Phantastical Regress: The Return of Desire and Deed in \u3ci\u3ePhantastes\u3c/i\u3e and \u3ci\u3eThe Pilgrim\u27s Regress\u3c/i\u3e

Examines the close link between George MacDonald’s Phantastes and C.S. Lewis’s first post-conversion fiction The Pilgrim\u27s Regress, born out of the “baptism” of Lewis’s imagination by MacDonald’s seminal work. Both feature pairings of seekers initially led by desire with knight-like figures, and takes the characters through journeys with many important parallels, including learning lessons showing that desire and deed must work in harmony to bring about successful spiritual quests

Teaching Thoreau in China: Waldensian Reflections on Chinese Ecology and Agriculture

It may seem quixotic to teach Walden, the archetypal American ode to self-reliance and wildness, in Wuhan, one of China’s largest industrial cities. Nevertheless, I was excited when I found out I would have the opportunity to give a series of lectures on Thoreau at Wuhan University of Technology, the third largest university in China. This would give me the chance to discuss pressing ecological and cultural issues in the context of one of the most rapidly industrializing countries in the world. China’s environmental problems are widely reported, and if China can’t find a way to develop its vast economy more sustainably, then the entire world will suffer the consequences. Through this opportunity, Thoreau provided me with a helpful perspective from which to understand China’s ecological, agricultural, and political situation. Thoreau attempts repeatedly to reconcile the train that ran next to Walden Pond with his pastoral life, but the industrial and pastoral remained stubbornly at odds. This opposition describes modern China pretty well also, and their railroad system is a profound example of their rapid industrialization. Yet at the same time that China is building high-speed rail, erecting new high-rises, and coping with smog, much of the country continues to be farmed by peasants using traditional methods. For Thoreau, the countryside acts as a site for political resistance; he can move out to Walden Pond, establish a life apart from an oppressive, slaveholding government, and consider how to participate in a more just economy and culture. Such a tradition of protest and civil disobedience has been largely tamped down in China. As long as the government delivers basic services, most citizens are content to mind their own affairs; those who speak out just bring trouble on themselves and their families. One Chinese poet who was inspired by Thoreau, Hai Zi, wrote poetry protesting industrialization and the destruction of the countryside, but he eventually lost hope and committed suicide by lying down on the railroad tracks, a copy of Walden tucked into his bag. Yet at the end of Walden, Thoreau has an experience which gives him renewed hope for the railroad and his culture, a hope that may also be imaginable in China. Thoreau sees the sun melting frozen sand on the bank of the railroad grade and creating new patterns; he sees nature at work in the midst of industry. I’m never quite sure how to read this conclusion. Is Thoreau right to realize that human culture is part of nature also, or is he naive in thinking that human development can’t ultimately destroy natural life? Is he right that our imagination is what most needs to change? Teaching Thoreau in Wuhan, to people living in one of the most rapidly industrializing civilizations in the history of the world, gave me new hope that Thoreau’s conclusion, with its focus on imaginative and perceptual change, is right. Perhaps the core problem is not industrialization or the train itself, but the warped human imaginations that use these tools to damage the earth. And literature might play a role in renewing our imaginations, in helping all of us desire and work toward lives of contentment and wild harmony. As Hai Zi writes, “I hope that in this dusty world you become content / I only hope to face the ocean, as spring warms and flowers open.

Sounding the Darkness and Discovering the Marvelous: Hearing 'A Lough Neagh Sequence' with Seamus Heaney's Auditory Imagination

Abstract This essay carefully analyzes an important facet of T. S. Eliot's influence on Heaney, namely their shared understanding of the auditory imagination. Heaney looks to Eliot's auditory imagination to help him accomplish three vital poetic tasks: sounding the dark places of the earth, discovering a luminescence within these dark places, and inspiring poetry even when his dark surroundings threaten to silence his art. After accomplishing this through close readings of a wide selection of Heaney's prose and poetry, the essay presents detailed, original readings of Heaney's neglected, 'A Lough Neagh Sequence'. These readings practically illustrate the operation of Heaney's auditory imagination and the significance of his poetry's aural elements

God's wildness : the Christian roots of ecological ethics in American literature.

Early Puritan colonists expressed conflicting views regarding the religious significance of the New World’s natural environment. On the one hand, it was “the Devil’s Territories” that God would transform into “a Mart” to enrich his church. On the other hand, it was “God’s temple” in which humans should act as priests. While the first view justifies, even demands, America’s voracious extractive economy, many literary artists have developed the latter view to imagine ways that humans might fulfill more caring, priestly roles within America’s ecological communities. Instead of reordering the Devil’s territories to suit human ends, these authors challenge readers to reorder their own lives in order to participate in God’s wild ecology. This study examines the work of four American writers—Henry David Thoreau, John Muir, Willa Cather, and Wendell Berry—to understand the different means they propose to enable humans to participate in the ongoing redemptive work that God desires to accomplish in his creation. Thoreau draws explicitly on Puritan forms of history and natural philosophy as he calls his neighbors to glorify and enjoy God “in his works.” Muir’s writings in support of the National Parks transfer the central tenets of Disciples of Christ theology to his own “gospel of glaciers,” so he preached that humans could experience God’s presence most powerfully in primitive wilderness. In Death Comes for the Archbishop, Cather models her priests’ reconciliatory work in their mission and gardens on the active submission to God’s will that enabled the Virgin Mary to participate in the Incarnation and Jesus to participate in his Father’s redemptive plan. In Berry’s essays and fiction, he articulates a “way of love” that humans can follow to honor and participate in God’s redemptive love for all creation. Each of these authors imagines practical ways by which humans can fulfill their role as priests in God’s wild temple, and their insights may help Americans reinterpret their religious traditions in order to find wisdom regarding how to care for the damaged ecological systems within which they live.Ph.D