Sacramental Imagery in the Fiction of James Joyce, Flannery O'connor, and Wendell Berry David Jones [email protected]
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Rollins College Rollins Scholarship Online Master of Liberal Studies Theses Spring 2018 Sacramental Imagery in the Fiction of James Joyce, Flannery O'Connor, and Wendell Berry David Jones [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarship.rollins.edu/mls Part of the Arts and Humanities Commons Recommended Citation Jones, David, "Sacramental Imagery in the Fiction of James Joyce, Flannery O'Connor, and Wendell Berry" (2018). Master of Liberal Studies Theses. 80. https://scholarship.rollins.edu/mls/80 This Open Access is brought to you for free and open access by Rollins Scholarship Online. It has been accepted for inclusion in Master of Liberal Studies Theses by an authorized administrator of Rollins Scholarship Online. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Sacramental Imagery in the Fiction of James Joyce, Flannery O’Connor, and Wendell Berry A Project Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Liberal Studies by David D. Jones May 2018 Mentor: Dr. Maurice O’Sullivan Reader: Dr. Paul Reich Rollins College Hamilton Holt School Master of Liberal Studies Program Winter Park, Florida Abstract Sacramental Imagery in the Fiction of James Joyce, Flannery O’Connor, and Wendell Berry Alienation, nihilism, disenchantment, and destruction of the Earth are some of the widespread maladies of modernity and post-modernity. Dualisms between body and soul, the physical and spiritual, nature and grace, and fact and value have separated humans from other people, from the Earth, from the divine, and ultimately from themselves. Ambivalence about embodiment has characterized Western Civilization since at least the time of Plato and early Christianity. Over time, a confluence of powerful philosophical, religious, and scientific ideas and movements deepened the fissures of these destructive dualisms. Modern science with its claims to hegemony over objective ways of knowing the world is not capable of addressing the issues that are of most importance to human beings—questions about meaning, purpose, and values. Traditional forms of meaning making like narrative, metaphor, art, religion, and ritual were relegated to the realm of subjectivism and regarded as subservient to scientism. By contrast, the sacramental imagination that typified the pre-modern and early modern worldview saw connections everywhere between God, humankind, and the cosmos. The sacramental imagination sees the material and the spiritual as being intimately intertwined in the warp and woof of reality. This thesis begins by tracing the genesis of the body-soul dualism in the West and how the sacramental tapestry was woven and then torn asunder. On the darkling plain of modernity there arose three poet-prophets to call humanity back to a holistic and embodied way of engaging the world: James Joyce, Flannery O’Connor, and Wendell Berry. Although they represent secular, Catholic, and Protestant viewpoints, respectively, they each demonstrate how to recover the sacramental imagination. This thesis enters into the critical conversation concerning the sacramental nature of their works, including comparing and contrasting their sacramental approach. Through a close reading of one work of fiction from each author (Joyce’s novel Ulysses, O’Connor’s short story “Parker’s Back, and Berry’s novel Remembering), their use of sacramental imagery and the functioning of their fictional works as sacramental texts is explored. Recovery of the sacramental imagination is put forth as a way to embrace embodiment and to regain connections between humans, the world, and the transcendent. Acknowledgements First, I would like to thank my thesis mentor, Dr. Maurice O’Sullivan, for his constant encouragement and support throughout my project. Dr. O’Sullivan helped me develop a deep appreciation for the work of James Joyce in his excellent course, James Joyce and the Invention of the Modern Novel. I would never have had the courage to make it through Ulysses without his assistance. Each class was an adventure and a joy. I appreciate that Dr. O’Sullivan gave me the freedom to pursue the project in the way I desired and devoted his time to giving me wise counsel along the way. Next, I want to express my deep appreciation for my reader, Dr. Paul Reich. The genesis of the idea for my thesis came from the final paper that I wrote for The Literary South course that he co-taught. That course instilled in me a deep love for the literature of my native region and taught me about close reading. I had the privilege of taking two classes with Dr. Reich and his excitement and insights made each class special. To all the faculty of Rollins College who taught classes I took in the Master of Liberal Studies (MLS), I owe a deep debt of gratitude for enriching my life with a liberal arts education that I will always treasure. My MLS classmates enhanced my delight. Without the support and encouragement of my wife, Lou, I could have never completed this exciting MLS journey. She graciously allowed me to pursue my love affair with liberal studies that took so much of my nights and weekends for more than three years. My dear daughters, Kara and Mollie, also cheered me on. Lastly, I want to thank God who delights in creating embodied souls. My desire to recover a sacramental imagination is ultimately a desire to know Him better. Table of Contents Chapter 1 – Introduction ................................................................................................ 1 Chapter 2 – Genesis of the Body-Soul Dualism in Western Civilization ................... 19 Chapter 3 – Recovering the Sacramental Imagination ............................................... 56 Chapter 4 – The Artist as Priest: Transmuting the Daily Bread of Experience into Everliving Life (James Joyce) ........................................................................................ 89 Chapter 5 – Cocoa and Communion: Secular Sacraments in James Joyce’s Ulysses ......................................................................................................................................... 122 Chapter 6 – The Shocking Sacramental Artistry of a Catholic Author (Flannery O’Connor) ...................................................................................................................... 146 Chapter 7 – A “Panner-Rammer” of Sacraments Brings Parker Back .................. 247 Chapter 8 – The Sacramental Vision and Imagination of a Protestant Poet and Philosopher (Wendell Berry) ....................................................................................... 287 Chapter 9 – Finding the Way Home: Recovery of the Sacramental Imagination in Wendell Berry’s Remembering .................................................................................... 308 Chapter 10 – Conclusion .............................................................................................. 335 Works Cited ................................................................................................................... 358 1 Chapter 1 Introduction Please do not be fooled by the title. This is not a thesis about a quaint literary trope. Instead, it seeks to address something that lies right at the heart of being human— relationships with other people, with the Earth, with the transcendent, and ultimately with ourselves. Modernity and post-modernity are fraught with dualisms: body/soul, physical/spiritual, nature/grace, fact/value, secular/sacred, etc. Prior to the advent of modernity, Western Civilization had several shared moorings that anchored people to the world and one another. Common connections to God, family, friends, place, and nature permeated society and provided a glue that helped unite people to others and to themselves. In the wake of the storm of modernity, these bonds largely disintegrated, leaving people cast adrift as so much flotsam and jetsam in the shipwreck of a once stable society. Individuals were seeking to regain their bearings while drifting and being buffeted by waves of life with no firm foundation to grab onto. In Virginia Woolf’s novel, Mrs. Dalloway, the narrator captures the protagonist Clarissa Dalloway’s thoughts as she contemplates a young man suffering from shell shock who committed suicide just before her big party: “people feeling the impossibility of reaching the centre which, mystically, evaded them; closeness drew apart; rapture faded, one was alone. There was an embrace in death” (180). This brief quote captures the alienation, nihilism, and disenchantment pervading the modern psyche. From at least the time of Plato and Aristotle and early Christianity, a belief in gods or a God undergirded the prevailing sense of purpose and connection in the pre- 2 modern and early-modern Western world. As Lawrence Principe notes in The Scientific Revolution: A Very Short Introduction, “When early modern thinkers looked out on the world, they saw a cosmos in the true Greek sense of that word, that is, a well-ordered and arranged whole. They saw the various components of the physical universe tightly interwoven with one another, and joined intimately to human beings and to God” (21). Early moderns, including natural philosophers, saw the cosmos as an interconnected and purposeful whole. In his poem, “The Second Coming,” which was written in the aftermath of World War I, William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) laments that “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold.” Rather than a connected cosmos, everything was simply coming apart. Modern scientific approaches