Martin, Thomas L.

In my thesis, I examine the function and treatment of goddesses in six modern
feminist mythopoeic fantasy novels by Y olen, Shinn, and Harris. In these novels, the
goddesses and their worshippers serve as the agents of socio-political change within the
secondary world, inducing changes that end with the ultimate transformation of
oppressive social structures. Acknowledging these goddesses and incorporating them into
the fabric of communal life, the protagonists, and ultimately entire societies, are able
transcend issues of gender, race, ethnicity, class, and religion, in order to create a
peaceful and prosperous society. These novels work through many of the issues troubling
modern day feminist theorists and make important contributions to the discourse of
feminist spirituality and feminist theory as a whole. Extrapolating both a theory and
praxis from the texture of these fantasy narratives, I suggest that these stories offer a way
to transcend dichotomous thinking and escape the current stagnation of spirituality based
approaches to feminism.

In his epic poem Paradise Lost, John Milton, through sublime narration, creates
his Satan as a sublimely dangerous villain in accordance with Pseudo-Longinus's five
principles of elevated language, as outlined in Book VIII of On the Sublime. In his
treatise, the philosopher delineates that the five principles for sublime expression are the
''power of forming great conceptions," the gift of "vehement and inspired passion," the
"formation of figures," the art of"noble diction," and an abi lity to produce "dignified and
elevated composition." Foundational to sublime composition and the excellent usage of
these principles is the gift of discourse. Milton, in his quest to "justify the ways of God
to men" (1.26), fulfills these requirements for the sublime. As the poet-narrator, he
demonstrates his mastery in transporting the audience into the realm of his imagination,
sublimely conceiving, creating, and portraying his Satan to be a dangerous villain.

Humor’s effect on the audience’s relationship to the object, or speaker, of humor
has often been neglected, and creating a framework by which scholars can examine how
humor works to alter the relationship between audience and other fills this gap.
Additionally, the definition of science fiction relies on the existence of a cognitively
estranging other and under this definition, humor has not been thoroughly studied. This
thesis attempts to explain how humor affects audiences cognitively, utilizing Hegel’s
theory of self and other, and then applies this theoretical explanation to the field of
science fiction and examines its effects.

John Crowley’s Little, Big is an innovative piece of fantasy writing. This thesis aims to prove that Crowley’s innovation lays the groundwork for new avenues in which fantastic space can be manipulated and constructed. Deep study in Euclidean geometry, modern physics, and occult astronomy reveal a new fantastic space, and a new concept for the threshold of Faerie. Crowley’s fantastic space is constructed as infundibular; with layers of concentricities that funnels his characters to their final destination of self-actualization and the heaven-like realm of Faerie. Crowley amalgamates the boundaries of Faerie and the primary world in an unusual fashion that is noted as Coalesced Fantasy: a fantasy wherein there is ultimately no dichotomy between Faerie and the primary world, as there is no division between the fantastic and science. This deliberate aim to blend boundaries is to establish an All in One theory. Faerie and the primary world oppose each other as antithetical conical space, and Crowley’s Edgewood house serves as the threshold to allow man to access the divinity and vastness of Faerie. Faerie (Divinity/macrocosm) and man (microcosm) exist in and amongst one another; everything is connected and every path intersects, spinning on a hyperbolic plane in this new, quantifiable space.

Charles G. Finney’s 1936 novel The Circus of Dr. Lao was published to
enthusiastic reviews, but fell into relative obscurity shortly thereafter. Since its
publication, it has been the subject of one peer-reviewed critical essay, a number of
reviews, one non-peer-reviewed essay, and a master’s thesis. It was published in a world
where the fantastic and unique found only barren desert soil, with no scholarly tradition
for the fantastic, nor a widely receptive lay audience for something truly unique, or sui
generis. The concept of the sui generis, meaning “of its own kind,” provides a useful lens
for examining the novel, as Finney develops not only creatures, but people, which are
truly of their own kind, borrowing from existing mythologies, traits of humanity, and
aspects of nature, recombining them in a singular way which resists classification.

Wallace Stevens's poem "Someone Puts a Pineapple Together" contains his most complete figure on the workings of the self's noetic cosmos, the figure being a system of three planets, which accounts for the development of reason from its first stages all the way to its highest in art. This figure provides unusual insight into the most prominent theoretical issues in his poetry: the relationship between reality, reason, and art; and the relationship between subjectivity, intentionality, and externality.

C. S. Lewis's Space Trilogy presents a hero in the person of philologist Dr. Elwin Ransom. Lewis's presentation exhibits a purposeful and precise use of language that describes experience and characterizes emotional authenticity. This use of language becomes particularly interesting when examined in light of the theories of Owen Barfield, who along with Lewis recognizes that myth is significant as an expression of language and its relation to the human condition, and Joseph Campbell, who discusses the journey of the hero. In his own writings Lewis contends that there has been a process of working against the "mythical imagination," moving the hero away from the concrete and toward the abstract. Lewis works to reverse this process by presenting a modern hero who demonstrates an awareness of "old" conventions of language, emotion, and expression in which archaic and mythic concepts are available, where understanding need not be abstract to be acceptable.

Christopher Fry was instrumental in the early twentieth-century resurgence of plays dealing with religious themes. This movement can at first be seen as anomalous within the era of modernism, when many writers and theorists considered religious sentiment to be a barrier to the more crucial aspects of living authentically within a modern society haunted by history. Nevertheless, Fry's particular appropriation of a sacred conceptualization of time on the modern stage reveals a degree of congruity between him and his contemporaries in their varied attempts to represent transcendent value on the stage without simultaneously removing the audience from their own historical present. In The Boy with a Cart, Fry's superimposition of the life of a tenth-century saint onto modern experience infuses the temporality of the play with transcendent value. Fry shifts his focus to the question of authentic action in A Sleep of Prisoners, and uses a series of biblical dreams to stress the need for a conceptualization of eternity in the passing moment in order for one to act authentically within history.

Cassandra of Troy acts as a symbol of the repressed women in Western society, yet she has also become the figure that reawakens the female literary voice in modern times. Christa Wolf's Cassandra: A Novel and Four Essays is the prime example of this literary movement: the female point of view emerges from a patriarchal myth that originally silenced her. Other examples of the re-emerging voice are Christa Wolf's retelling of Medea, Marion Zimmer Bradley's Kassandra in The Firebrand, and Octavia Butler's prophetic Lauren Oya Olamina (a reflection of an African female goddess's power) in the Parable of the Sower series.

Thomas Kuhn's popular 1962 book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions failed to convince historians and philosophers of science of its validity as a theory. Instead, it became an overnight success in the humanities. New left-wing politics developed in academia rejecting not only science, but also traditional humanities, fueling an ideological shift away from academics to social politics. Besides the charge that Kuhn confuses history and sociology of science with logic and philosophy, inherent ambiguity and contradiction defy an accurate interpretation of the book. Critics of Kuhns' theory include Jaakko Hintikka, who maintains that an important but overlooked issue concerns what he calls the one-world linguistic view (lingua universalis) vs. the language as calculus view (calculus ratiocinator). Feted by the humanities as unimpeachable confirmation that the methods and theories of science were socially constructed, Revolutions helped justify relativism, attesting to undue dependence on reason as a culturally hegemonious Western practice.