For years, critics and fans of C. S. Lewis have noted his curious attentiveness to descriptions of food and scenes of eating. Some attempts have been made to interpret Lewis's use of food, but never in a manner comprehensively unifying Lewis's culinary expressions with his own thought and beliefs. My study seeks to fill this void. The introduction demonstrates how Lewis's culinary language aggregates through elements of his life, his literary background, and his Judeo-Christian worldview. Using the grammar of his own culinary language, I examine Lewis's fiction for patterns found within his meals and analyze these patterns for theological allusions, grouping them according to major categories of systematic theology. Chapter two argues that ecclesiastical themes appear whenever Lewis's protagonists eat together. The ritualized meal progression, evangelistic discourse, and biographical menus create a unity that points to parallels between Lewis's body of protagonists and the church. Chapter three focuses on the sacrament of the Lord's Supper and charges that Lewis's meals which are eaten in the presence of the novel's Christ figure or which include bread and wine in the menu reliably align with the Anglo-Catholic doctrine of the Eucharist. Chapter four studies how sinful eating affects the spiritual states of Lewis's characters. The chapter first shows how Lewis's culinary language draws from Edenic sources, resonating with a very gastronomic Fall of Humanity, then examines how the progressively sinful eating of certain characters signifies a gradual alienation from the Divine. The fifth, and concluding, chapter argues that Lewis's portrayal of culinary desire and pleasure ultimately points to an eschatological theme. This theme culminates near the end of Lewis's novels either through individual characters expressing superlative delight in their food or through a unified congregation of protagonists eating a celebratory feast during the novel's denouement. I close the study by emphasizing how this approach to Lewis's meals offers a complete spiritual analysis of Lewis's main characters that also consistently supports Lewis's own theology.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Baylor University, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 224-226).

The novels of Charles Dickens resonate with ancient and Christian moral messages: From plots and characters representative of Victorian ideals and concerns emerge themes that reflect centuries of moral, and, as I argue, specifically Augustinian, teaching. While the Christian overtones of Charles Dickens's novels are seldom denied, their Augustinian nature, their purpose, and Dickens's hopes for their effect are rarely given their proper due. In opposition to the postmodern idea of an increasing nihilism and despair in Dickens's message, I examine instead his steadfast fascination with and joy in the power of charitable friendships-friendships that embody goodness and the possibility for conversion, friendships that are especially noteworthy amid the societal darkness ushered in by the crises of faith that accompanied nineteenth-century industrialization, commercialization, and de-moralization. Preparing to highlight the undeniable moral value in both the rejected and realized friendships and conversions of Dickens's Martin Chuzzlewit, Bleak House, and Great Expectations, first I focus on true friendship as a necessary part of a soul's ascent developed in Plato's Symposium and Phaedrus, as well as in Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, illustrating how these classical texts anticipate the Augustinian notion of a soul's transformation from the earthly city to the city of God. With this literary continuum thus established, I contend that the Heavenly City as it is reflected in the Dickensian world relies on its virtuous citizens, those true friends who consistently manifest Christian charity, humility, and forgiveness. / by Jill A. Kriegel. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2010. / Includes bibliography. / Electronic reproduction. Boca Raton, Fla., 2010. Mode of access: World Wide Web.

Recent scholarship has demonstrated that Matthew's gospel has significantly developed both sapiential and apocalyptic elements within its narrative. Little attention has been paid, however, to the question of how these two features of Matthew's gospel might relate to one another. It is this gap in scholarly literature that the present study is intended to fill, by means of a comparative study with two other texts of mixed genre: 1 Enoch and 4QInstruction. An examination of these texts demonstrates that each is marked by an inaugurated eschatology, within which the revealing of wisdom to an elect group, defined in distinction to the Jewish parent group, serves as the pivotal moment of inauguration. In addition, within 4QInstruction the idea is developed that possession of this revealed wisdom allows the remnant to live in fidelity to the will of the Creator and to the patterns built-in to the original creation. Thus, possession of revealed wisdom facilitates a recovery of creation. These findings provide lines of enquiry that may be brought to Matthew. Three sections of the gospel are examined (chapters 5-7; 11-12; 24-25). It is argued that Jesus is presented as an eschatological figure who reveals wisdom to an elect group. This wisdom cannot be reduced to great moral insight or interpretation of Torah, but is presented as prophetic revelation, happening in eschatological time. It remains the case, however, that Matthew presents it as wisdom and presents Jesus as a sage. More tentatively, it is suggested that creation provides the patterns for the ethical requirements of Jesus' wisdom, thus indicating that the idea of restored creation is also at work in Matthew. The fall of the temple may also be connected in Matthew's narrative to such a restoration, but again, the evidence for this is not clear.

x, 175 p. A print copy of this thesis is available through the UO Libraries. Search the library catalog for the location and call number. / This dissertation considers the formal and thematic camaraderie between T. S. Eliot and Djuna Barnes. The Waste Land 's poet, whom critics often cite as exemplary of reactionary high modernism, appears an improbable companion to Nightwood 's novelist, who critics, such as Shari Benstock, characterize as epitomizing "Sapphic modernism." However, Eliot and Barnes prove complementary rather than antithetical figures in their approaches to the collapse of historical and religious authority. Through close readings, supplemented by historical and literary sources, I demonstrate how Eliot, in his criticism and poems such as "Gerontion," and Barnes, in her trans-generic novel Nightwood , recognize the instability of history as defined by man and suggest the necessity of mythmaking to establish, or confirm, personal identity. Such mythmaking incorporates, rather than rejects, traditional Christian signs. I examine how, in Eliot's poems of the 1920s and in Barnes's novel, these writers drew on Christian symbols to evoke a nurturing, intercessory female parallel to the Virgin Mary to investigate the hope for redemption in a secular world. Yet Eliot and Barnes arrive at contrary conclusions. Eliot's poems increasingly relate femininity to Christian transcendence; this corresponds with a desire to recapture a unified sensibility, which, Eliot argued, dissolved in the post-Reformation era. In contrast, Barnes's Jewish and homosexual characters find transcendence unattainable. As embodied in her novel's characters, the Christian feminine ideal fails because the idealization itself extends from exclusionary dogma; any aid it promises proves ineffectual, and the novel's characters, including Dr. Matthew O'Connor and Nora Flood, remain locked in temporal anguish. Current trends in modernist studies consider the role of myth in understanding individuals' creation of self or worldview; this perspective applies also in analyzing religion's role insofar as it aids the individual's search for identity and a place in history. Consequently, this dissertation helps to reinvigorate the discussion of religion's significance in a literary movement allegedly defined by its secularism. Moreover, in presenting Eliot and Barnes together, I reveal a kinship suggested by their deployment of literary history, formal innovation, and questions about religion's value. This study repositions Barnes and brings her work into the canonical modernist dialogue. / Committee in charge: Paul Peppis, Chairperson, English; Suzanne Clark, Member, English; John Gage, Member, English; Jenifer Presto, Outside Member, Comparative Literature

Seamus Heaney's prose poetics return repeatedly to the adequacy of poetry, its ameliorative, restorative response to the inimical reality of life in the public domain. Drawing on manuscript as well as print sources, this thesis charts the development of this central theme, demonstrating the extent to which it threads throughout the whole of Heaney's thought, from his earliest conceptual formation to his late cultural poetics. Heaney's preoccupation with this idea largely originates in his undergraduate studies where he encounters Leavis and Arnold's accounts of poetry's adequacy: its ameliorative cultural and spiritual function. He also inherits, from Romantic and modernist influences, two differing accounts of poetry's relationship to reality. That conflicted inheritance engenders a crisis within Heaney's own early theorisation of poetry's adequacy to the violence of public life. An important period of clarification ensues, out of which emerge the dualisms of his later thought, and his emphasis on poetry's capacity to encompass, and yet remain separate from, ‘history'. Accompanied by habitual appropriation of Christian doctrine and language, these conceptual structures increasingly assume a redemptive pattern. By the mid-1990s, Heaney's humanist commitment to a ‘totally adequate' poetry has assumed a thoroughly Arnoldian character. The logical strain of his conceptual constructions—particularly the emphasis on poetry's autonomy from history—becomes acutely apparent, revealing just how appropriate the ambivalent ideal ‘adequacy' is. The subsequent expansion of Heaney's poetics into a general affirmation of the arts illuminates the fiduciary character of his trust in poetry while exposing the limits of that trust: Heaney's belief in poetry's adequacy constitutes a humanist substitute for—indeed, an ‘afterimage' of—Christian belief. This, finally, is the deep significance of the idea of adequacy to Heaney's thought: it allows us to identify precisely the Arnoldian origin, the late humanist character, and the limits of his troubled trust in poetry.

This paper seeks to explore the dialogue between postmodern thought and Christian theology. The dialogue will be grounded in four postmodern novels: Toni Morrison's Beloved, Ian McEwan's Atonement, Jill Paton Walsh's Knowledge of Angels, and Jeanette Winterson's Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit. In many Church circles, it has often been said that postmodernism, as it manifests itself in popular culture, is a threat to the Christian faith. However, I will be arguing that the opposite is the case, and that postmodernism has allowed for new ways of thinking about the self that has great resonance with certain theological conceptions of the self. It will be argued that the postmodern subject is one that seeks to make sense of 'the other' without risking the exploitation of the other, and that this lies very close to the theological concept of relationship, based on the idea of covenant. The self as responsible to an other and as a participant in community will be explored, from both the postmodern and theological perspectives. Before exploring issues of the self, this thesis will contextualize the dialogue by exploring postmodern conceptions of space and time. It will examine how ideas around space and time have been imagined throughout human history, thereby contextualizing the emergence of postmodern thinking. It will then show how this emergence of a postmodern space and time in fact creates new possibilities for the Christian faith to reexpress itself in ways that are more relevant to the 21st century. The concluding chapter of this thesis brings to light the longing within our postmodern reality for a place we can call home, a place where we can belong, and find healing. Such a place, such a homecoming, is offered to us in the spaces opened up to us by the dialogue between the Christian faith and postmodernity, and is found within a community of people who are learning that, as, postmodern philosopher Emmanuel Levinas states, "there is something more important than my life, and that is the life of the other" (in Beavers, 1996,16). / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2004.

While the study of Charles Dickens’s religion has produced various results, few would contest that Dickens’s religious views are shaped by his peculiar emphasis on Jesus and the Gospels. As to the precise nature of his views and the degree to which his commitment to the Christian faith extends, however, a much lesser degree of consensus has been established. I attempt to demonstrate here that at the heart of his work is a conspicuous Christian worldview, which is grounded squarely in the imitation of Jesus and which pervades his life and his work in the most profound yet unobtrusive ways. I argue, then, that Dickens’s The Life of Our Lord is a definitive source in the Dickens corpus for our understanding of his Christian thought and worldview. Moreover, as a serious expression of Dickens’s understanding of Christianity, The Life of Our Lord also functions as an index to his Christian thought in the larger Dickens corpus. Of first importance then, I attempt to establish the authority of The Life of Our Lord as a composition that will bear the full weight of such assertions. Then, I analyze its content as to its implicit theology in order to establish not only its thoroughgoing Christian character but also to demonstrate that it reveals Dickens’s own genuine Christian conviction manifested in all his work. Drawing the work to a close, I attempt to demonstrate how The Life of Our Lord helps us to understand Dickens’s churchmanship and his relationship to the church. In the end, I comment on its intended purpose as moral instruction for his children exemplifying his understanding of Christianity. The study demonstrates throughout how the Christianity embodied and articulated in The Life of Our Lord is consistently and naturally reflected in all of Dickens’s work, whether fiction, journalism or correspondence.

A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Humanities, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in fulfilment of the requirements of Doctor of Philosophy, Johannesburg, 2016. / This thesis is concerned with the meeting point between theatre and religion in the mid-Victorian consciousness, and the paradoxical responses that this engendered particularly in the novels and thought of Dickens, Newman and Charlotte Brontë. It contributes to the still growing body of critical literature that attempts to tease out the complex religious influences on Dickens and Brontë and how this manifests in their fiction. Newman is a religious writer whose fictional treatment of spiritual questions in Callista (1859) is used as a foil to the two novelists. There are two dimensions to this study: on the one hand it is concerned with the broader cultural anti-Catholic mood of the period under consideration and the various ways in which this connects with anti-theatricality. I argue that in the search for a legitimate means of expressing religious sentiments, writers react paradoxically to the latent possibilities of the conventions of religious ceremony, which is felt to be artificial, mystical, transcendent and threatening, inspiring the same contradictory responses as the theatre itself. The second dimension of this study is concerned with the way in which these sentiments manifest themselves stylistically in the novels under consideration: through a close reading of Barnaby Rudge (1841), Pictures From Italy (1846), and Villette (1852), I argue that in the interstices of a wariness of Catholicism and theatricality there is a heightening of language, which takes on a ritual dimension, evoking the paradoxical suggestions of transcendent meaning and artificiality associated with performance. Newman’s Callista (1859) acts as a counterpoint to these novels, enacting a more direct and persuasive argument for the spiritual value of ritual. This throws some light on the realist impulse in the fiction of Brontë and Dickens, which can be thought of as a struggle between a language that seeks to distance and explain, and a language that seeks to perform, involve, and inspire. In my discussion of Barnaby Rudge (1841) I argue that the ritual patterns in the narrative, still hauntingly reminiscent of a religious past, never become fully embodied. This is because the novel is written in a style that could be dubbed “melodramatic” because it both gestures towards transcendent presences and patterns and threatens to make nonsense of the spiritual echoes that it invokes. This sense of a gesture deferred is also present in the travelogue, Pictures from Italy (1846). Here I argue that Dickens struggles to maintain an objective journalistic voice in relation to a sacramental culture that is defined by an intrusive theatricality: he experiences Catholic practices and symbolism as simultaneously vital, chaotic and elusive, impossible to define or to dismiss. In Villette (1852) I suggest that Charlotte Brontë presents a disjuncture between Lucy’s ardour and the commonplace bourgeoisie world that she inhabits. This has the paradoxical effect of revitalising the images of the Catholic religion, which, despite Lucy’s antipathy, achieves a ghostly presence in the novel. In Callista (1859), I suggest that Newman concerns himself with the ritual possibilities and limitations of fiction, poetry and theatre. These dramatic and literary categories invoke and are ultimately subsumed in Christian ritual, which Newman considers the most refined form of language – the point at which detached description gives way to communion and participation. Keywords: Victorian literature, Charles Dickens, Charlotte Brontë, John Henry Newman, ritual, religion, realism, theatricality, anti-Catholicism

The last half of the twentieth century has seen a rapid increase in the process of secularization in both Britain and America, and this trend is nowhere more clearly evident than in the widespread relaxation of sexual mores. Within the Catholic Church a tension has arisen between liberal Catholics who argue for the right of Catholics to act according to the dictates of individual conscience, and traditionalists who champion the absolute moral authority of the Church. Liberal Catholics emphasize the Thomist view in which the flesh and its desires are seen as part of God's creation and, therefore, intrinsically good, while conservative Catholics lean toward an Augustinian/Jansenist view which equates sexual desire with the fallen nature of humankind. There has also been a great deal of unrest among Catholic women regarding continuing misogynistic tendencies within the male-dominated Church. This study focuses upon portrayals of women and sexuality in selected novels by four representative contemporary Catholic novelists, David Lodge, Mary Gordon, Piers Paul Read, and Anne Redmon. In their fiction, these writers pursue moral questions related to sexuality which preoccupy contemporary Catholics, reflecting in their work the empirical struggle of Catholics to reconcile Church law with their individual needs and desires. In their ratio to each other, these novelists represent in microcosm the spectrum of opinion among lay Catholics regarding sexual morality. Liberals David Lodge and Mary Gordon affirm in their fiction the goodness of the body and its desires, while Piers Paul Read argues for the orthodox view that the flesh must be rigidly controlled in the interests of spiritual health. Anne Redmon explores issues of women and sexuality without entering the debate between liberal and conservative Catholics. As this study makes clear, the contemporary Catholic novel provides an experientially based context for moral reflection on sexual behaviour parallel to and often in tension with the traditional teaching of the Church. The recent Catholic novel has also provided an important site for the exploration of women's sexual needs, desires, and moral thinking against the background of an all-male hierarchical Church, which has largely been silent in this area.