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This dissertation argues that the biblical imagery of Gustave Doré (1832-83) successfully conveyed various modern ways of encountering the Bible, in both sacred and secular contexts. Doré was one of the most popular artists in nineteenth-century Europe and America, and his images have continued to be widely reproduced (to date, his Bible illustrations have been incorporated into over 700 publications). Emerging at a time when the Bible was taking on cultural roles beyond the moral and theological, Doré's images negotiated the challenges facing biblical representation, and introduced generations around the world to a new and modern way of understanding Judeo-Christian scripture. From the emergence of the "Bible as literature," to Holy Land archaeology, to the spectacularization of biblical narratives, to modern religious pedagogy, the impact of Doré's biblical pictures was felt on a scale heretofore unknown. More broadly, this project deals with the intersection of art, religion, and modernity through the study of one influential artist. The history of Doré's images extends across temporal, geographical, and denominational boundaries, and is crucial for understanding how the Bible has maintained its sacred and secular functions through the present day. Despite his centrality to the nineteenth-century art world, Doré's work has maintained a relatively marginal place in standard art histories. Art historians and sociologists of religion are becoming increasingly interested in the importance of religious imagery in modernity and Doré's works are often invoked, but there has yet to be a sustained study of the forms, history, and persuasive power of his images. Redressing art history's meager attention to modern religious art, I hope not only to recuperate Doré for art history, but also, more generally, to demonstrate how religious art helped make us modern.

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The interpretation of Ottilie in Goethe's Wahlverwandtschaften stems from an understanding of romantic motifs, which find their most systematic expression in her childlike character. Ottilie embodies the romantic idealization of childhood as a means of withdrawal from the enlightened world, echoing the Romantics' rejection of the disenchanted Age of Enlightenment. Through her portrayal of innocent childlikeness, her adolescent conflict with the rational world, and her final rejection of enlightenment, Ottilie maintains her childlike purity, expressing the romantic ideal of childhood. Ottilie's childlike emotional disposition puts her in conflict with the enlightened world of adults and academia. In an attempt to maintain her childlike innocence, she separates herself from the present world and establishes ties to the medieval past through monastic duties and catholic sympathies. However, Ottilie's attempt to remain separate is futile due to her enlightened surroundings. Her journey toward self-awareness begins as a result of her love for Eduard, whose sexual thoughts of Ottilie launch her into a state of adolescence, against which she unconsciously struggles. Continual contact with the enlightened world weakens Ottilie's efforts to maintain ties to her childlike state. In her weakened condition she is unable to resist Eduard's continual amorous pursuits and openly displays her affection for him with a kiss. Her inner turmoil, resulting from her deliberate indiscretion causes the accidental drowning of Charlotte's and Eduard's baby Otto, which illuminates the iniquitous nature of her love for Eduard. She makes the decision to reject full enlightenment and transcends her human frailty by becoming saint-like. Through renunciation, which results in her sacrificial death, she spurns enlightenment and returns to a state of everlasting purity. As the portrayal of the romantic ideal of a maintained childhood innocence, Ottilie seems to be a vehicle to express either Goethe's commendation of condemnation of Romanticism. For the romantic, Ottilie's life and death are a triumph, for she succeeds in passing from this world, having proceeded from innocent child to saint into everlasting life. For the non-romantic, Ottilie's death is a tragedy, for she never reaches true enlightenment and never develops to her full potential.

John Brown Gordon was committed to the mission of national reconciliation. He knew that the South would have to embrace the North to repair the devastation of the Civil War. Driven by dedication to public service after the war, he worked through his positions in governmental offices to help the South. As his public life slowed he began work on a lecture aimed at making him a peacemaker, a missionary for reconciliation. His purpose was to provide a broad, nationalistic perspective which created a common vantage point that would allow both Northerners and Southerners to derive pride and honor from their participation in the Civil War. The lecture, "The Last Days of the Confederacy," became very popular in a short period of time, and made Gordon one of the most requested speakers of the Southern Lyceum Program and Slayton Lyceum Program. The purpose of this critical interpretation of Gordon's lecture is to account for the effectiveness of the rhetorical elements and strategies in the work. The analysis will be based on Walter Fisher's narrative paradigm. Narratives dominate the content and structure of speech; narratives provide a way of ordering and presenting a view of the world through descriptions of a situation - -the act of storytellingthe format Gordon chose in creating the lecture. After drawing conclusions from application of the narrative paradigm I will focus on identifying and evaluating Gordon's rhetorical vision, which is based in Ernest Bormann's fantasy-theme theory. Finally, due to the synecdochal nature of the narratives I will use Kenneth Burke's four master tropes literature to fully interpret the various aspects of the narrative, which complements the initial mission of narrative criticism. In "The Last Days of the Confederacy," Gordon masterfully uses anecdotes from his experiences in the Civil War to create narrative sequences, which construct a strategy of transformative discourse. A typical sequence would start with an ingratiary tactic in which Gordon, in his eloquent manner, would describe a Northern character, scene, or theme and juxtapose it to another story from the South. The purpose of this sequence is to generate irony, creating a dialectic between the two stories, which, at the surface, seem to be opposed. His third step, then, was to use that dialectic to point to the commonalities between the North and the South. This he would do by illustrating an American trait, skill, or value. The result would be a major theme demonstrating a national value or belief to add strength to his existing compendium of themes, such as unity, fraternity, and brotherhood - -all tools to salve the process of reconciliation of conflict with face-saving for both. / Graduation date: 1994

Texte remanié de : Dissertation : ? : Bonn, Universität : 2004. / Bibliogr. p. 307-342.

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This thesis examines the development of an anorexic discourse in Goethe's Die Wahlverwandtschaften. Chapter 1 investigates anorexia as a cultural signifier and its relationship to non-clinical and non-medical disciplines. I then submit that female self-starvation serves a structural and a thematic function in WV. In Chapter 2, I argue that Ottilie's arrested female development illustrates the central, concept (elective affinities) of the novel. Chapter 3 examines food as a non-verbal system of communication in the narrative. Here, I demonstrate that Ottilie's eating disorder denies her subjectivity while it signifies and affirms the dominant social institutions depicted in the novel. Chapter 4 examines Ottilie's oscillation between corporeality and bodilessness. Her physicality is always associated with instability. The disappearance of her flesh allows for the passive reflection of masculine identity. In Chapter 5, I analyze the representation of Otttilie's death and demonstrate that her corpse allegorizes the construction of subjectivity in the narrative. In closing, I argue that Ottilie is an empty signifier in the novel, onto which the plot is imposed. Her anorexia functions as a sign for the process of narration and is a condition of the novel itself.

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