First, a welcome back to you (or to me). As the snow globe flurries have settled from Christmas and New Year's, I dug my plow into some dissertation writing this week. I drew lots of diagrams on a paper napkin on Jan. 1 in a revised explanation of my topic. The napkin has operated as a mental outline over the last couple of days as I have planned out the composition of my first chapter. So, welcome to one of the first posts from the dissertation adventure trail of 2010 . . .
In building a lens through which to examine the uses of sermons in American fiction, we must pay attention to several things: ancient rhetoric, the history of the Christian sermon, the development of the sermon in the U.S., the use of sermons in canonical American literature, and, finally, what those sermons have looked like since 1950. This serves as a rough chronological "skeletal" system for a study of post-1950 sermons in novels.
The theoretical system requires attention to cultural, historical, and linguistic boundaries and the motivations and results for crossing these boundaries. Boundaries to consider are between ancient pagan societies and early Christian ones; between 19th century Christian culture in the U.S. and 20th century secular, academic culture; between modernist American novels and so-called postmodernist American novels; between Cicero and Augustine; between Huck Finn and Invisible Man; between critical theory and theology.
Last tidbits from today: Augustine is my focus; reminded of the importance of Giles Gunn and Adolf von Harnack; new word today . . . hierophant.
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