Back to The World is a collection of twelve short stories. They may be dark, but I believe the dark places are where we gather up our humanity and our power. We all have challenges: the ones that are given us and the ones we make. My stories are filled with ordinary people dealing with the lives they have, with dignity, hope and the pain and messiness that goes with being human and alive.

While much scholarship has considered the theological and metaphysical foundations of Samuel Taylor Coleridge¡¯s and Gerard Manley Hopkins¡¯ poetry, this study seeks to add to the conversation by examining how a conversational mode of meditation unique to Christian sacrament inspires that poetry. Both Coleridge and Hopkins demonstrate an understanding of Christian sacrament that emphasizes engagement and encounter with God through language and creation; in turn, they create a poetry that uses all aspects of the form -- musical sound yoked to philosophical sense -- to record and reenact this sacramental encounter. Chapter 1 discusses how Coleridge, beginning from the Idealism of George Berkeley, counters Berkeley¡¯s passive, non-sacramental reading of nature with a theory of active engagement with nature, man, and God. We see how this theory issues in the ¡°conversation poems,¡± a set of meditations that enact the sacramental interchange that results from the poet¡¯s awareness of God¡¯s presence in the fullness of creation. Chapter 2 considers how Hopkins steps beyond the subtle machinations of Scotist theology to the meditative engagement of Ignatius Loyola¡¯s Spiritual Exercises. Encouraged by Ignatius¡¯ emphasis on detail and particularity, Hopkins creates a poetic practice that uses the music of words to their fullest sacramental potential, demonstrating in poetry how man encounters God through active engagement with the world and takes on the image of Christ through sacrament.

In this thesis, I use G.W.F. Hegel?s notions of self-consciousness and self-awareness to examine the function of the gaze in two of Charlotte Brontë?s early novels, The Professor and Jane Eyre. The first chapter of the thesis discusses William Crimsworth?s intimate relationship with two women, Mademoiselle Zoraide Reuter and Frances Evans Henri. The first relationship with Mademoiselle Reuter does not result in a balance of power, but is essential in understanding his relationship with Frances, which does ultimately result in a balance of power. The second chapter of the thesis discusses the relationship of Fairfax Rochester and Jane Eyre. While this relationship is fraught with a great deal of complexity, I argue that ultimately Jane and Rochester achieve a balance of power in the gaze. Through the discussion of the lover?s gaze in each of these novels, I demonstrate that, contrary to Jean--Paul Sartre?s influential but very negative rendering of the power dynamics implicit in the gaze, in Brontë?s works we see an affirmative, mutual reinforcing exchange in the lover?s gaze.

This thesis examines the influence of male homosocial relationships on the masculine identity performances men develop in such relationships. Specifically, I argue that three American novels?Herman Melville?s Moby-Dick, Jack Kerouac?s On the Road, and Chuck Palahniuk?s Fight Club?illustrate a similar pattern of masculine identity performance and (re)construction. In each novel, the narrator initially experiences a masculine identity crisis. In order to resolve his crisis, he engages in homosocial relationships that refine and reaffirm his masculinity. Furthermore, each narrator examines and reports the life of another man?a man obsessed with a single-minded pursuit. Ishmael of Moby-Dick narrates the events of a whaling voyage led by the Moby Dick-obsessed Captain Ahab. Sal Paradise of On the Road recites the adventures he has on the road following the IT-obsessed Dean Moriarty. And, the unnamed narrator of Fight Club explains the development of Fight Club and Project Mayhem by the revolution-obsessed Tyler Durden. As I reveal, hunting for Moby Dick, traveling the road, fighting each other and terrorizing capitalistic society all represent pursuits of manhood and ways of constructing, performing, and asserting masculinities. By joining these pursuits, the narrators forfeit their agency to these obsessed men; however, as the narrators continue to follow, they realize that to regain their masculine identities they must also eventually establish agency in their lives. Ultimately, the pattern illustrated in this thesis involves the continual remasculation of an emasculated man?or a man under threat of becoming so?through purpose-oriented homosocial relationships and an assertion of agency.

Critical pedagogy, a teaching philosophy that encourages critical reflection in students so that they may expose and change oppressive societal structures, has been plagued by criticisms from a variety of sources. Critics charge that critical pedagogy is marred by irreconcilable contradictions such as its inappropriateness for non-oppressed students, its neglect of students? needs, and its unsuitability for most instructors privileged by the dominant ideology. Examining the internal consistency of Kenneth Burke?s pentadic ratios can be a useful tool for analyzing these contradictions, specifically those related to scene-act, agent-purpose, and act-agent. However, these contradictions, inherent in the very nature of critical pedagogy, seem to defy Burke?s pentad. Without inconsistencies between critical pedagogy, its purpose, its agents, and the broader scene in which it operates, the impetus for the enactment of critical pedagogy would not be present. Therefore, instead of seeking to deny or eradicate contradiction, critical theorists and educators need to make use of it in their own philosophies and practices. Because both critical educators and their students should confront and grapple with these contradictions in critical practice, the apparent flaws in critical pedagogy can actually encourage the critical consciousness that is the goal of the enterprise.

Both Percy Shelley and Mary Wollestonecraft Shelley asserted their belief in the nature of literature to transcend conscious thoughts and to operate as a dream state, manifesting unconscious fears and desires. By analyzing two primary works by the Shelleys as dreams, and applying Freud?s theories of dream interpretation and the unconscious, this thesis reveals how these works demonstrate a shared unconscious anxiety about the transformative nature of creation and its power to establish or destroy identity. In Alastor, Percy Shelley manifests his anxiety about his relationship with artistic creation through his treatment of gender, most especially in his description of and interaction with the veiled maid. Alastor demonstrates Shelley?s conflicting desire both to unite with the powerful creative force and to reject it in order to maintain his own socially constructed role as male Romantic Poet. In Frankenstein, Mary Shelley both responds to and expands upon the thematic focus established by Percy Shelley in Alastor. Focusing on the power of physical creation to redefine a woman?s identity, Mary Shelley manifests her anxiety about the possibility of integrating the dueling aspects of her own identity, mother and author, into one cohesive identity. Percy examines how his desire for pure poetic expression affects his role within a masculine construct, while Mary interrogates her own beliefs about integrating the role of mother and author into one cohesive identity in a world that privileges and requires motherhood. Their creation of marginalized, exiled characters in the figures of the wandering poet, who chooses to shun society, and the monster, who is shunned by a society he deeply desires to be a part of, indicates their own fear of the consequences of societal rejection.

While scholars have noted the relationship of food and drink imagery in the Puritan captivity narrative genre to corrective affliction, the focus of this study is to provide an extended evaluation of this relationship. By examining the role of hunger in the reconversion experience, discussing the various contexts of hunger in Puritan discourse, and tracing food and drink imagery through several texts, it is the intent of this thesis to show that hunger is the most significant and transformational mode of affliction within the genre. The narratives of Mary Rowlandson, Hannah Swarton, and John Williams will be examined to show how these authors incorporate images of food and drink into their accounts and how hunger figures prominently. Throughout, this thesis will show how hunger?as the central motif of the theme of affliction?is established, imitated, and manipulated.

<> A collection of short stories allows a writer certain freedoms that the novel form does not. It enables the writer to explore different ideas of form, content, and voice in a limited amount of space, looking at small slices of life that should hopefully add up to more than the sum of its parts. As such, this collection of stories attempts a variety of structures and styles. The view points range between first person to third person, and the main characters vary in gender and age, letting the voices of an 13 year old country girl in "What You Can't Leave Behind," and a man in his early 30's living in the city in "The Sun and Death" stand next to each other, among others. These stories are most simply connected through the idea of exploring the way people relate to one another, and especially how families interact, in this often chaotic world.

Sir Thomas Wyatt?s epistolary satire, ?My mother?s maids,? is often overlooked by critics, purportedly because of the superiority of the poet's other two verse satires; and too often dismissed as little more than a straightforward retelling of the ?country mouse? fable in Horace?s Satire 2.6. However, Wyatt?s version does not merely endorse Horace's view of the superiority of the simple country life over that of the city and court. Indeed, his poem focuses attention on the inherent violence that characterizes the outside world regardless of the setting. In fact, Wyatt's poem is better read as a satire of its Horatian ?source,? genre, and central theme about the peace and contentment that can be supposedly found in the country. For Wyatt, exerting any effort to find peace outside of oneself is not only a chimera but a search that may inevitably end in tragedy. This inward focus is reflected beyond this satire in his lyric poems, where Wyatt's criticisms of his fellow courtiers for lacking such a focus grow more ambiguous, veiled by careful use of narrative personae. Wyatt ultimately argues that the only way to survive in the court is through a Stoic philosophy, turning inward and trusting only in oneself and the certainty of appearance as appearance rather than possessing faith in others or the outside world.

This thesis explores, in three works of literature, possibilities for redemption via abjection. Julia Kristeva?s semanalysis is the primary theoretical tool with which Aphra Behn?s Oroonoko (1688) is examined as a nascent work in Caribbean literature. Next, and central to this thesis, the Guyanese Wilson Harris?s The Palace of the Peacock (1960) is discussed within Kristevan context and within Caribbeanist literary critical context. Mariella, a central and fluid character in Palace, acts as a semiotic agent of destruction and of abjectly sublime redemption for Donne and his crew of river boatmen in pursuit of Other ethnically mixed peoples in Guyana?s interior. Donne?s moment of epiphany, wherein he comes to understand how inhumanely he has treated Others, is followed by his ?second? death and rebirth in a celestial palace (along with the rest of the crew), marking his and their transformation from abject slavers to abjectly sublime and redeemed beings. The semiotic linguistic characteristics of Palace are investigated: while written in the style of Magical Realism, Palace contains lexical and dialectal features stemming from African and Amerindian influences. Flannery O?Connor?s ?Revelation? (1965) is the final work examined. Via legacies of plantation slavery and ensuing discrimination against freed African-Americans, many works of Southern U.S. literature contain qualities of postcolonial literatures, particularly the element of abject Otherness. In ?Revelation? Mrs. Ruby Turpin?s ideas about abject Others are transformed, as she is transformed from an abject avatar of white Southern racism and classism, into an abjectly sublime person who receives a ?revelation? of her wrongs righted in a celestial march of all human beings. Her ?revelation? is markedly similar to Donne?s in Palace, both in what she sees and in the language employed to describe what is revealed to her. In Palace and in ?Revelation,? characters are redeemed by their limitations, by recognition of their abjections, and thus from these abject restrictions. Although Behn?s narrator aborts her encounter with an Other, she comes very close to actualizing abject sublimity as is evinced in a fractured and digressive narrative, indicative of the narrator?s conflicted psyche. At least she is conflicted about New World colonial enterprises and their institutions of brutal enslavement. Rather than abjure abject Otherness, perhaps readers?students of life and of literature?would embrace abjection, the eschewed Otherness within, as a critical agent for and means to the sublime.