Sacred Estrangement

Sacred Estrangement PDF Author: Peter A. Dorsey
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 027104067X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 229

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Book Description
Sacred Estrangement analyzes certain works by important American writers and thinkers in the context of the &"rhetoric of conversion.&" Such analysis is especially valuable because it provides a reliable index of the relationship between the self and larger communities. Traditionally, &"conversion&" has served a socializing function, signifying that one has come into alignment with certain linguistic, behavioral, and cultural expectations. The socialization process is particularly apparent in the Christian conversion narratives of the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries: by publicly testifying to a conversion experience, believers became empowered members, not only of God's elect community but also of a local population. As modern autobiography developed in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the Christian pattern was secularized and individualized. Conversion became a model for many kinds of psychological change. With the coming of the twentieth century, however, the authors upon whom Peter Dorsey focuses, including William and Henry James, Henry Adams, Edith Wharton, Ellen Glasgow, Zora Neale Hurston, and Richard Wright, radically revised conversion rhetoric. If conversion had traditionally linked the search for illumination with the search for a defined social role, these writers increasingly used conversion as an index of estrangement from mainstream America. Dorsey documents this profound change in the way American intellectuals defined the &"self,&" not in terms of personal orientation toward or away from a given community, but as a resistance to such an orientation altogether, as if social forces by their &"nature&" were a threat to personal identity.

Sacred Estrangement

Sacred Estrangement PDF Author: Peter A. Dorsey
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 027104067X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 229

Get Book Here

Book Description
Sacred Estrangement analyzes certain works by important American writers and thinkers in the context of the &"rhetoric of conversion.&" Such analysis is especially valuable because it provides a reliable index of the relationship between the self and larger communities. Traditionally, &"conversion&" has served a socializing function, signifying that one has come into alignment with certain linguistic, behavioral, and cultural expectations. The socialization process is particularly apparent in the Christian conversion narratives of the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries: by publicly testifying to a conversion experience, believers became empowered members, not only of God's elect community but also of a local population. As modern autobiography developed in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the Christian pattern was secularized and individualized. Conversion became a model for many kinds of psychological change. With the coming of the twentieth century, however, the authors upon whom Peter Dorsey focuses, including William and Henry James, Henry Adams, Edith Wharton, Ellen Glasgow, Zora Neale Hurston, and Richard Wright, radically revised conversion rhetoric. If conversion had traditionally linked the search for illumination with the search for a defined social role, these writers increasingly used conversion as an index of estrangement from mainstream America. Dorsey documents this profound change in the way American intellectuals defined the &"self,&" not in terms of personal orientation toward or away from a given community, but as a resistance to such an orientation altogether, as if social forces by their &"nature&" were a threat to personal identity.

Sacred Estrangement

Sacred Estrangement PDF Author: Peter A. Dorsey
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 027107342X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 225

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Book Description
Sacred Estrangement analyzes certain works by important American writers and thinkers in the context of the "rhetoric of conversion." Such analysis is especially valuable because it provides a reliable index of the relationship between the self and larger communities. Traditionally, "conversion" has served a socializing function, signifying that one has come into alignment with certain linguistic, behavioral, and cultural expectations. The socialization process is particularly apparent in the Christian conversion narratives of the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries: by publicly testifying to a conversion experience, believers became empowered members, not only of God's elect community but also of a local population. As modern autobiography developed in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the Christian pattern was secularized and individualized. Conversion became a model for many kinds of psychological change. With the coming of the twentieth century, however, the authors upon whom Peter Dorsey focuses, including William and Henry James, Henry Adams, Edith Wharton, Ellen Glasgow, Zora Neale Hurston, and Richard Wright, radically revised conversion rhetoric. If conversion had traditionally linked the search for illumination with the search for a defined social role, these writers increasingly used conversion as an index of estrangement from mainstream America. Dorsey documents this profound change in the way American intellectuals defined the "self," not in terms of personal orientation toward or away from a given community, but as a resistance to such an orientation altogether, as if social forces by their "nature" were a threat to personal identity.

The Self and the Sacred

The Self and the Sacred PDF Author: Rodger Milton Payne
Publisher: Univ. of Tennessee Press
ISBN: 9781572330153
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 142

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Book Description
From about 1740 to 1850, evangelical Protestantism became a major cultural force in virtually all areas of America. Emerging from this religious movement was a rich vernacular literature of conversion narratives and spiritual autobiographies--writings in which believers described their own salvation in hopes of converting others. In The Self and the Sacred, Rodger M. Payne examines these neglected texts in depth, focusing particularly on what they reveal about notions of selfhood and how those notions were incorporated into Christian orthodoxy. As Payne explains, conversion narratives point to a fascinating paradox that became evident among evangelicals as they were confronted by the disruptions and discontinuities marking their culture's passage into modernity. On the one hand, these narratives asserted the traditional Christian values of humility and self-effacement--an annihilation of the self in the divine. On the other hand, they created a discourse that allowed one to embrace the modern idea of an autonomous self: only by speaking from personal experience could a convert testify to the power of God. "Despite protests to the contrary," Payne writes, "the central character of any conversion account, spiritual diary, or spiritual autobiography was the convert, not God." Using the theology of Jonathan Edwards as a key example, Payne shows how Puritan piety encouraged the development of autobiographical spiritual narratives. He goes on to explain the ways in which the discourse of conversion functioned apart from the control of the church and marked the growth of evangelicalism into "a discursive community." Finally, he considers how the language of conversion functioned as a "rhetorical space" in which believers situated themselves individually within sacred space and time before turning back to society with a renewed regard for others. Drawing throughout on the insights of such theorists as Michel Foucault and Victor Turner, Payne's penetrating analysis reveals the early conversion accounts as mythic texts through which the modern self emerged. The Author: Rodger M. Payne is associate professor of religious studies at Louisiana State University. He is editor-in-chief of The Journal of Southern Religion, an electronic publication available on the World Wide Web.

Law and the Sacred

Law and the Sacred PDF Author: Austin Sarat
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 9780804755757
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 220

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Book Description
"The essays in this book were originally prepared for ... during the 2001-2002 academic year."--Acknowledgments.

Art of Estrangement

Art of Estrangement PDF Author: Pamela Anne Patton
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 0271053836
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 220

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Book Description
"Examines the influential role of visual images in reinforcing the efforts of Spain's Christian-ruled kingdoms to renegotiate the role of their Jewish minority following the territorial expansions of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries"--Provided by publisher.

Kierkegaard and the Self Before God

Kierkegaard and the Self Before God PDF Author: Simon D. Podmore
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253222826
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 281

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Book Description
Simon D. Podmore claims that becoming a self before God is both a divine gift and an anxious obligation. Before we can know God, or ourselves, we must come to a moment of recognition. How this comes to be, as well as the terms of such acknowledgment, are worked out in Podmore's powerful new reading of Kierkegaard. As he gives full consideration to Kierkegaard's writings, Podmore explores themes such as despair, anxiety, melancholy, and spiritual trial, and how they are broken by the triumph of faith, forgiveness, and the love of God. He confronts the abyss between the self and the divine in order to understand how we can come to know ourselves in relation to a God who is apparently so wholly Other.

Political Conversion

Political Conversion PDF Author: Don Waisanen
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 1498575730
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
Stories of religious conversion have been told for millennia. Yet many prominent figures such as Ronald Reagan, Hillary Clinton, and Rick Perry have also used stories of their change from one political worldview to another as a communication strategy aimed at winning the hearts and minds of the public. This book is about political conversion stories in public discourse, in their evolution from and interactions with religion. From a historical perspective, it charts the development of conversion narratives from religious contexts to their contemporary applications as specifically political messages. Since these narratives continue to be used in the culture wars, this book examines several related autobiographies that contributed to the use of this strategy in contemporary U.S. politics. Each case shows how shifts during the postwar period called for conversion texts under varying guises, and illustrates how and why the majority of these stories have been of conversions from the ideological left to the right. Examining political conversion as a form of public persuasion, Political Conversion ultimately provides insight into what these types of civic-religious stories mean for democratic communication and communities.

In Search of the Sacred Book

In Search of the Sacred Book PDF Author: Aníbal González
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
ISBN: 0822983028
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 324

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Book Description
In Search of the Sacred Book studies the artistic incorporation of religious concepts such as prophecy, eternity, and the afterlife in the contemporary Latin American novel. It departs from sociopolitical readings by noting the continued relevance of religion in Latin American life and culture, despite modernity's powerful secularizing influence. Analyzing Jorge Luis Borges's secularized "narrative theology" in his essays and short stories, the book follows the development of the Latin American novel from the early twentieth century until today by examining the attempts of major novelists, from María Luisa Bombal, Alejo Carpentier, and Juan Rulfo, to Julio Cortázar, Gabriel García Márquez, and José Lezama Lima, to "sacralize" the novel by incorporating traits present in the sacred texts of many religions. It concludes with a view of the "desacralization" of the novel by more recent authors, from Elena Poniatowska and Fernando Vallejo to Roberto Bolaño.

The Other Quebec

The Other Quebec PDF Author: John Irvine Little
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 0802093973
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 297

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Book Description
The Other Quebec explores some of the complex ways that religious institutions and beliefs affected the rural societies in which the majority of Canadians still lived in the nineteenth century.

Beyond Sacred and Secular

Beyond Sacred and Secular PDF Author: Sultan Tepe
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 0804758646
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 433

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Book Description
Comparing the politics of Judaism and Islam, this book demonstrates that common religious political party characteristics in Israel and Turkey can be as striking as their differences.