Navigation

Tag Archives | English

Jeffrey Bilbro

By on April 30, 2015 in Faculty Publications

Bilbro, Jeffrey. Loving God’s Wildness: The Christian Roots of Ecological Ethics in American Literature. Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press, 2015.

Jogging with ChestertonWhen the Puritans arrived in the New World to carry out the colonization they saw as divinely mandated, they were confronted by the American wilderness. Part of their theology led them to view the natural environment as “a temple of God” in which they should glorify and serve its creator. The larger prevailing theological view, however, saw this vast continent as “the Devil’s Territories” needing to be conquered and cultivated for God’s Kingdom. These contradictory designations gave rise to an ambivalence regarding the character of this land and humanity’s proper relation to it.

Loving God’s Wildness rediscovers the environmental roots of America’s Puritan heritage. In tracing this history, Jeffrey Bilbro demonstrates how the dualistic Christianity that the Puritans brought to America led them to see the land as an empty wilderness that God would turn into a productive source of marketable commodities. Bilbro carefully explores the effect of this dichotomy in the nature writings of Henry David Thoreau, John Muir, Willa Cather, and Wendell Berry.

Thoreau, Muir, Cather, and Berry imaginatively developed the Puritan theological tradition to propose practical, physical means by which humans should live and worship within the natural temple of God’s creation. They reshaped Puritan dualism, each according to the particular needs of his or her own ecological and cultural contexts, into a theology that demands care for the entire created community. While differing in their approaches and respective ecological ethics, the four authors Bilbro examines all share the conviction that God remains active in creation and that humans ought to relinquish their selfish ends to participate in his wild ecology.

Loving God’s Wildness fills a critical gap in literary criticism and environmental studies by offering a sustained, detailed argument regarding how Christian theology has had a profound and enduring legacy in shaping the contours of the American ecological imagination. Literary critics, scholars of religion and environmental studies, and thoughtful Christians who are concerned about environmental issues will profit from this engaging new book.

Cameron Moore

By on June 30, 2014 in Faculty Publications

J. Cameron Moore. “Outward Seeming: Lancelot’s Prayer and the Healing of Sir Urry in Malory’s Morte Darthur.”Arthuriana 24, no. 2 (2014): 3-20. doi: 10.1353/art.2014.0019

Abstract: Lancelot’s reaction to prayer in the Sir Urry episode of the Morte Darthur differs from his other responses to efficacious prayer, revealing the disjunction between his inward spiritual state and his outward appearance as the greatest knight in the world.

Jeffrey Bilbro

By on October 16, 2013 in Faculty Publications

Bilbro, Jeffrey. “The Form of the Cross: Milton’s Chiastic Soteriology.” Milton Quarterly 47, no. 3 (2013): 127-148. doi: 10.1111/milt.12043

Abstract: While Milton’s mastery of rhetorical figures has long been admired and discussed (see Pallister, Wood, Broadbent, and George Smith), scant attention has been given to his use of chiasmus. Understanding how Milton employs this figure can illuminate his ideas about the Crucifixion. In turn, recognizing the medieval and Renaissance association between the event of the Crucifixion and the crossing structure of chiasmus can lead to a reassessment of the role the Crucifixion plays in Milton’s soteriology and a new appreciation for the vital connection between Milton’s poetics and his theology. In essence, the inverted shape of chiasmus enables Milton to enact the Son’s overturning work of redemption on the cross, and the contrasts drawn by the repetitions produced by this rhetorical figure depict the way this redemption reconciles seeming opposites.

Jeffrey Bilbro

By on September 3, 2013 in Faculty Publications

Bilbro, Jeffrey. “Lahiri’s Hawthornian Roots: Art and Tradition in “Hema and Kaushik”.” Critique 54, no. 4 (September 2013): 380-394.

Abstract: Hawthorne explores—in “The House of Seven Gables” and particularly “The Marble Faun”—how some artistic methods attempt to fix the past and escape tradition’s grip while others participate in the reformation and revitalization of tradition. Lahiri draws on Hawthorne’s ideas and characters as she probes—in “Hema and Kaushik” and especially its final story, “Going Ashore”—how one’s relation to the past affects and even determines one’s ability to live out a hybrid, postnational identity.

Brent Cline

By on August 13, 2013 in Faculty Publications

Cline, Brent Walter. “Great Clumsy Dinosaurs: The Disabled Body in the Posthuman World.”  In Disability in Science Fiction: Representations of Technology as Cure, edited by Kathryn Allan, 131-143. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.

Great Clumsy DinosaursIn science fiction, technology often modifies, supports, and attempts to ‘make normal’ the disabled body. In this groundbreaking collection, twelve international scholars — with backgrounds in disability studies, English and world literature, classics, and history — discuss the representation of dis/ability, medical ‘cures,’ technology, and the body in science fiction. Bringing together the fields of disability studies and science fiction, this book explores the ways dis/abled bodies use prosthetics to challenge common ideas about ability and human being, as well as proposes new understandings of what ‘technology as cure’ means for people with disabilities in a (post)human future.

Jeffery Bilbro

By on November 13, 2012 in Faculty Publications

Bilbro, Jeffrey. “The Ecological Thought.(Book Review).” Christianity and Literature no. 4 (2012): 693.

Abstract: In his latest book, Timothy Morton provides those scholars who are interested in the growing field of ecocriticism but not sure what all the fuss is about with a provocative, accessible introduction to the radical implications and intriguing possibilities that ecology offers for cultural theory. Those looking for literary analysis or an overview ofthe current state of environmental literary theory should turn elsewhere—starting with Lawrence Bueil’s excellent, if now slightly dated. The Future of Environmental Criticism: Environmental Crisis and Literary Imagination (2005). In The Ecological Thought, Morton leaves behind the close textual analysis, high-level theory, and, thankfully, the impenetrable prose, of his previous book. Ecology without Nature: Rethinking Environmental Aesthetics (2007). Instead, he offers a series of probing thought experiments and far-reaching cultural and theoretical analyses that explore ecology’s cultural implications. Morton’s style embodies the provocative irony that he argues the ecological thought demands as he takes on the role of “the irritating Columbo-style guy at the back of the room, the one who asks the unanswerable question” (115). So while many of Morton’s answers suggest that his conception of :he ecological thought is not as radical as he thinks it is, or as it perhaps should be, his questions challenge scholars in the liberal arts to wrestle with the consequences of ecology’s recent scientific discoveries.

Jeffrey Bilbro

By on September 26, 2012 in Faculty Publications

Bilbro, Jeffrey. “Who Are Lost and How They’re Found: Redemption and Theodicy in Wheatley, Newton, and Cowper.” Early American Literature 47, no. 3 (2012): 561–589. doi:10.1353/eal.2012.0054.

Abstract: The article critiques poems which focus on the themes of redemption, theodicy and the African American slave trade, including the poem “On the Death of the Rev. Mr. George Whitefield,” by Phillis Wheatley, “Olney Hymns,” by John Newton and “Charity,” by William Cowper. The relationship between the poetry of Newton, Wheatley and Cowper and the abolition movement is discussed.

Brent Cline

By on September 26, 2012 in Faculty Publications

Cline, Brent Walter. “‘ You’re Not the Same Kind of Human Being’: The Evolution of Pity to Horror in Daniel Keyes’ Flowers for Algernon.” Disability Studies Quarterly 32, no. 4 (2012).

Abstract: Of American novels that engage with the topic of mental disability, few are more popular than Daniel Keyes’s Flowers for Algernon. Such popularity seems based on a simplistic reading of the novel where the mentally disabled are objects of good-natured compassion. A more thorough reading of how Charlie Gordon is presented, however, leads to the conclusion that mental disability is the embodiment of death in the novel. Readers are first taught to pity the pre-operative Charlie, but once they come to respond to the ethical voice of the post-operative Charlie, his regression to his original state becomes the rhetorical villain in the novel. At first an object of pity, the mentally disabled Charlie Gordon eventually becomes the metaphorical horror of oblivion that no character has the power to overcome.