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Robert Penn Warren has a facility for transforming region and history into fiction and poetry. His novel Flood: A Romance of Our Time (1964) and his poem sequence “Internal Injuries” (1968) stand out insofar as they share a leitmotif; that is, he uses images of imprisonment to represent the loss of free and responsible selfhood under a technocratic dispensation. He is the quintessential loneliness artist, as can be heard through the voices of his characters. His literary criticism is a testament to his concerns about how one comes to reconcile oneself to place. His theory of literature provides us a unique window on what it means to discover oneself in the tumult of a rapidly changing landscape. The use and misuse of technology to augment one’s relationship to place and self is my overriding concern. In Fiddlersburg, the town in Flood, melodrama hangs in the air like rotting perfume. All that will remain once the town is flooded is the penitentiary. In “Internal Injuries,” Warren’s poem-within-a-poem sequence about the loss of self within the modern city, Warren invokes the penitentiary to represent and speak for the loss of self and the feeling of lonesomeness. Flood speaks to “Internal Injuries” in the sense that Warren oscillates between the discovery of self in Flood to the loss of self in “Internal Injuries.” I give my observation of how Warren’s critical work forms a dialogue with his creative work, offering insight as to how the oldest maximum-security penitentiary in Kentucky speaks to the lost and found selves of Warren’s world. Finally, I deal with the problem of modernity and Warren’s perennial concern about the alienation of the self and how he wrestles with it from a deeply personal and experiential perspective. The reader will find that Warren’s critical and creative works form a kind of inside passage.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Liberty University, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available through Liberty University's Digital Commons.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Liberty University, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1945. / Typescript. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.A.)--Brigham Young University. Dept. of History. / Bibliography: leaves 215-221.

Thesis (M.A.) Brigham Young University. Department of History. / Bibliography: leaves 115-118.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1953. / Typescript. Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 411-429).

This dissertation analyzes Rick Warren's hermeneutic based on his writings, conferences, sermons, and Bible studies. Chapter 1 introduces the topic giving special attention to Warren's popularity and the need for an examination of his hermeneutic. Chapter 2 demonstrates that Warren's purpose-driven hermeneutic is based on his understanding of the purpose of the Bible. In particular, Warren's doctrine of the Bible, his Bible study methodology, and his emphasis on the essential nature of application to the task of Bible interpretation are addressed. Chapter 3 examines Warren's preaching as a source for evaluating his hermeneutic. This chapter gives an explanation of his verse-with-verse methodology and how he uses Scripture to develop sermon series, individual messages, and the preaching points within his messages. Chapter 4 addresses Warren's hermeneutic as it is revealed in his writings and conferences. The chapter focuses on The Purpose Driven Church and its associated conference and materials, The Purpose Driven Life and the various Bible studies associated with the "40 Days of Purpose," and Warren's other books. Chapter 5 is devoted to Warren's use of translations and paraphrases as key to understanding his hermeneutic. An overall list of translations and paraphrases used by Warren is given along with a statistical analysis of the frequency of translation usage in his various works. A final chapter offers a conclusion to the study. An evaluation of overall trends, strengths, and weakness of Warren's purpose-driven hermeneutic is included. This chapter also gives a summary of the conclusions that the research has supported and an examination of some implications of Warren's hermeneutic to the greater field of church growth preaching. / This item is only available to students and faculty of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. If you are not associated with SBTS, this dissertation may be purchased from <a href="http://disexpress.umi.com/dxweb">http://disexpress.umi.com/dxweb</a> or downloaded through ProQuest's Dissertation and Theses database if your institution subscribes to that service.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Boston University / This dissertation sets forth data and interpretation for a more adequate evaluation of the significance of the life and work of William Fairfield Warren to the theology of American Methodism. The method employed is that of an "intellectual biography" in which Warren's achievements are delineated against the background of his life and times. The sources for the study are mainly primary. Following a chapter dealing with Warren's biography, a survey is made of his early works as a maturing Methodist thinker. His response to the theological Climate of mid-nineteenth century New England is seen to be characteristic of American Methodism of that period. Another chapter examines Warren's scholarship in the areas of cosmology, comparative religion, and the history, psychology, and philosophy of religion. His standpoint is seen to be that of Christian theism which he conceived to be the highest, deepest, and most scientific view possible. He understood the wellsprings of all religion and theology to lie in the incompatability within each individual of instinctive awareness of absolute dependence and spontaneous energy. It is argued that religion can and must pass before the strictest and most thorough scientific investigation. The heart of Warren's philosophy of religion is his conviction of the identity of ideal Christianity with ideal Religion. Christianity is presented as the one true World-Religion. The God postulated y philosophical and scientific researches is identical with the God revealed by Jesus Christ. One-sided emphases on either "divine revelation" or "purely natural evolution" are joined together in a third view which seeks to harmonize the two by showing that the essence of religion implies a mutual activity on the part of the Divine Object and the human subject. [TRUNCATED]