Thesis (Ed. D.)--Illinois State University, 1973. / Title from title page screen, viewed Oct. 13, 2004. Dissertation Committee: Hugh W. Stumbo (chair), Charles B. Harris, Steven E. Kagle, Jack Hobbs, Harold Boyd. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 77-78). Also available in print.

Diss. Stockholm : Stockholms universitet, 2006.

Thesis (M.A.P.S.)--Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminaries, 1986. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 118-121).

Thesis (M.A.P.S.)--Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminaries, 1986. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 118-121).

Thesis (M.A.)--Regent College, 1989. / Abstract. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 219-243).

"Rudy Wiebe and the Historicity of the Word" analyzes Wiebe's six major novels published to date: Peace Shall Destroy Many (1962), First and Vital Candle (1966), The Blue Mountains of China (1970), The Temptations of Big Bear 1973), The Scorched-Wood People (1977), and My Lovely Enemy (1983). Traditional literary critical terms and concepts prove inappropriate to Wiebe's work because they implicitly reinstate the ideological postulates Wiebe calls into question. This study therefore employs the theoretical framework developed by Mikhail Bakhtin and V. N. Vološinov. The introductory chapter provides a synoptic view of the six novels, relates Wiebe's authorial objectives and practices to his cultural and religious background, surveys relevant critical discussions of Wiebe's work, and defines the central theoretical principles of Bakhtin and Vološinov. Chapters 2 and 3 discuss Peace Shall Destroy Many and First and Vital Candle respectively, establishing that although Wiebe shows considerable interest in "the dialogic principle" at a thematic level, his overt rhetorical intentions prevent him from realizing this principle in his writing. Chapters 4 and 5 examine Wiebe's use of polyphonic narrative forms in The Blue Mountains of China and The Temptations of Big Bear. Analysis of the inter- and intra-textual politics of these two novels demonstrates that overtly dialogic narrative forms may remain functionally monologic. Chapter 6 considers The Scorched-Wood People and Wiebe's strategy of embedding voices within other voices, a practice which compounds the "internal dialogization" of the prose. Chapter 7 discusses My Lovely Enemy as a challenge to various forms of anti-imaginative discourse, and to prevailing notions of artistic creativity. Chapter 8 focusses on the question of the provenance of "voice" and concludes that although Wiebe's novels exploit the historicity of the Word—indeed, of all words—they also bear the legacy of a monologic Christian fundamentalist model of language. An Appendix entitled "The Early History and Doctrines of the Mennonite Church" describes Wiebe's dialogue with Menno Simons' doctrines of the Word. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate

Typological methods and a scheme of Protestant iconography constitute the fiction of Rudy Wiebe. This structure and style are the necessary consequences of an artistic vision that is self-consciously Christian and evangelical. After a brief discussion of the problem of belief and literature, the dissertation presents Wiebe's Anabaptist theology and examines the typological and parabolical means by which Christian beliefs can become a method of composition. Wiebe's project is to create a fiction in which realistically presented lives and actions exist consubstantially with the gospel of Jesus. A pervasive iconic imagery and ironic reference result in a carefully controlled evangelical "sentence," one which allows Wiebe a fictional re-enactment of the incarnation. In Peace Shall Destroy Many, First and Vital Candle, and The Blue Mountains of China. Wiebe experiments with retrospective typology and with analogical sacrificial actions. In the historical novels (The Temptations of Big Bear, The Scorched-Wood People, The Mad Trapper), he exploits typology proper, giving epistemological authority to his chronicles of faith by establishing the hermeneutical divide in history itself. The gospel is again present, but now it is almost entirely anticipatory and ironic. The dissertation concludes by speculating about Wiebe's latest experiment in evangelical fiction, the self-regarding dramatization of a Christian Wiebe-persona acting in a documentary present.

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Thesis (M.A.P.S.)--Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminaries, 1986. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 118-121).

Thesis (D.M.A.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2001. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references. Available also from UMI/Dissertation Abstracts International.