Thesis (Ed. D.)--University of La Verne, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 183-192).

Thesis (Ed. D.)--University of La Verne, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 183-192).

The dissertation includes a critical essay on Jorie Graham's "The Guardian Angel of the Little Utopia and a full-length collection of poetry entitled Moonlight in Quota. The essay is a critical examination which argues that Graham's poems question Western anthropocentric thought through her constant arrangement of particular images (flowers, yellow sky, leaves) and her subsequent questioning of such intellectual and linguistic arrangements. Graham grapples with ideas of perception, questions the historical concepts of truth and knowledge, and engages in linguistic play both musically and imagistically. Each section is tied together by some overriding theme or persistent image: 1.) forgetting, Mexican-American border scenes 2.) poverty and faith shown through images of marginalized characters 3.) Artistic creation as a means for the survival for the "other."

What psychologial processes are activated in experiencing mourning after a loss of a belovedperson? How is death described in other authors’ novels and short stories compared to mine? This essay aims at analysing my two short stories The follower and The price for love fromdifferent aspects. I discuss the psychological realism and the spirituality using the method ofclose reading, interpreting and applying ideas of texts from other authors in my short stories. Death is a central phenomenon in both of my texts. Therefore I discuss death frompsychological and philosophical aspects in this essay. To get a philosophical frame of death Iturn to Jacques Derrida, Emmanuel Levinas and Martin Heidegger. They express different opinions but important to point out is their truism that death is waiting for us all. Then I turn to Sigmund Freud, Ann-Kristin Lundmark and Lars Rönnmark to get the psychological view of death. Because of the character of the texts, I use concepts of mourning and losses from Sigmund Freud, Barbro Lennéer Axelson and Lars Rönnmark. I discuss the characters, their inner psychological processes, and relationships between persons. In this essay I indicate that mourning is a natural reaction to the loss of a beloved person. The usual mourning often follow four phases. The first phase is the chock phase, then comes the reaction phase, followed by the process phase. Finally comes the reorientation phase. The religious aspect of the stories is also explored. There my starting point is authors as Staffan Ljungman and Inger Waern, who discuss the occurrence of angels in human beings lifes. The narrator in The follower is a guardian angel, something that makes the question ofangels interesting to study. The reality aspect in the short stories is also discussed in this essay. I turn to James Wood and compare his ideas and hypotheses with my texts. James Wood present the importance of giving the reader an appearance of reality and creating vitality of the literary characters. My stories are planted in a realistic environment, the characters act and react the way real people could do in their culture and epoch. Their mourning is also similar to what human beings could experience. Therefore I come to the conclusion that my stories could regard realistic for some readers but not to other. My intention is to give the reader an atmosphere of probability. If I success is both depending on the way I send my messages as well as on the way the reader receives it. I use no special school of philosophy or psychology to analyse these texts. I analyse from the point of view of a social worker. My own conclusion of this essay is that relationships are important in my stories, as well as a capability of mourning. The religious facet is an attempt to raise the question of a possible invisible world.

L’ange n’a jamais été aussi présent qu’à l’heure de la modernité, c’est-à-dire à l’époque où le religieux, en son expression, sa forme et sa substance, ses objets, se trouvait remis en question par l’intense réflexion philosophique et par les découvertes scientifiques et techniques issues des Lumières. C’est ce constat fondé sur l’omniprésence des anges tant dans l’art que dans la littérature du dix-neuvième et du vingtième siècles qui nous a conduit à nous poser une question simple : de quoi l’ange fait-il signe ? Que symbolise-t-il ? Quel sens donner à cette présence ?Nous avons décidé, pour le savoir, de remonter aux sources de l’ange afin de mettre au jour les fondements de ce qui, de toute évidence, s’affirme comme l’un des mythes les plus importants de notre imaginaire contemporain. Nous avons également décidé de montrer comment ce passage d’une figure biblique à un mythe profane avait été rendu possible et quels mécanismes cette métamorphose avait empruntés ;nous avons aussi cherché à savoir quels enjeux ce processus mettait en jeu.Cette étude se propose d’étudier les représentations des anges dans l’art et la littérature de 1850 à 1950 afin de découvrir comment l’on passe d’une figure traditionnelle à un véritable mythe moderne. En quoi les représentations modernes de l’ange témoignent-elles des nouveaux rapports qui se tissent au divin ? Il s’agit ensuite d’étudier ses deux symboliques majeures : celle de l’ange inspirateur et celle de l’ange gardien, en mettant au jour les procédés qui permettent à l’ange de devenir un mythe personnel de l’individu et du créateur en particulier. / The angel was never as present as during the modernist era, that is at a time when thereligious figure, in its expression, its form, and even in its substance, its objects, waschallenged by the intense philosophical reflection and by the scientific and technicaldiscoveries stemming from the Enlightenment era. It is this acknowledgement basedon an omnipresence of angels, in nineteenth and twentieth art and literature alike,which led us to ask a simple question – what is the angel a sign of? What does itsymbolize? What meaning may be given its large presence?We have decided, to understand it, to get back to the sources of the angel in order toshed light onto the foundations of that which, quite obviously, establishes itself asone of the most important myths in the present-day imagination. We have alsodecided to show how the mutation from a biblical figure to a profane myth hadmanaged to happen and what were the mechanisms through which thismetamorphosis had taken place; we have also tried to know what was at stake in thisprocess.This study proposes to examine the representations of angels in art and literaturefrom 1850 to 1950 in order to discover how these traditional figures came to becomemodern myths. How can their contemporary representations testify of a newrelationship with the divine ? We'll try to answer this question by studying two majorsymbolics - the inspiring angel and the guardian angel - and by revealing the processin which the angel becomes a personal myth of the individual and especially of thecreator.