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Marilynne Robinson's Gilead and Home Jeffrey Gonzaleza a the Borough of Manhattan Community College Published Online: 06 Aug 2014
This article was downloaded by: [Jeffrey Gonzalez] On: 07 August 2014, At: 10:09 Publisher: Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/vcrt20 Ontologies of Interdependence, the Sacred, and Health Care: Marilynne Robinson's Gilead and Home Jeffrey Gonzaleza a The Borough of Manhattan Community College Published online: 06 Aug 2014. To cite this article: Jeffrey Gonzalez (2014) Ontologies of Interdependence, the Sacred, and Health Care: Marilynne Robinson's Gilead and Home, Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, 55:4, 373-388, DOI: 10.1080/00111619.2013.783780 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00111619.2013.783780 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content. -
Grace: a Reflection on the Novels of Marilynne Robinson
Volume 48 Number 1 Article 3 September 2019 Grace: A Reflection on the Novels of Marilynne Robinson Elayne Apol Heynen Dordt University Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcollections.dordt.edu/pro_rege Part of the American Literature Commons, and the Christianity Commons Recommended Citation Heynen, Elayne Apol (2019) "Grace: A Reflection on the Novels of Marilynne Robinson," Pro Rege: Vol. 48: No. 1, 14 - 16. Available at: https://digitalcollections.dordt.edu/pro_rege/vol48/iss1/3 This Feature Article is brought to you for free and open access by the University Publications at Digital Collections @ Dordt. It has been accepted for inclusion in Pro Rege by an authorized administrator of Digital Collections @ Dordt. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Editor’s Note: Elayne Apol Heynen wrote this paper for a Kuyper Scholars Seminar to precede the Prodigal Love of God Conference, held at Dordt, April 4-6, 2019, and co-sponsored by the Lilly Fellowship Program as a regional conference. Grace: A Reflection on the Novels of Marilynne Robinson the simple joy of the words on the page. For this joy in words is what makes her writing so memo- rable: each sentence is delectable, meant to be read and then re-read, reveled in and embraced before the reader moves on to see what the next sentence might bring. Her novels call the reader to slow down, to notice the beauty of the ordinary, both in the beauty of her writing and the beauty of the lives she writes about. If one could take a common kitchen sponge, saturate the sponge with the words from her novels, and then wring out the sponge, what one would see drip out slowly would unmis- takably be grace. -
Addition to Summer Letter
May 2020 Dear Student, You are enrolled in Advanced Placement English Literature and Composition for the coming school year. Bowling Green High School has offered this course since 1983. I thought that I would tell you a little bit about the course and what will be expected of you. Please share this letter with your parents or guardians. A.P. Literature and Composition is a year-long class that is taught on a college freshman level. This means that we will read college level texts—often from college anthologies—and we will deal with other materials generally taught in college. You should be advised that some of these texts are sophisticated and contain mature themes and/or advanced levels of difficulty. In this class we will concentrate on refining reading, writing, and critical analysis skills, as well as personal reactions to literature. A.P. Literature is not a survey course or a history of literature course so instead of studying English and world literature chronologically, we will be studying a mix of classic and contemporary pieces of fiction from all eras and from diverse cultures. This gives us an opportunity to develop more than a superficial understanding of literary works and their ideas. Writing is at the heart of this A.P. course, so you will write often in journals, in both personal and researched essays, and in creative responses. You will need to revise your writing. I have found that even good students—like you—need to refine, mature, and improve their writing skills. You will have to work diligently at revising major essays. -
Names in Marilynne Robinson's <I>Gilead</I> and <I>Home</I>
names, Vol. 58 No. 3, September, 2010, 139–49 Names in Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead and Home Susan Petit Emeritus, College of San Mateo, California, USA The titles of Marilynne Robinson’s complementary novels Gilead (2004) and Home (2008) and the names of their characters are rich in allusions, many of them to the Bible and American history, making this tale of two Iowa families in 1956 into an exploration of American religion with particular reference to Christianity and civil rights. The books’ titles suggest healing and comfort but also loss and defeat. Who does the naming, what the name is, and how the person who is named accepts or rejects the name reveal the sometimes difficult relationships among these characters. The names also reinforce the books’ endorsement of a humanistic Christianity and a recommitment to racial equality. keywords Bible, American history, slavery, civil rights, American literature Names are an important source of meaning in Marilynne Robinson’s prize-winning novels Gilead (2004) and Home (2008),1 which concern the lives of two families in the fictional town of Gilead, Iowa,2 in the summer of 1956. Gilead is narrated by the Reverend John Ames, at least the third Congregationalist minister of that name in his family, in the form of a letter he hopes his small son will read after he grows up, while in Home events are recounted in free indirect discourse through the eyes of Glory Boughton, the youngest child of Ames’ lifelong friend, Robert Boughton, a retired Presbyterian minister. Both Ames, who turns seventy-seven3 that summer (2004: 233), and Glory, who is thirty-eight, also reflect on the past and its influence on the present. -
Marilynne Robinson, Wallace Stevens, and Louis Althusser in the Post/Secular Wilderness: Generosity, Jérémiade, and the Aesthetic Effect
humanities Article Marilynne Robinson, Wallace Stevens, and Louis Althusser in the Post/Secular Wilderness: Generosity, Jérémiade, and the Aesthetic Effect Daniel Muhlestein Department of English, Brigham Young University, Provo, UT 84602, USA; [email protected] Received: 3 September 2019; Accepted: 29 March 2020; Published: 7 April 2020 Abstract: In Restless Secularism (2017), Matthew Mutter points out that Wallace Stevens described three related techniques that could be used to attempt to purge secular life of its religious residue: adaptation, substitution, and elimination. Marilynne Robinson pushes back against such secularizing strategies by employing three related techniques of her own: negotiation, grafting, and invitation. She does so to attempt to bridge the gap between religious and humanistic perspectives and—in the process—mounts a spirited defense of religious faith and practice. Robinson uses a fourth technique as well: jérémiade. In its usual sacred form, jérémiade is a lamentation that denounces self-righteousness, religious hypocrisy, and social injustice. Much of what Robinson says about the Christian Right is essentially jérémiade. Robinson’s critique of parascientists is jérémiade as well, although its grounding assumptions are secular rather than sacred. While Robinson’s jérémiades against the Christian Right and against parascientists are effective in isolation, in aggregate they sometimes undercut her more generous and inclusive attempts at negotiation, grafting, and invitation. This may be because Robinson’s essays do not undergo the moderating influence of what Louis Althusser called the aesthetic effect of art, which in Housekeeping (1980), Gilead (2004), Home (2008), and Lila (2014) helps counterbalance the flashes of anger and tendencies toward judgement that periodically surface elsewhere in Robinson’s work. -
A Modern Allegory of the Color Purple
Canadian Social Science Vol.1 No.1 May 2005 A Modern Allegory of The Color Purple ALLÉGORIE MODERNE DANS THE COLOR PURPLE Guo Deyan1 Abstract: Alice Walker became the first black woman to win a Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1983 for The Color Purple. Even though it has been severely attacked by some people for its nasty language, lesbian relationship and domestic violence, The Color Purple is still hailed as a classic book in exploring the pathos of black women in social context. The strength of the book mainly derives from the regeneration of the multitude of characters with the protagonist Celie in the forefront. Facing the overwhelmingly powerful patriarchal culture, Celie unresistingly places herself under the domination and authority of men, as revealed in her way of naming men, her fear of men and of God. While later through the wholesome influence of Sofia and mothering nurturing of Shug, Celie’s sense of ego is gradually awakened. She finally enters the world of creation. In return, the arrogant Shug and Amazon-like Sofia become more compassionate and gentle. While the black women enjoy their close bond and dearly selfhood, the black men as exemplified by Mr. ____and Harpo also go through the process of reexamination of their existence. They no longer view women as objects; instead they begin to acknowledge their equal status as human beings. So at the end of the book, both black men and women discover in themselves the ability to love and to be loved and learn to embrace the selfhood, sisterhood and brotherhood. -
Reflections on the Ordinary: an Interview with Marilynne Robinson
Reflections on the Ordinary: An Interview with Marilynne Robinson The following interview took place on 4th November 2017 in Dey House, of the Iowa Writer’s Workshop in Iowa City. Cunning: The word ‘ordinary’ seems so important to your work, and the more I read your fiction, the more it stands out as a significant term. Your novels focus on profoundly ordi- nary things: family, ageing, light, water, loss, language, time, the natural world. I think this would be a good place to start our conversation. Where does your mind go when you hear the word ‘ordinary’ and what is behind your conscious decision to write novels so attentive to the ordinary? Robinson: I think the ordinary is very mysterious. I think the ordinary, given a reasonable span of time, might also be called the ephemeral. It presents itself as if it were not, as something that allows itself to be taken for granted, when nothing is finally granted. There’s a sort of metaphysical mystery, I think, because the ordinary can be so over- looked, even though it’s basically the fabric of life. It is so important that it has to be very meaningful and at the same time so sort of self-effacing in a way that it is so seldom put into the model of reality from which people extrapolate statements about reality. Cunning: It seems that it is overlooked, yet the more attention that is paid to it the more it seems to open up. In your fiction there is the sense that the ordinary is inexhaustible. -
Connections, April 2016 University Library Roger Williams University
Roger Williams University DOCS@RWU Connections University Libraries 4-2016 Connections, April 2016 University Library Roger Williams University Follow this and additional works at: https://docs.rwu.edu/libnews Part of the Education Commons, and the Library and Information Science Commons Recommended Citation University Library, "Connections, April 2016" (2016). Connections. 30. https://docs.rwu.edu/libnews/30 This News Article is brought to you for free and open access by the University Libraries at DOCS@RWU. It has been accepted for inclusion in Connections by an authorized administrator of DOCS@RWU. For more information, please contact [email protected]. 4/10/2018 » 2016 » April RWU Learning Commons Home Announcements The Learning Commons Outreach & Discovery Programs & Exhibits Tech News Culture of the Book HOME » 2016 » APRIL April 2016 From the Nightstand: Professor Edward J. Delaney APRIL 29, 2016 2:22 PM Interview conducted by Brittany Parziale, Connections Intern Edward J. Delaney, Professor of Creative Writing and Editor of Mount Hope magazine, has taught at RWU since 1990. Current Reads Currently reading Literary Publishing in the 21st century edited by Wayne Miller, Kevin Prufer, and Travis Kurowski. This collection of narratives describes the transformation in the world of publishing brought about by technological developments, market pressures, and changing reading habits through a wide range of perspectives. http://rwulibraryconnect.org/2016/04/ 1/17 4/10/2018 » 2016 » April RWU Learning Commons “I am reading it to help with the literary publishing course I teach. But I also find it very interesting and insightful on a personal level.” As the editor of Mount Hope, the student run magazine operating out of Roger Williams University, Delaney finds himself gravitating to works about publishing and about the history of the modern publishing era. -
Geraldine Brooks, Historical Fiction and Australian Writers in the US
Geraldine Brooks, Historical Fiction and Australian Writers in the US ANNE PENDER UNIVERSITY OF ADELAIDE A number of Australian expatriate authors in the United States have made an impact on the American public in a variety of genres: Lily Brett, Geraldine Brooks, Peter Carey, Shirley Hazzard, Thomas Keneally, Jill Ker Conway, Sumner Locke Elliott, Robert Hughes, Kate Jennings, Christina Stead, Janette Turner Hospital and others. In addition, the experiences of these writers in the United States have informed their work in distinctive ways that have been important to Australian literature, and to Australian literary culture. Contemporary Australian authors such as Chloe Hooper and Nam Le have undertaken creative writing training in the US, and have returned to live in Australia. Over the last twenty years however, the globalisation of the book trade has not dissolved the concept of the expatriate writer, or removed the problems for writers linked to origin, readership, visibility, remuneration for, and recognition of their work. In fact, ironically, it seems that there is a renewed imperative for Australian writers to live outside Australia in order to gain access to a global readership and lucrative publishing opportunities. The success of high-profile expatriate writers in the US, such as Brooks and Carey, supports this claim. This article considers the historical fiction of Geraldine Brooks, who is, alongside Peter Carey, an exceptionally successful author with an immense readership in the US and across the world. Unlike Carey, however, Brooks is largely ignored by Australian critics. What follows explores Brooks’s fiction in the context of her career as a war correspondent, her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel March (2005), and the effect of her many years covering war and conflict on her work. -
Home by Marilynne Robinson Readers of Marilynne Robinson's
Home by Marilynne Robinson Readers of Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead will find themselves viewing familiar events from an unfamiliar perspective in Home. —Robinson’s third novel, like her second, is set in Gilead, Iowa, in 1956, but the home around which the story is centered is not that of John Ames, narrator of Gilead, but of Ames’ longtime friend and colleague, Presbyterian pastor Robert Boughton. For many years, the large house, inherited from his frugal and foresighted parents, and the boisterous family of eight children he and his late wife raised there, have ―embodied for [Boughton] the general blessedness of his life, which,‖ in his eyes, ―was manifest, really indisputable.‖ Now retired and increasingly frail in both body and mind, Boughton clings tenaciously to this worldview, greeting the smallest indication that all is well with his home and family with an enthusiastic ―Yes!‖ But such determined optimism has its costs, not only for Boughton himself, but also for his family, especially the two children whose less-than-happy lives cause their father the most anxiety. Robinson focuses her narrative on these siblings, telling the story from the perspective of the youngest daughter, Glory, who has returned home to care for her father after a thirteen-year career as an English teacher and a failed engagement, and centering the novel’s action around the reappearance after twenty years of Jack, the black sheep of the family. Jack’s disproportionate power in the family has always derived from his absences, actual and anticipated. Jack’s badness – his tendencies to drinking, theft, and other petty crimes – creates undeniable but ultimately manageable challenges for his parents. -
Souls in the Dark: Theodicy and Domesticity in Home
religions Article Souls in the Dark: Theodicy and Domesticity in Home Mark S. M. Scott Department of Religious Studies, Thorneloe University at Laurentian, 935 Ramsey Lake Road, Sudbury, ON P3E 2C6, Canada; [email protected]; Tel.: +1-705-673-1730 (ext. 403) Received: 17 October 2017; Accepted: 15 December 2017; Published: 19 December 2017 Abstract: Theodicy typically addresses the problem of evil in the public square, focusing on instances of paradigmatic evil that raise the issue broadly. Theodicy, however, also operates in the private sphere, where the conflict and chaos of family life raise doubts about God’s goodness and power. Domestic suffering—here defined as the hurt, sorrows, and heartbreaks of family life, apart from domestic abuse, which belongs to a separate category—has often been neglected by theodicists. In this article, I will analyze Marilynne Robinson’s fictional novel Home for insights into the problem of evil in the domestic realm. While it does not offer a domestic theodicy per se, Robinson’s Home sheds light on the reality of suffering love and its bias toward hope, which charts new theological pathways in theodicy that have hitherto been underexplored. Keywords: Marilynne Robinson; Home; Gilead trilogy; problem of evil; theodicy; suffering love; hope “But the soul finds its own home if it ever has a home at all” (Home, 282) Classic theological and philosophical treatments of the problem of evil cast the question onto a vast canvass, enumerating the most egregious examples of suffering around the globe, both historically and currently. Most often, these are infamous spectacles whose shockwaves were felt far and wide: the Plague, the Inquisition, the Lisbon Earthquake, the World Wars, the Holocaust, 9/11, and so on. -
Power and Identity in Jeffrey Eugenides' Middlesex
View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by NORA - Norwegian Open Research Archives Power and Identity in Jeffrey Eugenides’ Middlesex By Lene Renneflott A Thesis Presented to The Department of Literature, Area Studies and European Languages In partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Master of Arts Degree UNIVERSITY OF OSLO Thesis supervisor: Rebecca Scherr Spring Term 2011 i Power and Identity in Jeffrey Eugenides’ Middlesex By Lene Renneflott A Thesis Presented to: The Department of Literature, Area Studies and European Languages In partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Master of Arts Degree UNIVERSITY OF OSLO Thesis supervisor: Rebecca Scherr Spring Term 2011 ii © Lene Renneflott 2011 Power and Identity in Jeffrey Eugenides’ Middlesex Lene Renneflott http://www.duo.uio.no/ Trykk: Allkopi iii Abstract The main objective in this thesis is to point out the mechanisms that govern, and have governed, identity formation in the United States as played out in the novel Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides. Looking more closely at how the characters are influenced by the powers and norms that govern their options, their place in society and their possibilities for a fulfilling life of personal freedom, the analysis in this thesis has concentrated on three main areas as these are portrayed in Middlesex: 1. Gender identity and sexual categorization 2. Race and whiteness 3. Immigration, class and the American Dream For a most part, this is a close reading of Middlesex, dwelling on the identity possibilities of the intersex protagonist Cal/lie, and especially his/her quest for self-identification.