This dissertation seeks to construct a profile of Thoreau as a mystic. It examines Thoreau's life up to the publication of Walden, using in the main Thoreau's Journal and letters. It elucidates Thoreau's mystical experience and temperament chiefly by paralleling them with the experience and temperament of other mystics. It comments extensively on Walden throughout its chapters in an attempt to clarify Walden's mystical dimension.The Introduction justifies the method of paralleling Thoreau's experience with that of other mystics. It also defines the terms "mystic" and "mystical experience" and briefly argues the appropriateness of regarding Thoreau as a mystic. The Introduction gives special attention to explaining the various aspects of "illumination," the particular mystical state that Thoreau experienced numerous times in his life.Chapter 1 summarizes and comments in detail on many of Thoreau's illuminative experiences. Thoreau could facilitate these experiences either through meditative practice or through the cultivation of a passive, open, receptive condition while on walks in nature. Thoreau's illuminations included experiences of mystical "Silence," incommunicable noetic experiences, experiences of infinity and of flotation in infinity, experiences of calm and infinite self, "illuminative light," transfiguration and sacramentalization of external nature, joyfully reborn self, and other experiences.Chapter 2 shows that Thoreau conceived of his life as a quest for more and more complete mystical experience. Deliberate pursuit of illumination through nature formed one of the means through which he could make progress on this quest. Thoreau sought out certain natural locales, for example, that might catalyze illumination. Efforts of moral self-examination and self-shaping, efforts of character change, formed another means of progress. Thoreau sought to eliminate negative elements from his character and to cultivate non-self-preoccupation, trust, love, imperturbability, joy.Chapter 3 explores the effects on Thoreau of the gradual lessening, starting perhaps in 1841, of the frequency and intensity of his illuminations. The chapter shows that Thoreau shared in a period common in mystical lives called the Dark Night of the Soul, a period of despondency and spiritual deprivation that springs from the phenomenon of declining illuminations. Thoreau's purpose in going to Walden was partly to dispel the Dark Night he was experiencing and to recover the full illuminative state that he enjoyed previously. Thoreau's Dark Night continued past the Walden sojourn, however. Thoreau's Dark Night was rather frequently brightened by illuminations, although Thoreau commonly expressed dissatisfaction with them. The chapter explores why Thoreau came to regard these later illuminations as insufficient. By the time Thoreau published Walden, he had not advanced to Union, the final stage of the mystical life. The chapter suggests that remaining self-preoccupation and an acquisitive approach to the joys of illumination may have been the reason for Thoreau's not passing completely out of both the Illuminative and Dark Night phases of the mystical life and proceeding to Union. Thoreau seemed to be aware of the hindering effects of his remaining self-involvement, however, so he was in a likely way to grow out of this self-involvement.Chapter 4 discusses the possible effects on Thoreau's character of his numerous illuminative experiences. The chapter finds some of these effects to be a deep feeling of self-worth and of personal security, a sense of belonging in the world by rights as an integral part of it, asense of a loving presence that infuses life, self-detachment, inward calm, loving feeling and behavior, joy and zest in living, liberation from material pursuits, experience of the external world as sacramental or paradisal, and the ability spontaneously to poeticize or mythologize daily experience.

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This dissertation examines the works of five medieval women mystics—Hildegard of Bingen, Hadewijch of Brabant, Angela of Foligno, Birgitta of Sweden, and Julian of Norwich—to argue that these writers used feminine topoi, commonplace images of women symbolizing complex themes, to convey authority based on embodied experience that could not be claimed by their male associates. The lens used to study their works is rhetorical analysis informed by a feminist recuperative objective, one concerned with identifying effective rhetorical strategies useful to many women and men who have traditionally been denied speech, rather than with women's entrance into traditional rhetorical canons. In addition, the project deliberately engages scholarship by critics whose work has been informed by postcolonial, gender, and queer theories. This preference allows an exploration of the ways in which legitimized language becomes unstable and permeable, permitting members of oppressed and suppressed groups to usurp the authority of dominant discourse, and of historically situated rhetorical practice as the result of cultural and textual negotiations of gender.

This thesis explores the interrelatedness of anarchism and intoxication in Walter Benjamin’s 1929 article, ‘Surrealism: The last snapshot of the European Intelligentsia’. Responding to Marxist understandings of the ‘Surrealism’ article, this thesis contributes to a position put forth by Gershom Scholem regarding Benjamin’s later writings: that anarchism remains a distinct and alternative path in Benjamin’s thought, a path indebted to a youthful engagement with anarchist ideas. Utilising this understanding of anarchism in Benjamin’s later writings, it is argued that a positive understanding of anarchism in Benjamin’s ‘Surrealism’ article is discernible, and it exists in the ambiguous subordination of both anarchism and intoxication before that of Benjamin’s avowedly Marxist position, as expressed in the idea of profane illumination. / It is thus considered how a positive understanding of anarchism and intoxication in Benjamin’s ‘Surrealism’ article is evident not from the perspective of the article’s conclusions, but from the ambiguities of these conclusions. These tensions are further emphasised in focusing upon the temporal discontinuities of Benjamin’s work and the discordant ordering of his writings. Focusing specifically on Benjamin’s childhood remembrances, written after the publication of his ‘Surrealism’ article, it is to be considered how these remembrances, or “images” grant a positive status for Benjamin’s youthful concerns, a point with demonstrable connections to both anarchism and intoxication. These youthful “images” are understood as offering a new trajectory or pathway in readings of Benjamin’s ‘Surrealism’ article, wherein anarchism together with intoxication a represented as an alternative path unbound from their tense subordination beneath Marxism and the profane illumination. In contemplation of this alternative path, concluding remarks engage with the lineaments of a potential “anarchic illumination.” And, as with Benjamin’s “images” of childhood, these potentialities are to be found in those of Benjamin’s earlier writings that profess a sympathetic portrayal of anarchism and intoxication.

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / This thesis presents a new assessment of the identity and historical significance of Marguerite Porete, burned for heresy in Paris in 1310, and reconnects her to a vigorous, lay, discourse community that threatened the authority of the later medieval church. The thesis argues that a bilateral annihilation of Porete as an historical subject has been brought about by medieval and modern representations, and that this has served to obscure the presence of a subaltern religious discourse in the period. The historiography of Porete has followed distinctive stages of development that reflect, and are affected by, concurrent advances in the study of medieval female religious participation. This interplay has led to the development of a particularly influential hermeneutics that serves to exclude Porete from her contemporaries. Analysis of documentation issuing from Porete’s condemnation has similarly been influenced by hermeneutic issues that manipulate the ways in which Porete is perceived as an identity. This thesis challenges dominant representations of Porete in the scholarship and argues that Porete’s identity and discourse reflect a particularly vigorous, fluid and cross-discoursed lay engagement with religiosity that has roots in the precocious socio-religious environment of the Southern Low Countries. Central to the aims of this thesis is the question “how did Porete ‘fit’ the religious landscape of her period?” A seeming obstacle to this pursuit are claims from within the scholarship that Porete did not ‘fit’ at all, but was, rather, as an aberration amidst other female mystics of the period. Clear links, however, have suggested a wider discourse community and some have identified her, in conjunction with those that condemned her in Paris, as a beguine. Yet this affiliation is refuted by Porete within her book and the term, as an indicator of identity, is highly problematic. This thesis explores the historiographical issues that cloud Porete’s case and offers a reassessment of the possibilities her reconnection to the major religious currents of her day presents. It will be argued that her condemnation represents a major historical development wherein the boundaries of institutionally accepted discourse were hardened at the very moment when the possibilities for religious discourse were at their peak. Porete will thus be reassessed as a major figure in an alternative religious discourse that represents the excluded voice of lay engagement in the later Middle Ages.

Thesis (M. Div.)--St. Vladimir's Orthodox Theological Seminary, 1969. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (S.T.L.)--Catholic University of America, 1989. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 112-115).

Thesis (M.F.A.)--Rochester Institute of Technology, 1992. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 50-51).

Thesis (M.A.)--Cincinnati Bible Seminary, 2008. / Includes abstract and vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 106-110).

Thesis (M.A.)--Central Connecticut State University, 1997. / Thesis advisor: John A. Heitner. "... in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Masters of Arts in English." Includes bibliographical references (leaves 90-92).