103 research outputs found
Theology in suspense : how the detective fiction of P.D. James provokes theological thought
No full textElectronic redacted version excludes material for which permission has not been granted by the rights holderThe following dissertation argues that the detective fiction of P.D. James
provokes her readers to think theologically. I present evidence from the body of
James’s work, including her detective fiction that features the Detective Adam
Dalgliesh, as well as her other novels, autobiography, and non-fiction work. I also
present a brief history of detective fiction. This history provides the reader with a
better understanding of how P.D James is influenced by the detective genre as well as
how she stands apart from the genre’s traditions.
This dissertation relies on an interview that I conducted with P.D. James in
November, 2008. During the interview, I asked James how Christianity has
influenced her detective fiction and her responses greatly contribute to this
dissertation. However, James’s novels should be interpreted and explored in the
manner that they are received by the reader. How the reader receives and responds to
the novels, not only how James writes the novels, is what causes her stories to
provoke theological thinking.
By examining Christian symbolism that is present in setting, character, the
Detective Adam Dalgliesh, and plot, this dissertation seeks to assert that James
contributes to a theological conversation through her popular detective fiction
Dante\u27s Virgils
No full textThe questions brought to a text define the reading of it, questions both invited by the author and assumed by the reader. Dante\u27s Divine Comedy opens with a remarkable ambiguity that calls for an investigation of the questions being brought to the poem:
Midway along the journey of our lifeI woke to find myself in a dark wood,For I had wandered off from the straight path. (Inf 1.1-3)
Dante ...... Joyce. Derrida
No full textJames Joyce remains a logocentric figure, a position confirmed in his perceived relation to Dante within a patriarchal canonical lineage and its philosophical implications. Joyce also occupies this position within the writing and thought of Jacques Derrida, for whom his work then represents both the logos and its own deconstruction. In contrast, this thesis proposes that Joyce in fact is not a logocentric author, and that his writing is explicitly directed towards a deconstruction of the idea of the logos. This claim is advanced through the suggestion that there is in Joyce a deconstruction rather than a validation of the phonocentric linguistic theory and practice of Dante, and concomitantly of a patriarchal Joyce construed through that Dante. In this interrogation of the Dantean logos by Joyce’s writing the thesis then reads the Derridean view on Joyce and examines its investments, proposing that in it there are wider implications for a critical reading of Derrida’s work and for an understanding of his grammatology. It does so in three imagined papers on Joyce and Dante, an insert, a lecture and an essay. They constitute phantom artefacts in which to read deconstructively, and to read deconstruction, by unbinding Derrida’s Joyce.
The first chapter is an imagined insert from Joyce and Dante into Of Grammatology and its first chapter, ‘The End of the Book and the Beginning of Writing’. In the folds of the insert it is proposed that Derrida cleaves to the idea of the book and is bound to it in Joyce. This binding initiates a retrospective reading of ‘The End of the Book and the Beginning of Writing’ and of the wider grammatological opening; its implications are unfolded in the insert. By then unbinding the thread of a logocentric Dante in Joyce, the insert unbinds Joyce from the Derridean idea of the book and furthermore suggests that Joyce, read in the deconstruction of Dante, represents the closure of the book as imagined in that essay.
Building upon the proposal of a Joycean closure of the book as unfolded in chapter one, the second chapter advances and outlines the shape of that closure in an imagined lecture by Joyce. The chapter follows the displaced letter a in Ulysses as it interrogates mimesis, tracing the development of a subject in différance. The lecture performs that deconstruction of mimesis and, in doing so, announces not the apotheosis but the death of the realist novel in Ulysses.
The final chapter draws together the conclusions of the previous two chapters in an imagined essay that arche-writes ‘Two Words for Joyce’ as an example of its own thesis. It does so in a previously untraced Dantean connection, through a conversation between Joyce and Beckett on Dante that finds its way into Finnegans Wake and is archived in the two words Derrida extracts as the spur for his essay. The imagined essay brings together Derrida, Beckett and Joyce in Dante as a concatenation of pairs within the pair of essays; it also shadows another pair, the Derridean Joyce and his other from whom the imagined essay comes. It both performs a deconstructive reading of Derrida in ‘Two Words for Joyce’ and then, through that reading, more widely affirms a Derridean grammatology.
The argument of the thesis as it has advanced through the three chapters is here brought to a conclusion, suggesting that in Joyce’s writing it can be proposed that the relationship of deconstructive reading to its own practice is mediated through literature; it also proposes what might be a relationship between deconstructive reading and literature beyond those consequences
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A study of John Clare in his historical and political context
No full textAs the title indicates, the basis of the thesis is to set John Clare’s life and work within the context of the social and political history of his time. It is a study that is long overdue. The manner in which topical and political matters were mediated to him and were reflected in his work are analysed. His introduction to the literary and social worlds of Stamford and London is evaluated, and the advantages and disadvantages of patronage assessed. The active and complex political culture of Stamford has been taken into account as this may have affected his later political statements and a growing awareness of his audience. His antagonism to enclosure and the social changes that it engendered are considered. Three major questions that arise from this are addressed. The two local newspapers that Clare is known to have read are used throughout. His correspondence with friends, colleagues and casual correspondents has provided valuable insights as have his poetry and prose writings. Research in the Northamptonshire Record Office has revealed important new information in the form of one book of Enclosure Commissioners’ Minutes dated 1809-14, the first five years of the enclosure of Helpstone, Clare’s native village
Fortune and desire in Guillaume de Machaut
No full textThere is a pervasive tendency, in Machaut scholarship, to read his poetry as having
value only insofar as it speaks to our postmodern age: either it is fragmented and
riven with ambiguities, or it celebrates eroticism and the things of this world for their
own sake; in any case, it resists religious and moral orthodoxy. Such readings, while
often valuable in themselves, fail to take sufficient account of the influence which
Boethian and Neoplatonic ideas had upon Machaut, and thus misunderstand his work
on a fundamental level. By paying attention to the Boethian content in the narrative
dits, and by analysing Machaut's verse more thoroughly than has been done before,
my thesis demonstrates not only this author's moral orthodoxy, but also his extremely
sophisticated didactic methods. I begin with the Confort d'ami, Machaut's most
overtly moral work. The Confort engages with the supposed 'worldly' perspective of
its imprisoned addressee, adapting biblical and classical exempla in order to coax
Charles of Navarre towards a deeper understanding of worldly fortune. In Chapter 2 I
show how, in the Prologue and the Dit du vergier, the ambiguity so beloved of critics
can serve as a moral commentary on the carnality and self-absorption of the erotic
and artistic points of view. Having established, in the preceding chapters, that this
author's approach to his subject is ambiguous and critical, in Chapter 3 I explore the
extremes of his pessimism, and show how his love poetry can incorporate
sophisticated philosophical ideas, through my analysis of the Jugement du roy de
Behaigne. The thesis culminates in a detailed reading of the Remede de Fortune.
Through his deliberately idealised statements about education, through his application
of these views to the art of courtly love, through his composition (and setting to
music) of a sequence of virtuoso lyrics, and through his explicit invocations of and
borrowings from Boethius, Machaut develops an empathic but ultimately, as I argue,
deeply sceptical vision of earthly love
Dantean Journeys: The Motif of Meeting the Dead in Modern Poetry
No full textIt seems almost odd that a poet as remote, historically, linguistically, and philosophically, as Dante should maintain so pervasive an influence on modern poetry in English, by which we may comprehend the work of romantic, modernist, and contemporary poets. And yet it is easily demonstrable that Dante, a poet with medieval religious beliefs, an elaborately allegorical method, and an Italian system of versification difficult to transpose into English, has been an intimate and profound influence on poets as diverse as Shelley, Dante Rossetti, T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Allen Tate, James Merrill, and Wendell Berry. Indeed, Eliot went so far as to recommend Dante as a “universal school of style” (228), a better model for English poets than such native luminaries as Shakespeare and Milton. The nature of Dante’s actual influence varies from case to case, and ranges from attempts at “Englishing” terza rima to imitations of the grand structure of the Commedia. In the case of poets like Eliot and Tate, it may extend even to religious admiration, emulation, or attempted revival. The focus of this essay, however, will be on a narrower, and more strategic form of emulation: the recurrence in modern poetry of the motif of meeting and conversing with the dead
Robert Buchanan 1841-1901: an assessment of his career.
No full textPhDRobert Buchanan was widely regarded during his
lifetime as a poet of distinction, a capable and powerful
novelist, and a critic of some perception, yet his name is
now associated only with one regrettable episode, while
those of lesser men and women continue to be remembered for
work inferior to his. A man possessing large reserves of
energy, and pressed to write for a living at an early age,
he produced much work that deserves the oblivion it has
found; but his early verse, expressing his profound compassion
for the sufferings of the unfortunate in the simplest
language, some of his ballads, and not a little of his
later more vatic verse, is still worthy of study. As a
novelist his work is provocative and readable, but too
often descends to the level of the sentimental melodrama
which earned him, for a while, a very good income from the
stage. As a critic he was not profound, but was quick to
detect and praise expression of his own sympathy for humanity
that came to represent for him art's highest aspiration;
Dickens, Browning and Whitman were his heroes, and for the
last two he did sterling work in helping them to gain widespread
recognition. As a polemist he rushed into several
arenas, for some of which his talents were not especially
suited; but he publicly supported C. S. Parnell and Oscar
Wilde when few found the courage to do so. An interesting
man of impressive variety and undoubted talent has found an
undeserved neglect, and a full-scale critical biography of
Robert Buchanan is long overdue
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