Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-29T14:27:24Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Celia Soares de Sousa.pdf: 1090335 bytes, checksum: ae6cbb21fbe9a6a5710322943efac3a2 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2013-10-24 / The following dissertation has as an objective to contribute to the theological thinking on the already existing dialogue between Theology and Literature. It sought to promote a relation between Murilo Mendes s poetry and Christian mystical, focusing in an interpretive reading of his poetry, where are affirmed not just the quality of it, but also his reading of the human and the divine. Murilo Mendes s poetry, which abundantly talks about God, God s words, religiosity, Christianity and about the Person of Jesus, marked the human theme from the approach through the literary universe. We found the urgency of the mystical rediscovery for an experience more compromised with the Reign of God, to come out of the inertia and dive into mystery, acknowledge that we need the loving presence of Christ in our days to face with tenderness, but also with firmness, the challenges that modernity imposes to us / A presente dissertação tem como objetivo contribuir com a reflexão teológica a partir do diálogo já existente entre Teologia e Literatura. Buscou promover uma relação entre a poesia de Murilo Mendes e mística cristã, focando em uma leitura interpretativa da sua poesia onde se afirmam não apenas a qualidade da sua poesia, mas sua leitura do humano e do divino. A poesia de Murilo Mendes que abundantemente trata de Deus, da Palavra de Deus, da religiosidade, do cristianismo e da Pessoa de Jesus marcou a temática humana a partir da abordagem pelo universo literário. Constatamos a urgência da redescoberta da mística para uma vivência mais comprometida com o Reino de Deus para sair da inércia e mergulhar no mistério, tomar consciência que precisamos da presença amorosa do Cristo no nosso no cotidiano para enfrentar com ternura, porém, com firmeza, os desafios que a modernidade nos impõe

Thesis (M.A. in English) -- University of Dayton. / Title from PDF t.p. (viewed 06/23/10). Advisor: Albino Carrillo. Includes bibliographical references (p. 72-75). Available online via the OhioLINK ETD Center.

Title: The Poet of the Word: Christology in the Work of T.S. Eliot The thesis focuses on the Christological analysis of the work of T. S. Eliot, a poet, dramatist and critic. The thesis is divided into two chapters. The first chapter describes historical and cultural background of Eliot's work, basic facts about his life and his literary and critical input. The first chapter is concluded by a reflection about the reception of T. S. Eliot in the Czech Republic and about the translation of his work to Czech. The second chapter contains the Christological analysis of Eliot's poetry and plays. The chapter starts with an analysis of Christological titles in individual poems. The second part of the chapter deals with the important moments of Jesus' life mentioned in Eliot's poems and dramas. The chapter also simultaneously contains references to particular places in the Scripture, which are relevant for given poems. Keywords Christology, T. S. Eliot, Catholic Theology, English Literature

<p>Twenty-nine of the some 900 fragmentary Scrolls recovered from the caves off the northwest shores of the Dead Sea were penned in the Aramaic language. It is generally agreed that this cross-section of Aramaic literature among the predominantly Hebrew collection derives from before and beyond the scribal community that lived at Qumran. Whether or not the Aramaic texts constitute a cohesive collection, however, is an ongoing debate. While their compositional origins are unknown, this dissertation avers that enough common traits exist among the Aramaic Dead Sea Scrolls to indicate an inherent unity in the group. Paramount among these traits is the pervasive usage of the dream-vision in a constellation of at least nineteen Aramaic writings.</p> <p>This study advances our understanding of the Aramaic texts by exploring the dream-vision as a literary convention from two interrelated perspectives. Part One maps out the major compositional patterns of dream-vision episodes across the collection. Special attention is paid to recurring literary-philological features (e.g., motifs, images, phrases, idioms, etc.), which suggest that pairs or clusters of texts are affiliated intertextually, tradition-historically, or originated in scribal circles in close proximity. Part Two articulates three predominant concerns advanced or addressed by dream-vision revelation. It is argued that the authors of these materials utilized the dream-vision (i) for scriptural exegesis of the patriarchal traditions, (ii) to endorse particular understandings of the origins and functions of the priesthood, and (iii) for historiography by creating <em>ex eventu </em>revelations of aspects or all of world history. In tandem these two components affirm the centrality of the dream-vision to the thought world of the Aramaic texts as well as demonstrate that this revelatory <em>topos</em> was deployed using a shared stock of language in order to introduce a closely defined set of concerns.</p> / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

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 master thesis presents the character of Job and his reception in German-speaking literature on the basis of three works of the twentieth century, written by Joseph Roth, Oskar Kokoschka and Günter Kunert. The starting point for the literary reception is the biblical Old Testament book Job, whose story, form and circumstances of origin are mentioned in the first part of the work. Following are the performances of individual authors and the interpretation of their works. The core of the work is a comparison of literary reception of the figure of Job in the texts with a biblical original. The subject of the study was, in particular, the question of how the selected authors deal with the biblical substance, how they use Job for their works and which meaning have the comic elements in their texts.

The quest of this essay is to see if a theology of motherhood based on a phenomenological experience can shine new light on the incarnation. How can the poems of the writer Alva Dahl and the philosopher Jonna Bornemark contribute to a theology of motherhood? To answer this question, I start by outlining the tradition of the theology of motherhood. My definition of a theology of motherhood is a theology that begins with the phenomenological experience of being a mother, an embodied theology. Dahl’s and Bornemark’s prose-poetry stems from their personal experiences of motherhood, pregnancy and birth. I analyze poems from these two writers and read them through the lens of the theoretical background. This background consists mainly of the book Motherhood: A Confession (2020) written by the feminist theologian Natalie Carnes. She shows how experiences of motherhood can point toward God. From her book I draw three main concepts, which I use as analysis-concepts in the readings of the material. These concepts are: “I and Thou”, “icon and idol” and “microgenesis”. In the analysis of the poems I show how motherhood is relational, iconographic and a reflection of creation. The poems show in different ways how motherhood can be iconographic by pointing towards God. One of the ways is in the relational aspect of birth, another one in how mothers become part of the creation-process by having a child grow in the womb. In the discussion I show examples on how this theology of motherhood shines light on the Incarnation through the readings of the prose-poetry of Dahl and Bornemark. The essay also asks the question of how further research can be pursued based on a more bodily and anabatic theology.

Jesus' story has been retold in various forms and fashions for centuries. Jesus novels, a subset of the historical fiction genre, are one of the latest means of not only re-imagining the man from Galilee but also of rewriting the canonical Gospels. This thesis explores the Christological portraits constructed in four of those novels while also using the novels to examine the intertextual play of these Gospel rewrites with their Gospel progenitors. Chapter 1 offers a prolegomenon to the act of fictionalizing Jesus that discusses the relationship between the person and his portraits and the hermeneutical circle created by these texts as they both rewrite the Gospels and stimulate a rereading of them. It also establishes the "preposterous" methodology that will be used when reexamining the Gospels "post" reading the novels. Chapters 2 to 5 offer four case studies of "complementing" and "competing" novels and the techniques they use to achieve these aims: Anne Rice's Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt; Neil Boyd's The Hidden Years; Nino Ricci's Testament; and José Saramago's The Gospel according to Jesus Christ. Chapter 6 begins an examination of a specific interpretive circle based upon Jesus' temptation in the wilderness. Beginning with the synoptic accounts of that event, the chapter then turns to how Jesus' testing has been reinterpreted and presented in two of the novels. Returning to the Gospel of Matthew's version of the Temptation, chapter 7 offers a "preposterous" examination of that pericope, which asks novel questions of the text and its role with Matthew's narrative context based on issues raised by the Gospel rewrites. The thesis concludes by suggesting that Jesus novels, already important examples of the reception history of the Gospels, can also play a helpful role in re-interpreting the Gospels themselves.