Timothy E. Bartel Phd Thesis

Glimpses of Her Father’s Glory: Deification and Divine Light in Longfellow’s Evangeline Timothy E Bartel This thesis is submitted in partial fulfillment for the degree of PhD at the University of St Andrews 26/09/2013 1. Candidate’s declarations: I, Tmothy Bartel, hereby certify that this thesis, which is approximately 81,000 words in length, has been written by me, that it is the record of work carried out by me and that it has not been submitted in any previous application for a higher degree. I was admitted as a research student in September, 2011 and as a candidate for the degree of Ph.D. in Divinity in September 2012; the higher study for which this is a record was carried out in the University of St Andrews between 2011 and 2013. (If you received assistance from anyone other than your supervisor) I, Timothy Bartel received assistance in the writing of this thesis in respect of grammar and formatting, which was provided by Hope Bartel. Date 22/9/13 signature of candidate 2. Supervisor’s declaration: I hereby certify that the candidate has fulfilled the conditions of the Resolution and Regulations appropriate for the degree of Ph.D. in the University of St Andrews and that the candidate is qualified to submit this thesis in application for that degree. Date 24.9.2013 signature of supervisor 3. Permission for electronic publication: (to be signed by both candidate and supervisor) In submitting this thesis to the University of St Andrews we understand that we are giving permission for it to be made available for use in accordance with the regulations of the University Library for the time being in force, subject to any copyright vested in the work not being affected thereby. We also understand that the title and the abstract will be published, and that a copy of the work may be made and supplied to any bona fide library or research worker, that my thesis will be electronically accessible for personal or research use unless exempt by award of an embargo as requested below, and that the library has the right to migrate my thesis into new electronic forms as required to ensure continued access to the thesis. We have obtained any third-party copyright permissions that may be required in order to allow such access and migration, or have requested the appropriate embargo below. The following is an agreed request by candidate and supervisor regarding the electronic publication of this thesis: (iii) Embargo on all printed copy and electronic copy for the same fixed period of 5 years (maximum five) on the following ground(s): (delete those not applicable) publication would preclude future publication. Date 22/9/13 signature of candidate signature of supervisor A supporting statement for a request for an embargo must be included with the submission of the draft copy of the thesis. Where part of a thesis is to be embargoed, please specify the part and the reasons. Abstract In this thesis I endeavor to discover and show the Unitarian and Patristic theological influences on Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s long narrative poem Evangeline, with special focus on the poem’s theological teachings concerning deification and descriptions of the spiritual experience of shining with divine light. In chapter one, I explore the theological climate of early nineteenth-century New England, focusing on the Unitarian and Transcendental movements and Longfellow’s familiarity with both. In chapter two, I present an overview of the critical literature concerning the religious elements of Evangeline, beginning with reviews by Longfellow’s contemporaries and ending with recent scholarship that calls for a new investigation of Unitarian influences on Evangeline. In chapters three and four, I look back to those Church Fathers who articulated the doctrines of deification and divine light in the second through fourth centuries. Through looking at the presence of the Church Fathers in Longfellow’s writings, especially in the unexplored “Christian Fathers” manuscript lectures from the early 1830s, I show how the Patristic writers proved interesting and inspiring to Longfellow in the years leading up to the publication of Evangeline. Finally, in chapters five and six, I investigate in depth the religious elements of Evangeline, giving special attention to the keynote passages of 2.1 and 2.5, which include, respectively, theological teaching concerning deification and a description of the spiritual experience of shining with divine light. I conclude that though in 2.1 Longfellow articulates theological teachings that possess strong affinities with Unitarian doctrine, in 2.5 Longfellow concludes the poem with a characteristically Patristic vision of the deified heroine shining with divine light. 2 Who this is we must learn, for man he seems In all his lineaments, though in his face The glimpses of his Father’s glory shine. - John Milton, Paradise Regained, ll.89–91 In narratives where historical veracity has no place, I cannot discover why there should not be exhibited the most perfect idea of virtue; of virtue not angelical, nor above probability, for what we cannot credit, we shall never imitate, but the highest and purest that humanity can reach, which, exercised in such trials as the various revolutions of things shall bring upon it, may, by conquering some calamities, and enduring others, teach us what we may hope, and what we can perform. - Samuel Johnson, The Rambler, No. 4 3 Contents Introduction 5 1 The Theological Climate of Longfellow’s New England 20 2 Religious Criticism of Evangeline 53 3 The Doctrines of Deification and Divine Light in the Church Fathers 95 4 The Christian Fathers in Longfellow 135 5 The Religious Elements of Evangeline 180 6 Deification and Divine Light in Evangeline 218 Conclusion: Evangeline Among Her Peers 249 4 Introduction Who, in his own skill confiding, Shall with rule and line Mark the border-land dividing Human and divine? - H.W. Longfellow, “Hermes Trismegistus”1 When humans become like God, they shine with God’s light—so the Fathers of the Christian Church teach. The nineteenth-century American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, who lived in a nation newly open to visions of the potential divinity and perfectibility of the human, encountered this doctrine in the writings of the Church Fathers, and illustrated it to striking effect in his 1847 poem Evangeline. Unfortunately, the critical tradition has not sufficiently recognized the theological heart of Longfellow’s poem, and we must refamiliarize ourselves with Longfellow’s poem and Longfellow’s theological sources—both Unitarian and Patristic—in order to discern what is at stake in Evangeline, which is, I suggest, no less than the question of whether one can achieve, through ascetic struggle and longsuffering charity, a true state of likeness to God. Longfellow and Evangeline Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was born in 1807, the son of a prominent New England lawyer. He was raised on the literature of the Romantics and the doctrines of the Unitarian preacher William Ellery Channing (Longfellow reports in a letter that he sought to distribute Channing’s sermons to his more Puritan peers while an undergraduate at Bowdoin College). In the 1830s and early ’40s Longfellow made a 1 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: Household Edition (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1907), 465. 5 name for himself in America and England with memorable lyric poems such as “A Psalm of Life” and “Excelsior.” From the outset Longfellow published poems that were deeply ethical and religiously informed. His 1839 collection of lyrics, Voices of the Night, for example, ends with the lines “Kyrie eleyson / Christe eleyson!”2 and his 1841 collection, Ballads and Other Poems, includes a short dramatization of the story of Blind Bartimaeus from the Christian New Testament.3 In 1845, however, Longfellow stepped out beyond didactic lyrics and set his sights on a new project: a long narrative poem based on the British-led deportation of the Acadians—a group of French Catholic colonists—from Nova Scotia. This poem, which became Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie, uses the deportation of the Acadians as the backdrop of a tragic romance. The plot is based on a story he heard at a dinner party with Nathaniel Hawthorne and the Reverend H.L. Connolly. Samuel Longfellow, the poet’s brother and early biographer, summarizes the poem’s origin thus: At dinner Connolly said that he had been trying in vain to interest Hawthorne to write a story upon an incident which had been related to him by a parishioner of his. It was the story of a young Acadian maiden who at the dispersion of her people by the English troops had been separated from her betrothed lover; they sought each other for years in their exile; and at last they met in a hospital where the lover lay dying. Mr. Longfellow was touched by the story, especially by the constancy of the heroine, and said to his friend, “If you really do not want this incident for a tale, let me have it for a poem;” and Hawthorne consented. Out of this grew Evangeline.4 Longfellow worked on the poem for two years, from 1845 to early 1847, and the poem was published on November 1, 1847. 2 Ibid., 6. 3 Ibid., 17. 4 Samuel Longfellow, The Life of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, vol. 2 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1891), 70–71. 6 Evangeline is a poem of 1,399 lines, divided into two parts of five cantos each. It is the second longest of Longfellow’s narrative poems, shorter than Hiawatha, and longer than The Courtship of Miles Standish, which is 1,018 lines and uses the same meter as Evangeline.

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