Thesis (M.A.) in Modern Languages and Classics--University of Maine, 2002. / Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 127-134).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1969. / Typescript. Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Lehigh University, 2005. / Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 201-207).

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2007. / The entire dissertation/thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file (which also appears in the research.pdf); a non-technical general description, or public abstract, appears in the public.pdf file. Title from title screen of research.pdf file (viewed on October 25, 2007) Includes bibliographical references.

My dissertation argues that changes in the structures and orientations of religious thought, changes commonly understood as secularization, have provided the intellectual underpinnings for the modern exploitation and ongoing destruction of the non-human world, which extend to the underwriting the devaluing and dehumanization of marginalized groups such as Native Americans. My work makes visible the secular assumptions of ecocriticism, which tends to blame Christianity for environmental problems. It also unwittingly relies on state-legitimating constructions of religion, simplistic religious-secular binaries, and outdated, false narratives of secularization. I theorize an ecocriticism “with/out the secular” to analyze secularity in both “secular” and “religious” settings, using the category of “religious orientation,” a tacit, pre-theoretical commitment that directs ultimate trust, structures meaning as it coheres in everyday life, and shapes ontological, epistemological, ethical, and other theories. I examine how certain nineteenth-century authors, including Henry Thoreau, Emily Dickinson, and Pequot minister William Apess, resisted this secularization within contemporaneous American culture and Christianity because of its epistemic devaluing of the natural world. Each of these authors has been read as an exemplar of secularization, but such interpretations reveal more about the secular commitments of literary critics than about the authors and their contexts. I show instead how modern religious constructions do not necessarily correlate with the deeper religious orientation of an author or the secularity or non-secularity of his or her arguments. Dickinson’s poetry and Thoreau’s A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers challenge dogmatic conceptions of heaven and Sabbath that are structured dualistically so as to devalue everyday earthly life. Yet they do so in non-dualistic ways that accord with a biblically rooted religious orientation of creation-fall-redemption-consummation. Their struggles against the church were against the church’s acceptance of dominant secularist ideologies that are ultimately at odds with Christianity and sustainable lifeways. Similarly, William Apess’ environmental justice work as a Native Christian against institutions dominated by white nationalist ideology demonstrate the how dualistic structures of secularity legitimate racism in conjunction with an anthropocentric that devalue the natural world.

These are stories about absurd societies, wigs, ill-fated journeys, guttering candles, obsessed fathers, direful glances, tornadoes, uniforms, strange logic, arcane hierarchies, captivity, the impossible, spectral animals, fields, and red light. They take place in invented or imagined historical settings.

No description available.

It is the purpose of this paper to demonstrate the nature of Thoreau's use of organic imagery by tracing recurrent symbols that represent key concepts and provide unity and coherence throughout Walden. By charting the patterns of imagery in Walden, one can observe Thoreau's movement from an initially pessimistic view of man's present state to one of transcendental optimism and hope for freedom in the future.

No description available.

Predominantly darker than his other works, Cape Cod depicts Henry David Thoreau's interpretation of life as a struggle for survival and a search for salvation in a stark New England setting. Representing Thoreau's greatest test of the goodness of God and nature, the book illustrates the centrality of the subject of death to Thoreau's philosophy of life. Contending that Thoreau's journey to the Cape originated from an intensely personal transcendental impulse connected with his brother's death, this study provides the first in-depth examination of Thoreau's use of the five senses in Cape Cod to reveal both the eccentricities inherent in his relationship with nature and his method of resolving his fears of mortality. Some of the sense impressions in Cape Cod--particularly those that center around human death and those that involve tactile sensations--suggest that Thoreau sometimes tried to master his fears by subconsciously altering painful historical facts or by avoiding the type of sensual contact that aggravated the repressed guilt he suffered from his brother's death. Despite his personal idiosyncrasies, however, Thoreau persisted in his search for truth, and the written record of his journey in Cape Cod documents how his dedication to the transcendental process enabled him to surmount his inner turmoil and reconfirm his intuitive faith. In following this process to spiritual renewal, Thoreau begins with subjective impressions of nature and advances to knowledge of objective realities before ultimately reaching symbolic and universal truth. By analyzing nature's lessons as they evolve from Thoreau's use of his senses, this dissertation shows that Cape Cod, rather than invalidating Thoreau's faith, actually expands his transcendental perspective and so rightfully stands beside Walden as one of the fundamental cornerstones of his canon. In addition, the study proffers new support for previous psychoanalytical interpretations of Thoreau and his writings, reveals heretofore unrecognized historical inaccuracies in his account of the shipwreck that frames the book's opening, and provides the first detailed consideration of the linguistic implications of Cape Cod.