Thesis (M. Div.)--St. Vladimir's Orthodox Theological Seminary, 2000. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 40-43).

Thesis (Th. M.)--Regent College, 1999. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 203-217).

Thesis (Psy. D.)--Massachusetts School of Professional Psychology, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves [100]-103).

Thesis (D. Min.)--Harding University Graduate School of Religion, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 181-210).

Thesis (D. Min.)--Western Conservative Baptist Seminary, 1988. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 239-243).

Thesis (M.S.) University of Missouri-Columbia, 2006. / The entire dissertation/thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file (which also appears in the research.pdf); a non-technical general description, or public abstract, appears in the public.pdf file. Title from title screen of research.pdf file viewed on (May 20, 2007) Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

This dissertation examines male bereavement in medieval literature, expanding the current understanding of masculinity in the Middle Ages by investigating both the authenticity and affective nature of grief among aristocratic males. My focus is on the pattern of bereavement that surfaces across genres and that has most often been absorbed into studies of lovesickness, madness, the wilderness, or more formalist concerns with genre, form, and literary convention, but has seldom been discussed in its own right. This pattern consists of love, loss, grief madness and/or melancholy, wilderness lament/consolation, and synthesis and application of information gleaned from the grieving process, which is found is diverse texts from the twelfth century romance of Chrétien de Troyes' Yvain to the fifteenth century dream vision/consolatio Pearl. A focused study of how bereavement is represented through this pattern gains us a deeper understanding of medieval conceptions of emotional expression and their connections to gender and status. In other words, this project shows how the period imagines gender and status not just as something one recognizes, but also something one feels. The judgments and representations of bereavement in these texts can be explained by closely examining the writings of such religious thinkers as Augustine and Aquinas, who borrow from the neo-Platonic and Aristotelian schools of thought, respectively, and both of whom address the potential sinfulness and vanity of excessive grief and the dangers for this excess to result in sinful behavior. This latter point is also picked up in medical treatises and encyclopedic works of the Middle Ages, such as those of Avicenna and Isidore of Seville, which are also consulted in this project. The medieval philosophical and medical traditions are blended with contemporary theories of gender, authenticity, and understanding, as well as an acknowledgement of the psychoanalytic contributions of Freud and Lacan. Through these theories, I explore the capacity for the men in these texts to move beyond the social strictures of masculinity in order to more authentically grieve over the loss of their loved ones, which often constitutes a type of lack. However, my purpose is not to view losses as lack, but rather, to see them as a positive impetus to push beyond the limits of social behavior in order to realize textually various outcomes and to suggest the limitations of such socially sanctioned conventions as literary forms, language, rituals, understanding, and consolation to govern the enactment of grief.

The experiences of grief and mourning in response to loss are fundamentally transformative to the self-identity of the mourner, necessitating an array of ritualized behaviors at the communal and individual levels. These rituals of mourning both create a space in which this transformation may take place and provide the structure that can direct that transformation. My focus is on historical and emerging forms of vernacular commemoration, by which I refer to material forms that are created by, acted upon, or in other ways utilized by a person experiencing grief in the service of regaining a sense of stability in the aftermath of loss. The re-integration of the bereaved, through mourning, back into society in new relation with the departed is often assisted by these vernacular memorial forms. My analysis focuses on three specific forms of commemoration: spirit photographs, ghost bikes, and memorial tattoos. These are vernacular forms of expression in the sense that they have emerged from and cater to individual needs and desires that are not satisfied by the more official and uniform materials and processes of mourning, such as the funeral service and subsequent visits to a gravesite or contemplation of an ash-filled urn. The power of these memorial forms rests in the adaptive and restorative abilities of memory to retain the lost relationship and to pull it forward and reconstitute it in a changed state as enduring and continuing into the future. When faced with the sudden death of a loved one, the traditional rituals that surround modern death may seem too rigid and homogenized to satisfy the wide array of emotions demanding attention in the bereaved. This is where the vernacular rituals and new forms of commemoration discussed in this dissertation spring up and make themselves known. Highly individual, yet often publicly and politically motivated, these new American ways of interpreting death and performing mourning represent the changing needs of contemporary mourners. As death has become increasingly hidden away and discussion of it rendered taboo, the need for personal and direct interaction with the processes of grief and mourning have become more and more important. / 2016-09-29

This thesis is a study of nineteenth century forms of grief and mourning, wlth particular reference to the peculiar pressures of writing to the bereaved, and how these were, or were not, overcome. Although the focus is mainly on the letters of condolence and on the poems of Tennyson, and the novels, journalism and letters of condolence of Dickens, use is also made of letters by the following: Thomas Carlyle, Edward FitzGerald, Benjamin Jowett, Cardinal Newman, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and Queen Victoria. Letters of condolence to Henry Hallam after the death of his son, Arthur, (given in appendix from unpublished originals in Christ Church College Library, Oxford), and also letters of condolence to George Eliot, are also studied. Twentieth century psychological studies of bereavement by Freud (Mourning and Melancholia [1917]), Eric Lindemann (Symptomology of Grief, [1944]) Geoffrey Gorer (Death and Bereavement in Contemporary Britain [1965]), and by Colin Murray Parkes (Bereavement; studies of grief in adult life [1986]), serve to identify common and universal features of the processes of grief and mourning. Correspondence about Arthur Hallam's life and death, and about the exhumation of Rossetti's poems, show how the language with which death and grief is treated in letters, is fraught with difficulties. This thesis establishes a link between the language of fiction, poetry and letters, and between the conventions of expressing sympathetic grief in the form of condolences, and Victorian conventions of funerals and mourning, as found in fiction, letters, art criticism, Dickens' journalism, a publication for undertakers, and in the monuments at Highgate Cemetery. Delineating the fears which faced a condoler, reveals the common awareness that words of comfort can seem useless and empty. It is also seen that in the Victorian age, the conventions of grief and mourning were felt to have separated from the sentiment within. This felt inadequacy had serious implicatlons for the writer of a letter of condolence. This thesis identifies the feeling which many condolers shared: that words of comfort seemed merely comnonplace and formalised, and were therefore unable to convey sincerity, or to mark particularity. That writing cannot fully record the modulations of a voice, or convey action, presents a writer of a letter of condolence with a further difficulty. Words already felt to be commonpLace or conventional, might seem dead on the page, without voice or gesture. This thesis delineates the conventions and conmonplaces of funerals, of mourning, and of letters of condolence, as a problem which is ever-renewed. Close readings of Tennyson's letters of condolence and of 'In Memoriam' are provided, in order to establish how, in particular contrast to Dickens, Tennyson was able to resurrect such comnonplaces. A study of 'Our Mutual Friend' and of Dickens' letters of condolence shows how, Dickens seeks to deny the anguish of grief. Whereas Dickens is confident and certain about his power to condole and about hls views of an after-life, Tennyson is hesitant and reticent. Whereas Dickens seeks to rouse and be heartfelt, Tennyson is cautious.

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