Buddhism in Progress: Ecstasy, Eternity, and Zen Sickness in the English Romantics

This dissertation addresses the philosophical similarity between English Romanticism and Buddhism from a Zen Buddhist perspective. In contrast to scholars such as Mark Lussier and John G. Rudy, who have focused on the similarity between Romantic and Buddhist philosophy, I explore their differences. I argue that Romanticism represents a “Buddhism in progress”: both philosophies seek to overcome “the self,” but do so through different means. Lacking direct access to Buddhist teachings, the authors considered in this study (Beckford, Coleridge, De Quincey, Shelley, and Keats) developed their own practice of self-transcendence through writing, often prompted by experiences of ecstatic intoxication that call into question the existence of “the self.” For these authors, “self” is an illusory concept that is narrated into existence to account for one’s “being” over time and is recognized as a source of suffering. Ecstatic intoxication offers self-palliation, but exposes an ontological groundlessness with which these authors struggle to come to terms. In Chapter 1, I give a historical overview of Romanticism’s relationship to Buddhism, suggesting that Romanticism’s self-difficulty is symptomatic of “Zen sickness” (i.e., attachment to self-lessness). Chapter 2 explores William Beckford’s Vathek (1786) as an ur-text of Romantic religion that appeals to the Orient in order to escape time and selfhood. My third chapter argues that Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s and Thomas De Quincey’s opium addictions model a kind of Zen sickness that is apparent in Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan” (1816) and De Quincey’s Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1821). In Chapter 4, I argue that Percy Shelley’s Prometheus Unbound (1820) vacillates between Christian and Buddhist philosophy, showing commitments to ontologies of both self and self-lessness. My fifth chapter addresses John Keats’s Hyperion poems (1818; 1819). I posit that due to his relationship to suffering, Keats, more intensely than any other author in this study, grapples with Buddhist themes, but is ultimately unable to cope with his self-lessness. Finally, I conclude by considering the status of the self in post-Romantic Western philosophy, which also understands the self as illusory, but unlike Buddhism, does not find liberation in this fact

The Victorian Newsletter (Fall 1966)

The Victorian Newsletter is edited for the English X Group of the Modern Language Association by William E. Buckler, New York University, New York, N.Y. 10003.Nonfiction as Art / George Levine -- Gerard Manley Hopkins and the "Stanching, Quenching Ocean of a Motionable Mind" / Howard W. Fulweiler -- "The Primaeval Fountain of Human Nature": Mill, Carlyle, and the French Revolution / Henry Ebel -- Imagery as Structure in Jane Eyre / Donald H. Ericksen -- A Brief Inquiry into the Morality of Amelia in Vanity Fair / Neal B. Houston -- Hetty Sorrel, the Forlorn Maiden / Thomas G. Burton -- A Note on the Ruskin-Blackwood's Controversy / Kenneth W. Davis -- Recent Publications: A Selected List / Arthur F. Minerof -- English X New

Conrad's impressionism the treatment of space and atmosphere in selected works

This thesis focuses on Conrad's representation of space and atmosphere in the "impressionistic" works published between 1897 and 1904, notably The Nigger of the "Narcissus" (1897), "Heart of Darkness" (1899), Lord Jim (1900), and Nostromo (1904). The many conflicting statements regarding the nature of Conrad's impressionism lead one to ask two fundamental questions: What constitutes this strange and elusive phenomenon, and how does it bear upon interpretation? This thesis works towards defining the elusive quality of Conrad's writing by investigating and assessing the contribution of impressionist techniques in the creation of a pervasive space and atmosphere; secondly, it considers how the various constituent elements interact with, and complement one another to form a dominant mode of fictional space in each work; and, thirdly, it indicates the possible impact that these particular Conradian configurations of space and atmosphere might have upon the interpretation of his impressionist works. The thesis argues that the existential condition of isolatio~experienced by Conrad's heroes and narrators is a consequence of epistemological frustration and fragmentation, which, in turn, is a function of impressionist ontology. There is a definite and complementary relationship between each of these notions in Conrad's fiction. The mysterious atmosphere in his works results from the interplay between various configurations of theme, narration and description, and these novelistic elements correspond roughly with the notions of existential isolation (the dominant theme), epistemology (narrating, telling and (re)telling as a method of knowing and understanding the space in which the characters find themselves) and, lastly, the ontological dimensions of the various modes of fictional space (as realized in description). The evocation and invocation of cosmic space in The Nigger of the "Narcissus," the mapping of a dorriinant symbolic space in "Heart of Darkness," the (re)constructions of Jim's psychological space in Lord Jim, and, finally, the "transcription" and "inscription" of a mythical space in Nostromo, indicate a definite development from epistemological to ontological issues. Phrased in more theoretical terms, this development is a movement from asking predominantly epistemological questions like "How can I interpret this world of which I am a part?" "What is there to be known?" "Who knows it ... and with what degree of certainty?", to asking predominantly ontological questions, such as "Which world is this?" "What kinds of worlds are there ... and how are they constituted?". Such questions, categorized by McHale as the dominant characteristics of Modernist and Postmodernist fiction respectively, are already present in Conrad's texts, thus undermining any clear-cut division between these broad categories. Indeed, this thesis suggests that these categories are at best tenuous, and that they should perhaps be used heuristically, rather than definitivel

The Image of Idiocy in Nineteenth Century England: A history of cultural representations of intellectual disability

Over the nineteenth century, the popular and the scientific understanding of idiocy changed in conjunction with shifts in social concerns and the emergence of new discourses. An examination of representations of idiocy over the century foregrounds the manner in which the condition was given shape and meaning. The dissertation traces the history of the idea of intellectual disability in England from the start of the nineteenth century up to the initial articulation of eugenics, and argues that the idea of intellectual disability acquired new significance in the Victorian era, eventually stabilizing somewhat with the notion of the idiot as degenerate. Political, gender, economic, religious, literary and scientific discourses interact to weave a notion of what intellectual disability means and how it should be interpreted. This dissertation examines the ways that idiocy is constructed by these discourses, and to what ideological purpose, by reading critically texts involved in the construction of the notion. These texts include Wordsworth’s “The Idiot Boy,” Dickens’ Barnaby Rudge, Scott’s Waverley, and Gaskell’s “Half a Life-time Ago,” among other literary works, as well as medical, scientific and sociological writings. The dissertation is organized thematically and, for the most part, chronologically to sketch out a cultural history of the idea of idiocy, with an emphasis on delineating the factors that shaped perceptions (the idiot as holy fool, as innocent, or as degenerate), as well as on the ideological significance of the notion of idiocy. Throughout the dissertation, special emphasis is placed on the relation of intellectual disability to gender notions, and the varying interpretations of the significance of intellectual disability when associated with men or women

1915 Convention Report, Chicago

https://place.asburyseminary.edu/ceinternationalbooks/1028/thumbnail.jp