Thesis (M.S.)--Atlanta University. / eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.S.)--Atlanta University. / Includes bibliographical references. Also issued in print.

Although Annie Dillard has frequently written about the subject of time, no serious study of her treatment of this subject has been published. The purpose of this study was to open the conversation, particularly in the light of her recent book, For the Time Being.Dillard's strongest interest in time is in the relationship between the temporal, time here and now, and the eternal, generally located sometime in the future, somewhere other than here. Since Dillard has repeatedly alluded to this subject in her previous nonfiction books, one may trace the development of her concept of time and eternity from earlier works such as Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Teaching a Stone To Talk, and Holy the Firm, to its current expression in For the Time Being. She places her questions about time and eternity in a distinctly down-to-earth spirituality informed by modern science and sharpened by pungent humor.Beginning with an analysis of the influence on Dillard's writing of Romantics such as Wordsworth and Transcendentalists such as Thoreau but more particularly Emerson, as well as ancient Judaic thought, this study focuses on how Dillard blends with these theinfluence of twentieth century Christian theologian-philosophers such as Alfred North Whitehead and Teilhard de Chardin to form an eclectic spirituality that is distinctly her own.Though Dillard has often been called a mystic, her spiritual quest is intensely practical and purposeful: by cracking open the mystery of time she intends to discover nothing less than the secrets of God. This study concludes that Dillard is calling readers to recognize that the spiritually alive person can transcend the barriers of the temporal, experience the eternal in the present, and participate with God in the redemption of the universe. / Department of English

Thesis (M.C.S.)--Regent College, 1996. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 94-95).

Thesis (Ed.D.)--Teachers College, Columbia University, 1995. / Typescript; issued also on microfilm. Sponsor: Alayne Sullivan. Dissertation Committee: Lucy McCormick Calkins. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 179-182).

Thesis (M.C.S.)--Regent College, 1996. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 94-95).

Thesis (M.C.S.)--Regent College, 1996. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 94-95).

Peu à peu, depuis Descartes et Newton, la croyance laisse place au rationnel qui n'arrive toutefois pas à s'imposer dans l'esprit humain. Le présent mémoire tend à démontrer que, sans pervertir l'esprit scientifique, Annie Dillard, avec Pèlerinage à Tinker Creek, remet en dialogue le sacré et la science. Rattachée à la tradition des « American nature writers », Dillard adopte le genre essayistique pivotant autour d'une subjectivité centrale et centralisante. Dans cette double perspective, essai et subjectivité, nous suivons à la fois une narratrice en quête de connaissances sur le territoire circonscrit de la vallée de la rivière Tinker et l'auteure sur celui de l'essai. À travers ces déambulations, c'est également l'humain, dans son rapport au monde avec ses sens et son intellect en continuels ajustements, qui est étudié. S'il occupe, grâce à sa conscience, une place privilégiée parmi les espèces vivantes, le contact direct et immédiat avec la nature lui demeure interdit. La quête mystique, dont la narratrice fait l'expérience en s'abandonnant au présent et à ce qui l'entoure, tend cependant à replacer l'humain au coeur du vivant. Au-delà de ce temps toujours neuf, la parole, puisqu'elle n'est pas soumise à la linéarité temporelle, constitue l'ultime stratégie au problème du temps et de la mort qui lui est inévitablement rattachée. Invitant le lecteur à prendre part au pèlerinage afin qu'il change son regard sur le monde, le texte de Dillard a donné lieu, dans une perspective urbaine et environnementale, à un court essai (présenté au quatrième chapitre de ce mémoire) lui faisant écho. ______________________________________________________________________________ MOTS-CLÉS DE L’AUTEUR : Sacré, Science, Essai, Subjectivité, Humain, Connaissances, Mystique, Mort.

This dissertation analyzes concepts of the writing self in works about writing by professional creative writers (writers, poets, and essayists). Through a rhetorical analysis of these texts, I observe that writers view the writing self as a complex structure that is fully conscious as a rhetorical agent, an embodied self that interacts with the world and actively chooses linguistic representations of that experience, and maintains a concept of self that is subject to influences which the writers do not fully understand (such as inspiration and insight). The discourse used by writers to describe their writing processes challenges recent critiques of expressionism and the model of social construction that pervades contemporary composition scholarship. Chapter II examines Virginia Woolf's use of the central metaphor for invention in A Room of One's Own, a river, which sharply calls into question a unified view of the self which is central to critiques of expressivism by composition scholars. Woolf's concept of invention requires a negation of the self and harmony with nature (widely conceived as the entire world, including texts). Chapter III, an analysis of two writing memoirs by contemporary professional creative writers, Annie Dillard's The Writing Life and Donald Hall's Life Work, finds that Dillard and Hall use metaphors that establish freedom (rhetorical agency) and bodily presence as primary characteristics of their writing processes. Chapter IV, an analysis of two collections of essays about writing by professional creative writers, argues that the writers' use of metaphors of inspiration and instrumental metaphors creates a concept of the writing self that maintains a sense of writerly control (rhetorical agency) alternating with a sense of a diminished control; ultimately, the two concepts coexist in the minds of the writers. Chapter V proposes that the rhetorical situation of the contemporary composition classroom affects students' creativity adversely. The chapter also suggests further analyses of writing memoirs can provide new ways of understanding writing processes (as opposed to one writing process model) and therefore contribute substantially to composition scholarship and pedagogy.

Thesis (D. Min.)--New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, 1998. / Abstract and vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 102-109).