Dissertations / Theses: 'Spirituality in literature'

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Scofield, Mary Ellen. "Willa Cather's Spirituality." PDXScholar, 1996. https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/open_access_etds/5262.

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Both overtly and subtly, the early twentieth century American author Willa Cather (1873-1947) gives her readers a sense of a spiritual realm in the world of her novels. '!'his study explores Cather's changing conceptions of spirituality and ways_in which she portrays them in three of her novels. I propose that though Cather is seldom considered a modernist, her interest in spirituality parallels Virginia Woolf's interest in moments of heightened consciousness, and that she invented ways to express ineffable connections with a spiritual dimension of life. In 0 Pioneers! (1913), Cather proposes that those who use their intuition to express themselves recognize and unite with a spiritual current that runs underneath and through all experience and natural phenomena. In The Professor's House (1925), Cather questions whether union with the spiritual current can endure, and doubts the ultimate value of such a union. In Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927), she suggests that recognition of this spiritual current comes and goes, and resigns herself to the need for spiritual traditions, such as Catholicism, to be able to sustain belief in the current, to sense it, and to value a union with it. All her life, Cather searched for spiritual meaning, expressed in her interest in the philosopher Henri Bergson, in connections between art and religion, and in the Episcopal Church. Cather's conception of spirituality changes, but the spiritual dimension of her novels commonly includes a sense of space, place, transcendence and ambiguity. Because the spiritual realm is beyond words, Cather uses juxtaposition and repetition to create an expansive, imaginative space that resonates silently through her stories. Powerful landscapes express the spiritual realm, and enhance characters' ability to recognize it. Awareness of this realm allows characters to transcend mental and cultural barriers and experience a common consciousness. Cather embraces darkness and contradictions as part of the spiritual realm, resulting in powerful ambiguities. As her spiritual vision changes during her life from exuberant to deeply reserved, these ambiguities become increasingly highlighted in her novels.

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Ellis, Matthew Ryan. "William Wordsworth: Religion and Spirituality." Thesis, Boston College, 2005. http://hdl.handle.net/2345/358.

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Thesis advisor: John L. Mahoney
An exploration of the spirituality present in seleceted poems of William Wordsworth. Occasionally reference his personal relationship to and influence of the Anglican Church, but is a study of the way he developed his own spirituality, not an argument for or against his classification as a "Christian poet."
Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2005
Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences
Discipline: English
Discipline: College Honors Program

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Fancourt, Donna. "Altered states : feminist utopian literature." Thesis, University of Leicester, 2004. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.409809.

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This thesis interrogates the interaction between feminist utopianism and altered states of consciousness in fiction from 1970 onwards. The thesis develops further both Lyman Tower Sargent's definition of utopianism as "social dreaming" and Tom Moylan's understanding of critical utopia. It also develops and expands Lucy Sargisson's definition of feminist utopianism as subversive, fluid, ambiguous and committed to ongoing personal and social transformation. Utopianism must challenge society's norms and values, offering both social critique and social vision. I argue throughout this work that transforming individual consciousness is a vital step towards social change. The thesis focuses on four altered states of consciousness: madness, dreaming, spirituality and telepathy. These states are situated within a theoretical context, and are then explicated further through close literary analysis of feminist utopian literature. Altered states offer a metaphor for the need to think differently, and highlight the importance of looking at society in new and alternative ways. In a significant number of feminist utopian texts, utopia is accessed through a dream or a vision, through spiritual meditation, telepathy, or a state of "madness". Within these texts, altered states are not only used as a means of accessing utopia but are also represented within the narrative as a means of maintaining or sustaining the utopian vision. Additionally, I show that altered states refers to the place of utopia, which is altered, or different to, contemporary society. The reader may also enter into an altered state through the process of reading the text, as their beliefs and assumptions about "the way things are" are challenged, denaturalised and subverted.

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Popat, Manish. "T.S. Eliot and spirituality : the poetry of surrender." Thesis, University of Warwick, 1996. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.322690.

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Sutcliffe, Joseph Andrew. "James Joyce's Dubliners and Celtic Twilight spirituality." Thesis, University of Glasgow, 2006. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/5123/.

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My research is, as far as I am aware, the first reading of Dubliners as a specific and profound engagement with the ideas of the Celtic Twilight school. The recurrence of dreamlike states, such as ghostly visions and reverie, symbolizes aspects of an urban petit-bourgeois Catholic Irishncss excluded by Revivalist propaganda. Joyce earths popular notions of spirituality so that in their dreamlike states characters arc tantalized by glimpses of an evanescent world. He shapes such experiences in relation to similar moments in Celtic Twilight writing, delineating Dubliners' states of mind as an implicit rebuke to mythic ideal and romantic versions of Irishness, and suggesting a Dublin Otherworld to rival the one popularized by Yeats, A.E., Lady Gregory and Synge. Joyce reacts, too, against George Moore's brand of faux Naturalism which claims to present the 'real' Ireland in The Untilled Field. Joyce's project involves parody of privileged Celtic Twilight genres such as the fairy story, heroic legend, and folk song. The precise reactions in Dubliners expose the distortions of the apparently authentic Celtic Revival, which, for all its patriotism, is, ironically, unlrish since it is influenced by a genteel English sensibility. Such parody is complex in terms of mood since the wit co-exists with delicate psychological investigation and exploration of Dublin tribal consciousness. Against fashionable opinion, Joyce, in Dubliners, reclaims the city of Dublin as fit territory for literature and its citizens as capable of spiritual experience, however complex and potentially compromised this spiritual state might be.

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Rose, Patricia Elizabeth. "The Role of medieval and matristic romance literature in spiritual feminism /." [St. Lucia, Qld.], 2001. http://www.library.uq.edu.au/pdfserve.php?image=thesisabs/absthe16284.pdf.

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Pu, Xiumei. "Spirituality a womanist reading of Amy Tan's "The bonesetter's daughter" /." unrestricted, 2006. http://etd.gsu.edu/theses/available/etd-07192006-191437/.

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Thesis (M.A.)--Georgia State University, 2006.
Title from title screen. Layli Phillips, committee chair; Margaret Mills Harper, Carol Marsh-Lockett, committee members. Electronic text (64 p.) : digital, PDF file. Description based on contents viewed Apr. 20, 2007. Includes bibliographical references (p. 57-64).

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Jeon-Chapman, Judith Anne. "Spirituality in Michel Tournier : duality aspiring towards a perverse cosmogony /." Thesis, Connect to this title online; UW restricted, 1995. http://hdl.handle.net/1773/8283.

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Bleeker, Joshua James. "The Trinity and spiritual growth in contemporary evangelicalism." Online full text .pdf document, available to Fuller patrons only, 2004. http://www.tren.com.

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Senior, John. "Spirituality in the fiction of Henry Rider Haggard." Thesis, Rhodes University, 2004. http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1002252.

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Neither an unquestioning support for British imperialism nor a personal pre-Jungian philosophy were the driving forces behind Rider Haggard’s beliefs or his literature. These two concerns were secondary to the author’s fascination with the supernatural, a theme prominent in his era, but less so in our own. A declining faith in European religion provided the dominant focal point in Haggard’s work. Although there are important overtones of imperial concern and indeed points of Jungian significance in the texts, these are generally subservient to an intensive wide-ranging spiritual discourse. The place of Haggard’s work in history and its literary merit are thus misunderstood when his spiritualism is not taken into account. No analysis of the author’s work can be complete without first coming to terms with his spiritual ideas and then with their impact on other topics of significance to both the author and audiences of his day. The spiritual or religious aspect of his writing has been largely ignored because of its subtle nature and its relative unfashionability throughout most of the twentieth century in the critical and intellectual climate of the Western world. However, in the Victorian era, under the materialist impact of Darwin, Marx and industrialization, Europe's Christian God was pushed from centre stage, creating widespread spiritual hunger and anguish. In the resulting religious vacuum Haggard's overtures were of particular significance to his audience. In fact, when considered in terms of his immense contemporary popularity, the pervasive presence of spirituality throughout Haggard's works and in his personal writing gives some indication of the subject's enormous importance not only to the author, but to late Victorian society as a whole. In light of this Victorian significance, the spiritual element rises, by its constant presence and persistent foregrounding, to subvert not only the imperial and the Jungian, but even Haggard's overt adventure text by dealing directly with the underlying metaphysical crisis in Western society.

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Sundberg, Jeffrey Charles. "Shotgun awakening| A phenomenological study of extreme occurrences of falling in love." Thesis, California Institute of Integral Studies, 2016. http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=3743675.

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Falling in love, for many individuals, begins with an inescapable, uncontrollable, transformative experience of intense emotions and intrusive thoughts; one phenomenon from the literature is the extreme love experience, limerence. Romantic love researchers have tended to lump extreme love phenomena into the limerence model viewed as pathology. Transpersonal psychology was chosen as the lens to examine an extreme occurrence of falling in love for its positive, transformational, and spiritual potential using a phenomenological approach. There were 25 U.S. born participants, age 30 and older, recruited from the internet who reported experiencing a very intense and very significant romantic love occurrence. Data from semi-structured interviews were thematically analyzed for emergent information, and then the data were compared to potential explanatory models including limerence, spiritual emergency, biopsychosocial, and passionate romantic love. The results revealed a unique experience unlike limerence and with limited correlations to the biopsychosocial model. The new phenomenon is called amigeist, characterized by immediate, intense soul-mate bonding, such as secure attachment with lifepartner potential. The larger themes were dynamic connection, intense emotions, astonishment, new behaviors, and passionate long-term relationships.

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Dubin, Rachael. "Zen and shadows intersections between spirituality and aesthetics in Tanizaki's "In praise of shadows" /." Diss., Connect to the thesis, 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/10066/3731.

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Peterson, Tamalyn. "An Examination of Secrecy in Twentieth-Century African American Literature." Digital Archive @ GSU, 2013. http://digitalarchive.gsu.edu/english_diss/110.

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This dissertation examines the legacy of secrecy, silences, and the unspoken in twentieth century African American literary texts. Using a range of texts representing various eras within the genre of African American literature, this dissertation contends that secrecy is a trope and may be attributed to inherited, maintained traditional practices from West and West Central Africa. Having read a number of African American texts and connecting my personal experiences with these works, I noticed a pattern of withheld discourse throughout. Most notably, Leslie Lewis’s Telling Narratives posits a reason for this trope by examining earlier narratives, specifically nineteenth-century African American texts. She argues the master/slave relationship as the prevailing reason for the secretive motif. Yet, traditional and cultural practices noted in early African publications demonstrate that Africans were keeping secrets prior to their diasporic scatterings. By examining early West African-derived works, as well as nineteenth-century African American texts, I ground my position that secrecy as we see it evolves from or relates to early signifying and language manipulations, particular to African-derived people. Thus, the early works connect sustained homeland ties to the literature that follows, providing an explanation for the secrecy reflected in African American literature. This study highlights three types of secrets: identity, family, and sexual, all of which are interrelated and, out of one, the other type may result. The texts that best demonstrate these silences are James Weldon Johnson’s The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man and Nella Larsen’s Passing; James Baldwin’s Go Tell It on the Mountain and Alice Walker’s The Color Purple; and Gayl Jones’s Corregidora and Lalita Tademy’s Cane River. Each text group corresponds with a secret type. Overall, this dissertation challenges the notion that secrecy as a trope in African American literature limits itself to the master/slave relationship in the United States. The previously mentioned texts highlight a direct link to West and West Central African traditions maintained after the Middle Passage. Hence, these preserved homeland customs, including secrecy, are reflected in twentieth-century African American literature.

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McCreery, Elaine. "Promoting children's spiritual development in education : a review of the literature and an exploration of teachers' attitudes." Thesis, Roehampton University, 2000. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.326828.

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Jones, Esther L. "Traveling discourses subjectivity, space and spirituality in black women's speculative fictions in the Americas /." Columbus, Ohio : Ohio State University, 2006. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc%5Fnum=osu1155665383.

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McAvan, Em. "The postmodern sacred: popular culture spirituality in the genres of science fiction, fantasy and fantastic horror." Thesis, McAvan, Em (2007) The postmodern sacred: popular culture spirituality in the genres of science fiction, fantasy and fantastic horror. PhD thesis, Murdoch University, 2007. https://researchrepository.murdoch.edu.au/id/eprint/188/.

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In my thesis I argue that the return of the religious in contemporary culture has been in two forms the rise of so-called fundamentalisms in the established faiths-Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, even Buddhist-and the rise of a New Age style spirituality that draws from aspects of those faiths even as it produces something distinctively different. I argue that this shift both produces post-modern media culture, and is itself always-already mediated through the realm of the fictional. Secular and profane are always entangled within one another, a constant and pervasive media presence that modulates the way that contemporary subjects experience themselves and their relationship to the spiritual. I use popular culture as an entry point, an entry point that can presume neither belief nor unbelief in its audiences, showing that it is 'unreal' texts such as Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, The Matrix and so on that we find religious symbols and ideas refracted through a postmodernist sensibility, with little regard for the demands of 'real world' epistemology. I argue that it is in this interplay between traditional religions and New Age-ised spirituality in popular culture that the sacred truly finds itself in postmodernity.

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McAvan, Em. "The postmodern sacred : popular culture spirituality in the genres of science fiction, fantasy and fantastic horror /." McAvan, Em (2007) The postmodern sacred: popular culture spirituality in the genres of science fiction, fantasy and fantastic horror. PhD thesis, Murdoch University, 2007. http://researchrepository.murdoch.edu.au/188/.

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In my thesis I argue that the return of the religious in contemporary culture has been in two forms the rise of so-called fundamentalisms in the established faiths-Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, even Buddhist-and the rise of a New Age style spirituality that draws from aspects of those faiths even as it produces something distinctively different. I argue that this shift both produces post-modern media culture, and is itself always-already mediated through the realm of the fictional. Secular and profane are always entangled within one another, a constant and pervasive media presence that modulates the way that contemporary subjects experience themselves and their relationship to the spiritual. I use popular culture as an entry point, an entry point that can presume neither belief nor unbelief in its audiences, showing that it is 'unreal' texts such as Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, The Matrix and so on that we find religious symbols and ideas refracted through a postmodernist sensibility, with little regard for the demands of 'real world' epistemology. I argue that it is in this interplay between traditional religions and New Age-ised spirituality in popular culture that the sacred truly finds itself in postmodernity.

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Wilbur, Julie L. "Spirituality and spiritual sickness in Alice Walker's later works." Virtual Press, 1993. http://liblink.bsu.edu/uhtbin/catkey/864941.

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Walker's latest three novels address in some way walker's notions of spirituality and her idea that many people suffer from a type of spiritual sickness which prevents them from realizing the fullest extent of their spirituality. The well as with themselves. Possessing the Secret of Joy doesnot discuss Walker's thoughts on spirituality as much as her earlier works. Instead, the book focuses on Tashi, the main character, who suffers a form of physical mutilation which leads to her spiritual suffering.By looking at Walker's novels and by reading other works, both fictional and nonfictional, including the influential work The Great Cosmic Mother by Monica Sjoo and Barbara Mor, I have developed a theory of Walker's spirituality. Using this idea about spirituality, I then examined Walker's novels for evidence of forms of spiritual sickness in her characters and studied the ways in which the characters overcame their respective spiritual difficulties.
Department of English

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Phillips, Dianne Tisdale. "The Illustration of the Meditations on the Life of Christ| A Study of an Illuminated Fourteenth-Century Italian Manuscript at the University of Notre Dame (Snite Museum of Art, Acc. No. 85.25)." Thesis, Yale University, 2016. http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=10160872.

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For more than fifty years, the Meditationes Vitae Christi (MVC) and the most famous of its illustrated manuscripts (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, Ms. ital. 115) have been employed by scholars to exemplify late medieval female spirituality. The mid-fourteenth century ilhuminated manuscript of the Meditationes in the Snite Museum of Art at the University of Notre Dame that is the subject of this dissertation provides valuable evidence of the popularity of the famous text originally written for a woman religious and its appropriation by urban laity. As an example of the shorter text, in Italian, with 43 chapters plus prologue, its 48 large colored miniatures and the decorated initials that begin each chapter, point to a wealthy patron quite unlike the Poor Clare to whom the MVC text was initially directed. The style of the miniatures indicates that the manuscript was illuminated ca. 1350 in Bologna, site of the pre-eminent European university for the study of law.

The dissertation explores how the Meditationes Vitae Christi was adapted for an educated and prosperous husband and wife. While written in the vernacular, the Snite MVC illuminations bear a strong resemblance to the illustrations in fourteenth-century Bolognese legal manuscripts. Despite the vivid and often unconventional imagery of the text that is designed to stimulate the reader's affective response to its re-telling of the story of the life of Christ, the miniatures tend to preserve traditional iconographies. The superficially conventional Snite miniatures, which often seem indifferent to the visual specifics of the text, serve to align it with orthodox doctrine and underscore the veracity of its contents.

An analysis of the illuminations of the Snite MVC reveals a particular attentiveness by the illuminator to the representation of male exemplars that would appeal to an elite educated patron, who might have been a judge or lawyer, or law professor. The Infancy miniatures in particular depict St. Joseph in a prominent role and dressed as a late medieval professional man The dignified representation of St. Joseph is consistent with his scriptural appellation as a "just man " By attending to the themes of justice and wisdom in both the MVC text and in its scriptural sources, the Snite miniatures prove to be much richer in meaning than first glance would suggest, and their affinity with legal manuscript illumination hardly accidental.

The iconographic analysis of the Snite miniatures is complemented by the study of the social and intellectual context in which the manuscript was produced. Despite the seeming simplicity of the miniatures, the illuminator and his advisor prove to be theologically sophisticated and scripturally literate. By means of the illuminations, the MVC is made compatible with the religious and professional concerns of the elite laity, providing access for men wielding worldly authority into the life of Christ in which powerful and learned men play largely negative roles. The Snite manuscript responds to the lay patron's desire to see in the example of Christ and the events of his life confirmation of late medieval social, juridical, and political structures. In its miniatures, it provides saintly models for the educated laity desirous of reconciling their Christian commitments with the demands of an active, urban, professional life.

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Lazikani, Ayoush. "Cultivating the heart : suffering and language in Ancrene Wisse, the Wooing Group, and the Katherine Group." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2013. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:683e5231-3f50-48df-b0ab-9a1ef0fde367.

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This thesis examines the language of pain/suffering in Ancrene Wisse, the Wooing Group, and the Katherine Group, arguing that the anchoress nourishes an acute but discriminating sensitivity to pain. It seeks to demonstrate that the anchoress uses these early Middle English texts to cultivate sophisticated affective stirrings. Chapter 1 foregrounds the multidimensional penitence in Ancrene Wisse, situated in the context of Latin and vernacular penitential and homiletic material. The anchoress’ penitential processes demand not only physical pain, but also affective pain and intensive cognitive processes of self-examination. Chapter 2 argues that the Wooing Group meditations are tools of pain-cultivation, which the anchoress uses to nurture her affective pain as she develops her intimacy with the Spousal Lamb and his Mother. Chapter 3 assesses imagery of physical and affective woundedness. This chapter examines the anchoress’ use of imagery of Christ’s wounds, sin-wounds, and penitential wounding in Ancrene Wisse and the Wooing Group, and then studies her use of the saints’ wounding in the Katherine Group. Chapter 4 contends that spectatorship and performance of suffering are not separable acts for the anchoress. The chapter assesses: the anchoress’ spectatorship in the Katherine Group hagiographies, a spectatorship based on defamiliarization; the anchoress’ participation with the pain of Christ in Ancrene Wisse and the Wooing Group, including an examination of her potential use of church wall paintings; and the female reader of Hali Meiðhad, who immerses herself in the suffering of a married and child-bearing woman. Chapter 5 examines the crucial affective phenomenon of compassion, arguing that compassion in Ancrene Wisse and the Wooing Group is not a distanced ‘pity’, but a complex ‘co-feeling’ (using Milan Kundera’s (1984) term). The thesis concludes by underscoring the fact that the anchoress’ painful existence is not pathological; it is an existence characterized by agency and emancipation.

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Beveridge, Alexander Hutchison. "Hugh MacDiarmid and religion : a new approach to the poet's work through a study of his recondite spirituality." Thesis, University of Edinburgh, 1985. http://hdl.handle.net/1842/18722.

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Rozenski, Steven Peter. "Henry Suso and Richard Rolle: Devotional Mobility and Translation in Late-Medieval England and Germany." Thesis, Harvard University, 2012. http://dissertations.umi.com/gsas.harvard:10520.

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Henry Suso (c. 1295-1366) and Richard Rolle (c. 1300-1349) were two of the most popular authors in late-medieval England and Germany: their Latin works survive in hundreds of manuscripts owned by both lay and religious readers across Europe. Authority and exemplarity are central to their works, both writers present themselves as eponymous characters in their works, creating "pseudo-autobiographies" which offer their author-characters to the reader as ideal exemplars for imitation. Also central to their authorial strategy is their attention to feminine aspects of both divinity and audience; both imagine themselves as brides of Christ even as they pledge their devotion to Wisdom, a (female) combination of the Old Testament Goddess and Christ incarnate. The imagery of courtly love is employed both as an enticement for readers and as a natural extension of their internalization of the allegorical interpretation of the Song of Songs; their claims to bear the name of Jesus on their heart lead to iconographic crossover in representations of Rolle in English manuscripts. Music and aurality are repeatedly employed as a fundamental aspect of their descriptions of mystical experience. Suso was read widely in late-medieval England, both in Latin and in English translation; as his popularity grew, so too did his influence on English literature and theology. The chapters of the Horologium Sapientiae on the Eucharist and the art of dying well proved especially popular. Two Carthusians, Nicholas Love and the author of the Speculum Devotorum, for instance, both drew on Suso's treatment of the Eucharist in reinforcing orthodox beliefs surrounding the sacrament of the altar – yet a recently-discovered independent translation of the same text is found in a manuscript otherwise containing Lollard tracts. Suso's liturgy in honor of Eternal Wisdom proved his most popular and enduring contribution to English literature: it entered Sarum Use Books of Hours by the end of the fifteenth century and was printed in English translation towards the end of the sixteenth.

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Hemphill, Victoria L. "Beauty Awaits in the Darkness of Being| A Journey of Individuation." Thesis, Pacifica Graduate Institute, 2014. http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=1527516.

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This thesis has been written with the interest and concern for the symbolic meaning of the tale of “Beauty and the Beast,” as it illustrates a young woman’s journey of individuating, ultimately in order to meet with her own animus and true Self. The methodology for writing this thesis is hermeneutic, in that it involves a search for meaning from what has been written about the fairy tale among different texts and films that were created based on the original tale. In this thesis, “Beauty and the Beast” is analyzed by exploring what has been written about it by Jung, the post-Jungians, and Freudian thinkers. Images or objects of significance in the tale that hold meaning or power for the overall analysis of the tale are included and explained.

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Wagner, Adam J. ""Still Happier Landscapes Beyond:" Queer Spirituality and Utopia in Bayard Taylor's Joseph and His Friend." Bowling Green State University / OhioLINK, 2019. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1555422335940903.

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McQuarrie, Kylie. "Sacred Things, Sacred Bodies: The Ethics of Materiality and Female Spirituality in Purple Hibiscus." BYU ScholarsArchive, 2015. https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/etd/4409.

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Thing theorist Bill Brown writes that “the thing names less an object than a particular subject-object relation.” This article examines the subject-object relation between African things and African bodies in Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's first novel, Purple Hibiscus. While the main character, Kambili, eventually learns to assimilate Western Catholicism into her Nigerian reality, her Christian fundamentalist father, Eugene, uses Catholicism to justify his self-hating destruction of African things and bodies. This article argues that both reactions are rooted in the characters' ability or inability to see African material things, including both objects and bodies, as autonomous subjects. Adichie's novel demonstrates that religious syncretism centered in an ethics of things is a viable, fruitful reaction to the colonizers' religion, and that religious practice can be healthily enacted through the medium of things and bodies.

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Wilson, Ashley Nichole. "Adopting the orphan's God : Christianity and spirituality in nineteenth- and twentieth-century girls' books." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2015. https://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.708956.

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Walker, Wendy L. "Erotics as Decolonization and Pathway to Spiritual Activism in Chicana Literature: Demetria Martínez's Mother Tongue and Alma Luz Villanueva's Naked Ladies." Ohio University / OhioLINK, 2012. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ohiou1344436989.

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Kilgore, Karen Marie. "Starets Zosima, exemplar of spiritual generation a study of the spiritual father in Dostoevsky's The brothers Karamazov /." Theological Research Exchange Network (TREN), 1995. http://www.tren.com.

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Lundqvist, Lisa. "Aldous Huxley’s Dichotomized Beginning towards Spirituality : An Analysis of Religious Aspects in Crome Yellow." Thesis, Högskolan i Gävle, Avdelningen för humaniora, 2018. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:hig:diva-29168.

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This essay is an analysis of the religious aspects of Crome Yellow. The main focus is to discover what Aldous Huxley’s views on religion were at the time he wrote Crome Yellow and to explore how Huxley’s contemporary surroundings influenced his views on religion. Huxley was born into a family and a society where there was a conflict between science and religion and this conflict together with the crises of his early life, came to affect him greatly. This essay conducts an analysis of Crome Yellow by utilizing Peter Berger’s theory of social construction, which includes information about Huxley’s contemporary surroundings. Huxley seems to have been ambiguous towards religion. He was concerned about the future of society and opposed to organized religion. He was longing for answers and meaning, and he had begun to form a spiritual belief where colour and light are central. These spiritual aspects can be seen as the beginning of Huxley’s spiritual enlightenment.

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Guerin, Caroline. "Sara Maitland and Michele Roberts : religion and spirituality in contemporary British women's fiction /." Title page, table of contents and abstract only, 1995. http://web4.library.adelaide.edu.au/theses/09PH/09phg9321.pdf.

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De, La Cruz Garcia Katia. "African historical religions and Africana spirituality in the Caribbean literature: an analysis of Afro-Caribbean philosophical archetypes in contemporary Caribbean literature using Ifá philosophy as a signifying system." Doctoral thesis, Faculty of Humanities, 2019. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/30356.

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This research analyses the presence of Afro-Caribbean philosophical archetypes in Caribbean literature as fundamental elements in the identity formation and racial dynamics of African descendants in the Caribbean. The main focus is on the spiritual component of African historical religions and Africana spirituality. The spiritual component, considering its level of transcendence in the human being, is essential in the formation of the identity since it allows the creation of moral archetypes that can be recognized in literary creations. The research uses Ifá philosophy, Yoruba mythology, and Africana religions, as signifying systems. The research considers the religious foundations of the Ewe-Fon, Kongo and especially, Yoruba traditions, with a focus on the Yoruba Oracle as Literary Corpus as well as the basis for the analysis of the following novels: Of Love and other Demons by Gabriel García Márquez, Changó, the biggest badass by Manuel Zapata Olivella, Ecué Yamba Ó by Alejo Carpentier, The red of his shadow by Mayra Montero and Gabriela, clove and cinnamon by Jorge Amado. This project establishes that the moral philosophy, implicit in the divinatory system of the Yoruba people, known as Ifá, can be traced through the literary structures of Caribbean literature and can be used as a reference for transnational identity in the Caribbean.

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Stokes, Thomas Hubert Jr. "Audience, intention, and rhetoric in Pascal and Simone Weil." Diss., The University of Arizona, 1990. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/185120.

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This dissertation examines audience, intention, and rhetoric in the writings of Blaise Pascal and Simone Weil. Despite the differences in historical period, ethnic heritage, sex, and milieux, which separate them, these two writers are astonishingly similar with regard to those for whom they wrote--audience--the subject matter of their writings--intention--and their skilled and self-conscious use of language in addressing their audiences and themes--rhetoric. Each of them wrote scientific or philosophical works, and polemical works, intended for a certain public; each of them then wrote, in the final years of their short lives, long notebook or journal entries, a record of spiritual experience which has since been edifying to others besides themselves. The guiding principle here is the function of language. This means how it works (rhetoric), but also, for what purpose (intention) and for whom (audience). We find many metaphors of function in Pascal and Simone Weil. The motivating concern of this dissertation is how Pascal and Simone Weil articulate, through language, God's response to man's yearnings toward God.

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Kim, Hyangmi. "L'esprit de liberté dans la création poétique de Baudelaire." Villeneuve d'Ascq, France : Presses universitaires du septentrion, 2002. http://catalog.hathitrust.org/api/volumes/oclc/49325850.html.

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Hilton, Conor Bruce. ""I dare not venture a judgement”: Spirituality and the Postsecular in Hogg’s Confessions." BYU ScholarsArchive, 2019. https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/etd/7876.

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Reading James Hogg’s 1824 novel The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner through a postsecular lens provides a new framework for spirituality. This framework establishes spirituality as a place of tension and uncertainty between the text’s main ideologies—Enlightenment rationality and religious, specifically Calvinist, fanaticism. The text explores this place of tension through its doubled narrative structure and by demonstrating the crisis of faith that the fictional Editor of the text undergoes. Confessions brings a compelling new paradigm to discussions of the postsecular that allows insight into the complex intersections of Enlightenment rationality and empiricism as well as religious zealotry and the supernatural.

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Ashok, Kumar Kuldeep. "Clairvoyance in Jainism: Avadhijñāna in Philosophy, Epistemology and Literature." FIU Digital Commons, 2018. https://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/3700.

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This thesis is an analytical study of the place of clairvoyance (avadhijñāna) in Jain epistemology and soteriology. It argues that avadhijñāna occupies an ambivalent position regarding both, since it is not solely attained by means of spiritual progression but may also spontaneously arise regardless of a being’s righteousness (samyaktva). Beginning with a survey of descriptions of avadhijñāna in the canons of each sect, including a translation of Nandisūtra 12-28, it examines how commentaries, philosophy and narrative literature developed and elaborated upon avadhijñāna as part of its epistemological system. Further, it examines the nexus of avadhijñāna and karma theory to understand the role of clairvoyance in the cultivation of the three jewels—correct perception, knowledge, and conduct—that lead to liberation (mokṣa). Finally, several examples of clairvoyants from Jain narratives show how clairvoyance reamined an ambivalent tool for virtuous transformation in popular literature.

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Geary, Cynthia J. "Jane Eyre and the tradition of women's spiritual quest : echoes of the great goddess and the rhythms of nature in one woman's "private myth"." Virtual Press, 1989. http://liblink.bsu.edu/uhtbin/catkey/544126.

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Thanks, in part, to critical studies like Sandra Gilbert & Susan Gubar's The Madwoman in the Attic and Patricia Beer's Reader, I Married Him, Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte has come to be regarded as the standard feminist text; that is, when someone wants to demonstrate a particular principle of feminist criticism or a traditionally feminine concern, she generally points to Jane Eyre. As critics like Gilbert and Gubar have shown us, Bronte's novel is not merely a Gothic romance; it reveals a feminine consciousness struggling to assert itself within the nineteenth-century patriarchal social and religious structures. Jane Eyre, therefore, would naturally lend itself to a critical study based on the concerns of feminist spirituality, especially the notion of women's communities and reflections of a feminine divinity. I propose a critical study of Jane Eyre, like the one Carol Christ conducted on the works of Kate Chopin, Margaret Atwood, Doris Lessing, Adrienne Rich and Ntozake Shange in Diving Deep and Surfacing: Women Writers on a Spiritual Quest, in which Christ examines spiritual awakening of a female consciousness in the writings of these five authors.Though Jane Eyre, seems at first glance to work within a standard Christian, or patriarchal, religious structure, there are elements of a feminine divinity, even an attempt to re-create (as Mary Daly would say) God so that He perhaps more closely resembles the early, androgynous Hebrew Yaweh: Iahu-Anat, or Ashtoreth (Diane Stein, The Women's Spirituality Book, Llewellyn Publications, 1987, pp. 78). Jane Eyre asks guidance from the Moon, who in turn addresses her as "daughter'; then too, she clearly rejects the Christian Church, as evidenced by her highly symbolic refusal of St. John's proposal of marriage, for instance. However, despite her intuitive recognition of the feminine power and wisdom that is hers to draw upon and her rejection of the institution of patriarchal religion, she does not ultimately, I believe, reject a masculine God, nor does she replace Him with an androgynous God. Yet the aspects of the feminine divinity she discovers and the women's community (the nurturing influence of her cousins Diana and Mary, so named for the archetypal moon and the virgin) in which she finds herself lead lead her to a subconscious acceptance of the feminine divinity within herself.I propose then to trace the development of a feminine divinity in Jane Eyre, which culminates in a rejection of the Church and follows the individuation process of Jane Eyre herself. Completion of this project will requires research into four principal areas:1) Feminist literary criticism on Jane Eyre--in order to familiarize myself with the feminine and feminist significance of such a reflection, and possibly place Jane traditions it falls into and those, like Gilbert & Gubar's, that center on it and also to determine to what extent the notion of a feminine divinity has been recognized in the novel.2) Archetypal psychology and criticism--strictly concerning the process of individuation and manifestations of the Goddess and those figures associated with Her; for example, near the end of the novel Mr. Rochester is compared to Vulcan and I would like to pursue to what extent he can be seen in light of a Hephesties/Demeter syzygy.3) Jane Eyre criticism that discusses the spiritual or religious aspects of the novel--since Jane Eyre has obvious religious implications, spiritual issues have not been ignored by the critics (I am most eager to read Elisabeth Jay's The Religion of the Heart: Anglican Evangelicalism and the Nineteenth Century Novel, for instance); however, my previous research has not unearthed a feminist spirituality critical approach to Jane Eyre.4) Issues of women's spirituality--particularly those concerning communities of women, Goddess worship and ritual behavior, and images and symbols of the Goddess. Such research will allow me to determine to what extent a sense of a feminine divinity is reflected in Jane Eyre, come to a conclusion about the meaning and Eyre into a tradition of women writers on a spiritual Research in community management of the severely mentally ill has been scarce. Two primary components of community care in particular need evaluation,residential arrangements and styles of "case management." The purpose of this study was to evaluate the interaction of two types of residential arrangements (single- and double-occupancy) and two types of case management ("assertive" and "limited") in a 2 X 2 design. Participants were individuals with a severe mental illness served by CMHS, Inc. Individuals were matched on DSM-III-R diagnoses and sex: 8 had roommates and received assertive case management, 5 had roommates and limited case management, 5 lived alone and received assertive case management, and 5 lived alone with limited case management. Data were obtained from three independent sources: (1) each client was interviewed using the Denver Community Mental Health Questionnaire (DCMHQ) and the Inventory of Socially Supportive Behaviors (ISSB) on four separate occasions over three consecutive months; (2) frequency of client contact with family members over the same time interval was tracked by case managers; and (3) concurrent attendance in day treatment sessions, diagnosis, number of previous hospitalizations, and approximate number of months of previous hospitalization were obtained from community mental health center records. DCMHQ scores for acute symptoms and interpersonal conflict were combined into an index called problems, while ISSB scores measured social support received. Monthly followups for. three consecutive months were used to obtain stable estimates of problems and support. Significant positive correlations were found between family involvement and problems, family involvement and residential arrangements, social support and problems, group attendance percentage and age, problems and social support, and a marginal relationship between residence and social support. Statistically significant negative correlations were found between case management and problems, social support and number of previous hospitalizations, group attendance percentage and problems, and residence and age. In multiple regression involving all predictors, the variables other than roommating and case management, (i.e., average family involvement, number of previous hospitalizations, program attendance, and age, considered together) predicted both problems reported and support received, while as second and third steps in the regression analysis case management and residence did not significantly predict problems or social support. In other words, once chronicity (i.e., number of previous hospitalizations), family contact, age, and group attendance were controlled, case management and residence both vanished as predictors. Future studies should consider these factors, and other aspects of the natural context, when evaluating community interventions for the mentally ill in a more controlled experimental design. With respect to developing new research for community adjustment, recommendations for more controlled studies were made and two new community intervention procedures were described.
Department of English

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Chait, Sandra M. "Writing the body spiritual : sexual/textual/spiritual links in the writings of Antonia White, Emily Coleman and Djuna Barnes /." Thesis, Connect to this title online; UW restricted, 1997. http://hdl.handle.net/1773/9519.

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Sand, Anne. "Rain from the Dublin Bus." Ohio University Honors Tutorial College / OhioLINK, 2014. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ouhonors1398273904.

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Pulis, Anne Elizabeth. "The vanishing inquiry : modernists in pursuit of spirit /." free to MU campus, to others for purchase, 2000. http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/mo/fullcit?p9974673.

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Yoon, Young Ho. "Fénélon's spirituality of God-centeredness and self-abandonment an evangelical evaluation in light of John Piper's Desiring God /." Theological Research Exchange Network (TREN), 2006. http://www.tren.com/search.cfm?p001-1118.

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Hagan, Justice M. "Desert Enlightenment: Prophets and Prophecy in American Science Fiction." University of Dayton / OhioLINK, 2013. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=dayton1366729757.

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Slater, Jarron Benjamin. "Seeing (the Other) Through a Terministic Screen of Spirituality: Emotional Integrity as a Strategy for Facilitating Identification." BYU ScholarsArchive, 2012. https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/etd/3219.

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Although philosopher Robert Solomon and rhetorician Kenneth Burke wrote in isolation from one another, they discuss similar concepts and ideas. Since its introduction in Burke's A Rhetoric of Motives, identification has always been important to rhetorical theory, and recent studies in emotion, such as Solomon's, provide new insight into modes of identification—that human beings can identify with one another on an emotional level. This paper places Solomon and Burke in conversation with one another, arguing that both terministic screens and emotions are ways of seeing, acting, engaging, and judging. Hence, terministic screens and emotions affect ethos, or character, both in a specific moment and over periods of time as they are cultivated through habit. Because emotions influence ethos, it is important for a speaker to cultivate the right emotions at the right time—Solomon's notion of emotional integrity. Emotional integrity facilitates Burkean identification between speaker and audience because it enables human beings to see the other as synecdochically related to themselves, a part of the whole. Hence, this paper ultimately argues that a speaker will improve his or her ethos by cultivating emotional integrity.

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Wareham, Edmund Hugh. "Spirituality and the everyday : a history of the cistercian convent of Günterstal in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2016. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:d9dc2220-1a73-4f10-86a5-13baed5ac7b0.

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This thesis explores the evolving history of the Cistercian convent of Günterstal in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. It is structured around the anointing of the Last Rites of a Günterstal nun who was blessed on her eyes, ears, nose, mouth, hands, heart and feet. The thesis takes each body part as a symbol for understanding the changing environment and practices of the convent, especially the relationship between the nuns' spiritual and everyday lives, and the ways in which the nuns interacted with the world outside. It argues that the nuns developed a spirituality in the later fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries which was closely connected with the everyday world around them in a series of practices which went into decline following the criticism of the Reformation. Many of these were strategies developed by the nuns themselves for breaking down boundaries between convent and world. Attempts at revival in the later sixteenth century of convent life sought to heighten the distance between the convent and the world, in part by developing new forms of internalised spirituality. Yet these attempts at reform were made more difficult by the conflicting interests of those who sought change, the criticism which had come before, and the response of the nuns themselves. The thesis analyses a number of different external symbols of convent life, from the spaces they inhabited to the objects they handled, and shows how these represented a number of different values of what it meant to be a nun in this period, values which did not always sit easily with each other. Günterstal maintained a noble character throughout this period and the social profile of its inhabitants often jarred with the push towards religious uniformity. This thesis shows that the symbolic value of these markers became increasingly heightened over the sixteenth century and took on new forms as a direct result of the attack on the convent way of life in the Reformation.

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Alexander, Lydia L. "Iconoclast in the mirror." Thesis, University of North Texas, 2005. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc4822/.

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This work explores identity positions of speakers in modern and contemporary poetry with respect to themes of subjectivity, self-awareness, lyricism, heteroglossia, and social contextualization, from perspectives including Bakhtinian, queer, feminist and postructuralist theories, and Peircian semiotics. Tony Hoagland, W.H. Auden, Adrienne Rich, and the poetic prose of Hélène Cixous provide textual examples of an evolving aesthetic in which the poet's self and world comprise multiple dynamic, open relationships supplanting one in which simple correspondences between signifiers and signifieds define selves isolated from the world. Hypertext and polyamory serve as useful analogies to the semantic eros characteristic of such poetry, including the collection of original poems that the critical portion of this thesis introduces.

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Cosgrove, Walker Reid. "Enacted medieval spirituality on the page the Divine comedy and the Canterbury tales elucidating the internal and external pilgrimage of Margery Kempe /." Online full text .pdf document, available to Fuller patrons only, 2004. http://www.tren.com.

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Alblaimi, Najla A. ""I WILL SHOW YOU FEAR IN A HANDFUL OF DUST":CORPOREAL ANXIETIES IN T. S. ELIOT'S EARLY POETRY." Bowling Green State University / OhioLINK, 2015. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1429271816.

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Kramer, Emily Marie. "Wandering: Dreams, Memory, and Language in Poetry." Ohio University / OhioLINK, 2018. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ohiou1525179650285217.

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Herron, Stefanie. "Willa Cather's argument with modernism unearthing faith amid the ruins of war /." Access to citation, abstract and download form provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company; downloadable PDF file, 228 p, 2007. http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?did=1650498641&sid=4&Fmt=2&clientId=8331&RQT=309&VName=PQD.

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Burgon, Haleigh Heaps. "Redemption in the Life and Work of Camille Claudel." BYU ScholarsArchive, 2012. https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/etd/2987.

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Camille Claudel is a sculptor who has traditionally been approached in terms of her relationship to Rodin and his influence on her work. Indeed, the two shared a passionate relationship and there are certainly similarities between the two sculptors' work which provide for fascinating analyses. However, one of the acknowledged but previously unexplored speculations on Claudel's art suggests that it involves a measure of veiled spirituality sealed within its stone. It is precisely this sacred element within her sculptures that offers viewers an opportunity to experience transcendence while identifying with fundamental themes. Furthermore, Claudel created her figures as a method of interior healing and deliverance. This theme of redemption will be essential to arriving at the more profound, multifaceted interpretations of her sculptures. To highlight the connections to the various artists and movements discussed in the thesis, Claudel's piously thematic art can be compared to the nontraditional illustrations by Vincent Van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, and the religious depictions of James Tissot, as well as being seen as engaging with the idea of theosophy and the Symbolist art movement. It is true that in fin-de-siècle France, due to the advancing secularization of society, viewers did not understand religious and spiritual symbolism in art as comprehensively as they had in the past. However, it will be necessary to show that Claudel was not the only artist interested of her era who persisted in conveying spiritual themes within supposedly secular scenes. Yet, Claudel's work remains unique in that it communicates the theme of redemption through its creation as well as through its creator. Chez Claudel, the art and the artist are united and one cannot be fully understood without the other. Moreover, through her masterpieces, she did not only offer insight into the meaning of existence; through her redemptive works she found momentary salvation for herself and for others from the excruciating outward oppression present at the close of the 19th century. Unfortunately, since the moment she began to successfully achieve recognition for her work critics have been content to view each of Camille Claudel's sculptures as a deliberate response to her tumultuous relationship with Rodin. This thesis will investigate more enlightened interpretations made possible when one simultaneously considers the role of her spirituality. It will become unmistakably clear that Camille's brother Paul was right when he stated that her work is vastly different from all other artists' "because it welcomes light and radiates the inner dream that inspired it" (Ayral-Clause 157).

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Corrigan, Paul T. "Wrestling with Angels: Postsecular Contemporary American Poetry." Scholar Commons, 2015. http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/etd/5671.

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In the current “secular age,” more and more people find beliefs and behaviors associated with traditional religion intellectually and ethically untenable. At the same time, many “postsecular” writers, both believers and nonbelievers, continue to write with religious or religiously-inflected forms, themes, and purposes. In the United States, postsecular poets “wrestle with angels” by engaging constructively and deconstructively with matters traditionally considered the domain of religion and spirituality. While the recent work of Jürgen Habermas, Charles Taylor, John McClure and others puts the concept of the postsecular at the cutting edge of various fields of study, including religion, sociology, and literature, this dissertation presents the first study of contemporary postsecular poetry. The central question is, how should we define and describe contemporary postsecular poetry in the United States and how should we understand its religious and literary significance? To answer this question, this dissertation presents a broad survey of postsecular contemporary American poetry, offers extended analyses of the work of two preeminent postsecular poets—Li-Young Lee and Scott Cairns—and probes the implications for readers of the poetic forms found in such texts.

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Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Spirituality in literature'

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