Greer, Allen W.

Sehnsucht is a term used by C.S. Lewis to describe the immortal
longing imparted to each soul by the Creator. The design of this
longing is to draw one to a place of absolute surrender to the truth of God's preeminence. In Lewis' own life, as well as that of his
fictional characters, the result of this longing is a relentless quest.
In Out of the Silent Planet and Perelandra, the quest follows a
structural pattern I have identified as the island motif. Elwin
Ransom moves toward an island physically and spiritually. He is
drawn by slowly intensifying encounters with Sehnsucht, occasioned
by his sensory perceptions of the bizarre landscapes.
Ransom's journey is allegorically related to the Christian's
pilgrimage in Out of the Silent Planet. The quest becomes a
reenactment of the Redeemer Myth in Perelandra. Both stories culminate
in the hero's mystic union with the numinous.

A study of the dialogue in Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde indicates
that the range of expression with which the characters are endowed, from
the formal to thecolloquial, contributes to the verisimilitude of the
dialogue as well as to the structure of the poem. The range is
functional not only because it helps create realistic expression, but
also because it allows one style to predominate and diminish according
to the poem's structure. In the first part of the poem, approximately
to the midpoint of the poem at line 1309 in Book III, the colloquial
style reflects the ascending movement of the Wheel of Fortune and the
happiness of the characters. Throughout the rest of the poem this
style diminishes while the formal predominates, in accordance with
the Wheel's descending movement and the characters' sorrow. This
artistic balance is evidence of Chaucer's control of language.

The exegetical method established by the early Christian
Church fathers for interpreting the Bible, was of minor academic
concern from 1865 until approximately forty years ago when the
question was raised explicitly about its systematic application to
medieval literature at large. A scholarly controversy over patristic
exegesis developed and there was a growing number of publications
dealing with the critical approaches to medieval literature and
especially with the use of the patristic exegetical method for the
understanding of specific works. These publications are surveyed
in this paper and the method of patrist ic exegesis is illustrated
through its application to three medieval poems. The conclusion
reached indicates that the patristic exegetical method, though not
the exclusive method applicable to medieval l i terature, has become
an indispensable critical tool to enlarge our understanding of
religious works and uncover significant meanings in works heretofore
incompletely or erroneously understood.

The two writing modes in E.M. Forster's fiction--which we
may call the "ironic" and the "poetic"--and the ambivalent meaning
reflected in these modes make him a puzzling writer to comprehend
fully. A study of his narrator's function sheds some light
on this essential division in his work, revealing that the narrator
evolves from an omniscient type often found in the Victorian novel
to a much more subtle and unobtrusive , but not thoroughly effaced,
narrator in his last novel. The narrator's role changes from that
of a "Stage Manager" in A Room with a View to a mediator who speaks
almost as one with the central character in Howards End to that of
a commentator with psychological as well as social insight in A
Passage to India. As such, the narrator makes a direct revelation
of reality to the reader: a basically religious and tentatively
hopeful awareness of some unseen power existing beyond the physical
universe.