Thesis (D. Min.)--Dallas Theological Seminary, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 328-339).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1984. / Typescript. Vita. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 281-311).

Thesis (M.A.)--Lancaster Bible College, 2003. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 65-68).

Thesis (D. Min.)--Dallas Theological Seminary, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 328-339).

Critics from Virginia Woolf and David Cecil to Lyn Pykett and U. C. Knoepflmacher, among others, have been mesmerized by the eccentric but transcendent world of Brontë’s Wuthering Heights and the Gondal poems. Despite allusions and references to various modernist elements in Emily Brontë’s novel and poetry, there has not been extensive analysis of her work in connection to modern writers of the early twentieth century. I believe that a multi-themed analysis of such components is necessary to reassess her position in the canon and establish her as a precursor to the modernists. This dissertation examines Brontë’s deliberate invitation of, and simultaneous resistance to, interpretation—qualities that align her novel and verse more with Modernist literature than that of her contemporaries. I argue that Emily Brontë had an unusual and forward-looking focus that is revealed in her treatment of children, women, and the struggles of isolated beings in the dark, foreboding and often impressionistic world of Gondal and Wuthering Heights. Her elucidation of the gap between the mundane and the spiritual, the use of farcical elements against the sublime are also precursory to modernism. This dissertation assesses the various themes, angles and techniques that Brontë employs in presenting a strange atmosphere that is representative of a future world.

This thesis is based on the premise that questions about human affairs, including questions about art, need to be considered in the context of our deep history as a species. Darwinian theories of human existence have given scholars in evolutionary psychology the chance to analyze human cognition, emotions, and behaviour by considering the trajectory of our evolution and how that has shaped our current situation. Taking a Darwinian literary approach, this thesis tries to answer one of the main questions about James Joyce’s novel, Ulysses: What is the purpose behind a style that many find so difficult in this novel? In order to answer this question, I explore the adaptive purposes of literature (in general) and stylistic experimentation (in particular). I argue that art can be seen as a form of sexual display where stylistic difficulty and originality are ways of indicating fitness for survival. In this way, both the author and readers of Ulysses spend their time and energy to produce and consume the difficult style of Ulysses because they find pleasure in an activity that is adaptively useful. Furthermore, I suggest that earning social status could have been an evolutionary motive for both the authors and readers of difficult modernist texts, including Ulysses. To support this, I show how gaining social status is part of other sexual ornamentation that handicap the displayer by imposing excessive difficulty in terms of the time and energy needed to put on those displays of fitness. / Graduate / 2018-10-23

This thesis investigates the similarities in the study of time and space in literature and science during the modern period. Specifically, it focuses on the portrayal of time and space within Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897) and Joseph Conrad’s Lord Jim (1899-1900), and compares the ideas presented with those later scientifically formulated by Albert Einstein in his special and general theories of relativity (1905-1915). Although both novels precede Einstein’s theories, they reveal advanced complex ideas of time and space very similar to those later argued by the iconic physicist. These ideas follow a linear progression including a sense of temporal dissonance, the search for a communal sense of the present, the awareness and expansion of the individual’s sense of the present, and the effect of mass on surrounding space. This approach enhances readings of Dracula and Lord Jim, illuminating the fascination with highly refined notions of time and space within modern European culture.

This thesis is concerned with the philosophical problem of the universal and the particular and its application to identity and difference, specifically in relation to cultural identity. Merleau-Ponty's philosophy mediates between the extremes of a modernist view that seeks to subsume all difference in identity and a postmodem perspective that only validates our essential differences. Neither position offers a viable option for ethical relations or action. While the conclusion reached in the present work affirms the superiority of Merleau-Ponty's phenomenological view of difference and identity over either a modernist or a postmodemist perspective, initially Merleau-Ponty's notion of intersubjectivity is criticized. In the Phenomenology of Perception, MerleauPonty makes the claim that we can only ever live in one linguistic/social and cultural world. This claim does not account for the experience of immigrants, which attests to a borderland between worlds. In fact this claims seems to suggest that cultural worlds are to be viewed as hermetic localities. However, if Merleau-Ponty's earlier works are read in relation to the ontology of The Visible and the Invisible, the problems of subjectivism in his earlier works may be resolved. The notions of Flesh and Reversibility illustrate that Merleau-Ponty viewed identities as creative enterprises and by extension the intersubjective (t.e cultural and social ) world as one that is constantly re-creating boundary limits. This thesis explores the hermeneutical implications of the notions of Flesh and Reversibility in relation to cultural identity through the use of personal narrative. Identities are posited as imaginary idenitites and cultures are shown to be mutually implicated with each other. / Thesis / Master of Arts (MA)

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