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Theorizing the Goddess in Feminist Mythopoeic Fantasy
Title
Theorizing the Goddess in Feminist Mythopoeic Fantasy.
Creator
Taylor, Taryne Jade, Martin, Thomas L., Florida Atlantic University
Abstract/Description
In my thesis, I examine the function and treatment of goddesses in six modern feminist mythopoeic fantasy novels by Y olen, Shinn, and Harris. In these novels, the goddesses and their worshippers serve as the agents of socio-political change within the secondary world, inducing changes that end with the ultimate transformation of oppressive social structures. Acknowledging these goddesses and incorporating them into the fabric of communal life, the protagonists, and ultimately entire...
Show moreIn my thesis, I examine the function and treatment of goddesses in six modern feminist mythopoeic fantasy novels by Y olen, Shinn, and Harris. In these novels, the goddesses and their worshippers serve as the agents of socio-political change within the secondary world, inducing changes that end with the ultimate transformation of oppressive social structures. Acknowledging these goddesses and incorporating them into the fabric of communal life, the protagonists, and ultimately entire societies, are able transcend issues of gender, race, ethnicity, class, and religion, in order to create a peaceful and prosperous society. These novels work through many of the issues troubling modern day feminist theorists and make important contributions to the discourse of feminist spirituality and feminist theory as a whole. Extrapolating both a theory and praxis from the texture of these fantasy narratives, I suggest that these stories offer a way to transcend dichotomous thinking and escape the current stagnation of spirituality based approaches to feminism.
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Date Issued
2008
PURL
http://purl.flvc.org/fau/fd/FA00000968
Subject Headings
Myth in literature, Feminism in literature, Fantasy fiction, American--Criticism and interpretation, Spirituality in literature
Format
Document (PDF)
I’d rather be a sage than a cyborg: re-theorizing posthumanism through religious wisdom literature
Title
I’d rather be a sage than a cyborg: re-theorizing posthumanism through religious wisdom literature.
Creator
Shaw, Amy, Mason, Julia, Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters, Department of English
Abstract/Description
The topics of identity and subjectivity are well-trodden paths in posthuman thought, and the trend has been to reduce the self to its material, social, and technoscientific components. Yet the posthuman model of subjectivity—influenced by the tenets of postmodernism—tends to be disabling because it does not focus on the subject’s agency or the possibility of liberation from social tyranny. In this thesis, I use a sampling of what I call “religious wisdom literature”—specifically, the wisdom...
Show moreThe topics of identity and subjectivity are well-trodden paths in posthuman thought, and the trend has been to reduce the self to its material, social, and technoscientific components. Yet the posthuman model of subjectivity—influenced by the tenets of postmodernism—tends to be disabling because it does not focus on the subject’s agency or the possibility of liberation from social tyranny. In this thesis, I use a sampling of what I call “religious wisdom literature”—specifically, the wisdom books of the Old Testament and contemporary Buddhist writings—to challenge the assumption that the self is indistinguishable from the ideologies that produce it. I provide models from religious texts that instead, emphasize critical agency, flexibility, and resistive power. I also suggest that focusing on these qualities may ultimately be useful in the composition classroom, where we can use “self-centered” expressivist techniques (reflective assignments, emotional awareness) to meet the social-epistemic goal of ideological critique. Ultimately, posthumanism, with its emphasis on the construction of subjectivity, is better suited to question strict materialism and inquire into the inspiring possibilities of ancient wisdom.
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Date Issued
2013
PURL
http://purl.flvc.org/fau/fd/FA0004060
Subject Headings
Complexity (Philosophy), Order (Philosophy) in literature, Self in literature, Spiritual life (Buddhism), Spiritual life (Judaism), Wisdom literature -- Criticism and interpretation
Format
Document (PDF)
Reclaiming Wonder
Title
Reclaiming Wonder.
Creator
Barreneche, Ingrid M., Broderick, Amy S., Florida Atlantic University, Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters, Department of Visual Arts and Art History
Abstract/Description
I believe art can offer an antidote to our numbness and rekindle a sense of childlike wonder. Reclaiming Wonder is an installation in which I aim to explore the possibility of evoking the curiosity of childhood in the viewer’s mind and transporting him or her into a dreamlike atmosphere to wander about in wonder through the use of the senses of sight, touch, and hearing.
Date Issued
2017
PURL
http://purl.flvc.org/fau/fd/FA00004863, http://purl.flvc.org/fau/fd/FA00004863
Subject Headings
Semiotics and literature., Wonder in children., Philosophy of nature., Nature study., Discourse analysis., Symbolism in literature., Spiritual life.
Format
Document (PDF)
Emily Dickinson
Title
Emily Dickinson: the language of a spiritually periipheral perspective.
Creator
Gallagher, Linda Pergolizzi., Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters, Department of English
Abstract/Description
Emily Dickinson was a poet who existed at the center of her nineteenth-century United States culture and yet wrote from a periphery located at the edge of her being. Integral to understanding her poetry is a contextual awareness of her spiritual struggle. The experience of cultural marginalization and the way it informs art through a peripheral perspective has been the focus of examination in much of modern and post-modern literary studies where attention is given as much to an author's...
Show moreEmily Dickinson was a poet who existed at the center of her nineteenth-century United States culture and yet wrote from a periphery located at the edge of her being. Integral to understanding her poetry is a contextual awareness of her spiritual struggle. The experience of cultural marginalization and the way it informs art through a peripheral perspective has been the focus of examination in much of modern and post-modern literary studies where attention is given as much to an author's cultural station as to his or her artistic creation. A close study of Emily Dickinson's poetry reveals a spiritually marginalized perspective which closely resembles the structural framework of cultural marginalization. While there are areas of Dickinson's poetic perspective where these two experiences merge, my examination of Dickinson concentrates on her personal spiritual liminality in her relationship with God as expressed in the context of her poetry and letters.
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Date Issued
2007
PURL
http://purl.flvc.org/FAU/47851
Subject Headings
Criticism and interpretation, Spirituality, Spiritual life in literature, Belief and doubt in literature
Format
Document (PDF)
Sentimental spirits: saving the soul while seizing the heart and swaying the mind
Title
Sentimental spirits: saving the soul while seizing the heart and swaying the mind.
Creator
Rovere, Michelle, Bradford, Adam C., Florida Atlantic University, Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters, Department of English
Abstract/Description
During the nineteenth century, African American women like Jarena Lee, Zilpha Elaw, and Julia Foote wrote narratives of their spiritual conversions. Through their efforts and the efforts of others like them, spiritual autobiographies became not only evangelical tools but also a means of shaping African American culture and American society in general. While some black women were working to claim power for their gender and race by writing spiritual narratives, other women, both black and white...
Show moreDuring the nineteenth century, African American women like Jarena Lee, Zilpha Elaw, and Julia Foote wrote narratives of their spiritual conversions. Through their efforts and the efforts of others like them, spiritual autobiographies became not only evangelical tools but also a means of shaping African American culture and American society in general. While some black women were working to claim power for their gender and race by writing spiritual narratives, other women, both black and white, were working with sentimental literature to achieve similar goals.
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Date Issued
2015
PURL
http://purl.flvc.org/fau/fd/FA00004463, http://purl.flvc.org/fau/fd/FA00004463
Subject Headings
African American aesthetics, African American women authors -- 19th century -- Criticism and interpretation, American literature -- 19th century -- History and criticism, American literature -- African American authors, Antislavery movements in literature, Elaw, Zilpha -- approximately 1790- -- Criticism and interpretation, Emotions in literature, Foote, Julia A.J. -- 1823-1900 -- Criticism and interpretation, Lee, Jarena -- 1783- -- Criticism and interpretation, Spirituality in literature
Format
Document (PDF)
Spenser's spiritual vision
Title
Spenser's spiritual vision: the Faerie Queene as a teleological romance.
Creator
Groves, Laura Hendricks., Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters, Department of English
Abstract/Description
A recent trend in Spenser studies that relies heavily on materialist thinking either undervalues or misses altogether The Faerie Queene's inherent spiritual quality along with the irreducible interaction and ultimate reciprocity of earth and heaven. This thesis argues that Edmund Spenser's spiritual vision in The Faerie Queene expresses itself in a teleological romance that assumes a condition of mutability over stasis in the temporal earthly realm, as its first three heroes ascend a ladder...
Show moreA recent trend in Spenser studies that relies heavily on materialist thinking either undervalues or misses altogether The Faerie Queene's inherent spiritual quality along with the irreducible interaction and ultimate reciprocity of earth and heaven. This thesis argues that Edmund Spenser's spiritual vision in The Faerie Queene expresses itself in a teleological romance that assumes a condition of mutability over stasis in the temporal earthly realm, as its first three heroes ascend a ladder of perfection that evokes the heavenly and eternal, while at the same time heavenly glory reaches down into the story "romancing" the characters and exerting its own influence on the action.
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Date Issued
2009
PURL
http://purl.flvc.org/FAU/210523
Subject Headings
Criticism and interpretation, Symbolism in literature, Spirituality in literature, English literature, Criticism and interpretation
Format
Document (PDF)
Of offal, corpses, and others
Title
Of offal, corpses, and others: an examination of self, subjectivity, and authenticity in two works by Alexandra David-Neel.
Creator
Jones, Robert William, Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters, Department of English
Abstract/Description
This thesis examines two works (My Journey to Lhasa and Magic and Mystery in Tibet) by Alexandra David-Neel. These works subvert the self/other dichotomies both necessary to and critiqued by postcolonial theory. Central to this study is an examination of a claim by His Holiness the XIV Dalai Lama that David-Neel creates an "authentic" picture of Tibet. In order to do this the first chapter establishes a working definition of authenticity based on both Western philosophy and Vajrayana Buddhism...
Show moreThis thesis examines two works (My Journey to Lhasa and Magic and Mystery in Tibet) by Alexandra David-Neel. These works subvert the self/other dichotomies both necessary to and critiqued by postcolonial theory. Central to this study is an examination of a claim by His Holiness the XIV Dalai Lama that David-Neel creates an "authentic" picture of Tibet. In order to do this the first chapter establishes a working definition of authenticity based on both Western philosophy and Vajrayana Buddhism. This project argues that the advanced meditation techniques practiced by Alexandra David-Neel allow her to access a transcendent self that is able to overcome the self/other dichotomy. It also discusses the ways in which abjection and limit experiences enhance this breakdown. Finally, this thesis examines the roles that gender and a near absence of female Tibetan voice play in complicating the problems of self, subjectivity, and authenticity within these texts.
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Date Issued
2010
PURL
http://purl.flvc.org/FAU/1927604
Subject Headings
Criticism and interpretation, Criticism and interpretation, Influence, Self in literature, Symbolism in literature, Spiritual life, Buddhism, Buddhism, Doctrines
Format
Document (PDF)