Dreaming in Crisis: Angels and the Allegorical Imagination in Post-War America
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DREAMING IN CRISIS: ANGELS AND THE ALLEGORICAL IMAGINATION IN POST-WAR AMERICA by Emily Bauman BA, Northwestern University, 1993 MA, University of Pittsburgh, 1997 Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of Arts and Sciences in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Pittsburgh 2003 UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH FACULTY OF ARTS AND SCIENCE This dissertation was presented by Emily Bauman It was defended on September 5, 2003 and approved by Ronald A.T. Judy Jonathan Arac Nancy Condee Colin MacCabe Dissertation Director ii DISSERTATION ABSTRACT DREAMING IN CRISIS: ANGELS AND THE ALLEGORICAL IMAGINATION IN POST-WAR AMERICA Emily Bauman, PhD University of Pittsburgh, 2003 This dissertation bridges literary and cultural studies in order to offer a critical reading of the fascination with angels that appears in America at the beginning and end of the Cold War. Though the contemporary wave of interest spans genres of mass entertainment, pop psychology, and high modernist literature and film, I find angelic representations to be consistent. Invested in the idea of a separated intelligence, these representations expose larger concerns with personal sovereignty and historical determinism. From fantasy to true story, the encounter with the pure and providential spectator consecrates the subject within a special temporality, a temporality of imagination and reception. Angelic illumination thus answers a crisis of attention that renders the human paralyzed. In all of the texts considered the attendant spirit confers personal chosenness and historical beginning through the act of judgment, an idea I discuss in reference to the theories of agency of Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, and Immanual Kant. One distinguishing feature of the angelic spectrum is that popular and highbrow treatments differ radically in their attitudes toward angelic revelation. It’s a Wonderful Life and other movies of the sentimental fantasy genre, the true stories books, the self-help books, and the TV drama Touched by an Angel represent the angel-guardian as a figure of completion that assimilates an unsteady future to the rational structures of the past. Implicit already in Tony Kushner’s Broadway hit Angels in America and fully expressed in the angelic poetry since the second world war, angels appear as expressions of partialness, ruin, and decay. I analyze the iii differences between sentimental and tragic appropriations of angels by investigating them in relation to the logic of allegory. A paradoxically populist-hierarchical way of reading, allegorical thinking defines both the angels of annunciatory blessing and the angels of impotence and destruction. Through a final engagement with the work of Walter Benjamin, I argue that as a way of reading experience through its own alterity, allegory is itself an angelic hermeneutic. iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: AN APOLOGY FOR ANGELS A topic so outrageous and taxing can only have required the encouragement, brilliance, and support of a great many. However “pitiful a defence” of this poor subject my dissertation may prove to be, it owes its existence to those who have nurtured me in the writing, and to those who have nurtured my very engagement with writing. For the latter gift I am most grateful to my parents, Mary and Tom, who have always believed in the curiosity and conviction that makes a dissertation both possible and meaningful, and who never failed to make these qualities real in their own life and work. From my mother I learned that passion is nothing without discipline, and from my father that the love of ideas carries with it its own grace. I could say of them, in echo of Sidney, that their “milk little by little enabled me to feed afterwards of tougher knowledges.” Such tougher knowledges presented themselves in the course of my education in literature and critical theory. Among those teachers who contributed enormously to my sense of intellectual possibility in this field I single out Olakunle George, my thesis advisor at Northwestern, and at the University of Pittsburgh, Paul Bové. Fiery and exacting in intellect, both teachers modeled a commitment to the life of the mind that continues to influence me. Whatever seriousness and energy I possess as a scholar I owe in part to their inspiration. The writing of the dissertation itself benefited from the strengths and attention of a diverse and powerful committee. Though very different in orientation, they all share a penetrating ability to name the substance of things, even when that means calling a spade a spade. Nancy Condee, my outside reader, has been particularly helpful in this regard, pointing out both opportunities and pitfalls from a perspective that I could almost call the voice of Cultural Studies. It was her talk on “Baby Lenin” that first exposed me to a different kind of v work on popular culture, and opened up for me the topical possibilities that eventually defined my thesis. I have worked with Jonathan Arac since my very first semester at Pitt, and despite the increasingly intervening miles have always found myself blessed by his thoughtful encouragement and wisdom in the field. Thank you, Jonathan, for all your insight and enthusiasm, and for the knowledge that your passing this project means the affirmation of one of the most judicious and discriminating readers in English Studies. The project itself would have gotten nowhere without Ronald Judy. Professor Judy’s erudition encompasses the theological knowledge that makes angels transparent, and the philosophical and literary thinking that could translate such knowledge to the social field. I would have been lost without either. In my work on this dissertation I have been in many ways Ronald’s student; conversations with him both about the topic and the writing have in every case proven to be turning points, flashes on my horizon always productive and exciting and always a little out of reach. And to Colin MacCabe, my advisor and chair, I am indebted for reasons both predictable and surprising. Colin’s warm faith in my abilities, his patience, and his spiritedness have kept me grounded throughout the long process. His talent for seeing – and demanding – the forest for the trees has functioned as a needful corrective to my immersion in the leaves and branches. But it is Colin’s peculiar distaste for angels – ironically coupled with an interest in and genius for the ideas that angels represent - that perhaps has elicited the most from me. I could not have asked for a more providential devil’s advocate, nor a more ennobling struggle than that posed by the restless challenges and alluring gauntlet repeatedly thrown down before me by my chair. I have been lucky to have received a great deal of help in researching this topic. For the many snippets, articles, angel pins, books and references that have come my way, I wish to thank Lisa Roulette, Barry Howell, Geri Drymalski, Chris Boettcher, Janet Johnson, Annie Hagert, vi Anja Ulanowicz, Lisa Phillips, Clare Connors, and Jessica Pannell. I am forever at the mercy of Scott Silsbe, whose extensive knowledge of angels and contemporary poetry provided the basis of the fourth chapter. I also owe the final paragraph of this chapter to the administration of George W. Bush, in whose honor it was written. Susan Noel provided unhoped for enthusiasm for the topic in the early stages of this project, and throughout the writing Martha Feldman, my stepmother of twenty years, provided devoted camaraderie in her own work on angels and castrati, as well as an inspiring example of a strong and brilliant female academic. Deepest thanks also go to Sean McNamara for his unfailing support and for watching endless episodes of Touched by an Angel with me, to Anne Drymalski and Diane Coleman for their unfailing interest in discussing Touched by an Angel with me, and to Steve Arledge for his love and slightly amazed patience across vocational borders. Finally, I thank my friend and colleague, Brenda Whitney, for her help in the technically maddening preparation of the final draft, for her insightfulness and careful reading of some of the chapters, and for her friendship. To all of these people and many more, not the least my siblings Rebecca, Mason, and Meredith, this work owes its very being. During the revising stages of this dissertation my stepfather, Philip Heller, died from cancer. I wish I could say how much his love and generosity, intelligence and spark, his commitment as a father and radiance as a person have made my life richer and helped me to grow. In his absence, the world has less wonder and simplicity. Einstein’s eyes seem blurry, and I keep waiting for the last run to get knocked in. Without ability to say more, I dedicate this dissertation to his memory, to his sweetness and courage, to a prince of a human being. And flights of angels, Philip. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. Introduction............................................................................................................................. 1 2. Roadside Annunciations ....................................................................................................... 26 I. Conceiving Motions ............................................................................................................. 30 II. Fahrvergneügenus Interruptus............................................................................................. 44 III. Christmas ..........................................................................................................................