religion & american fiction

8/7/2019 Religion & American Fiction

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The University of Notre Dame

Religion and American FictionAuthor(s): Denis DonoghueSource: Religion & Literature, Vol. 38, No. 1 (Spring, 2006), pp. 31-51Published by: The University of Notre DameStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40060011

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RELIGION AND AMERICANFICTION

DenisDonoghue

IForthe purposesof thisessay(andfor somepurposesbeyondit),I takereligion o be Christianity,he expedient as Nietzsche called it in TheGe-nealogyfMorals "thatparadoxicaland awfulexpedient, hroughwhichatorturedhumanityhas found a temporaryalleviation, hat strokeof geniuscalledChristianityGodpersonallymmolatinghimself for the debt of man,God payinghimselfpersonallyout of a pound of his own flesh"(111).Itfollowsthat I do not allude to other religionsor to the sinisterpossibilityof "religionwithoutreligion" o which Derrida refers n TheGiftof Deathas "thisimmense and thorny question"(49).WhetherChristianity s anachievedentityora mysteriumremendumlwaysyetto be fulfilled s a questionI don'taddress.I begin with some generalconsiderations hat don't bearpeculiarly nAmerican iction.Theyareperhapsmerefive-finger-exercisesin the vicinityof the topic, but I hope by this meansto makea spaceforsome thatdo.I assumethat literature s language subjectto the double ministryoffictionand form. It is life as a writer magines t within the constraintsofthe languagein which it is written.The factorcommon to religionandliteratures language.But thatapparently implenotion does not reportaharmoniousrelationbetweenthe twovalues.GeoffreyHill,broodingoverthe twentyvolumesof the Oxfordnglish ictionaryn its secondedition,waspersuaded hat"sematologysa theologicaldimension: he use of languageR&L 38.1 (Spring2006) 31


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32 Religion& Literatureis inseparable rom that 'terribleaboriginalcalamity' n which,accordingto Newman,the human race isimplicated"20).In a light-heartedworldalanguagewould be comprehensive.There wouldbe wordsand sentences nit fullyexpressive f whateverperceptions, udgments, eelings,sentiments,and desiresarehumanlypossible.But that does not appearto be the case,asWittgenstein eld when he maintained hat whereof one maynotspeak,thereof one must be silent.In TheThingsTheyCarried,im O'Brien'snar-rator records hat Rat Kileyshot a babybuffaloseveral imes forno clearreason.All he can sayis:We had witnessed omethingessential, omethingbrand-newandprofound,a pieceof the world so startling here was not yeta name forit. (86)Maybetherewas a namefor it that O'Briencouldnotfind. It is stilla matterof debatewhetheror not therearefeelings hatnevertranspirenlanguage.There isalways ilence, he silence nto whichthewords,afterspeech,reach,accordingo the"BurntNorton"of T. S. Eliot.OrJohn Cage's ilence,whichispresumablydifferent rommine oranyoneelse's.HeatherMcHughhas apoem about the burningof GiordanoBruno,how his captorsput an ironmaskon hisface to preventhimfromspeaking.The poem ends:

Poetry s whathe thought,butdid not say. 4)Nonetheless,anguage eemstobe moreenabling han one couldanticipate.D. W. Hardinghas arguedin Experiencento Wordshat writersare distin-guished romotherpeople bybringing anguage o bearupontheirthinkingat anunusually arlystageof the transaction.Theydon'tconceivethoughtsindependentlyof languageand then search about for the best means ofexpressing hem;it is as if the wordspressedthemselves orwardand thethoughtscame,a splitsecondlater, o completetheaction. But wordsoftenseem to be not the rightones, and in that character hey offera show oftruculence hattheyhave no apparentrightto offer.In Style ndFaith,HillquotesBenjaminWhichcoteas sayingthat"bywickedness a man] passesintoa Natureontrary o hisown,"and commentsthat "whenyouwrite atanyseriouspitchof obligationyou enterinto the natureof grammarandetymology,which is a naturecontrary o yourown."You cannot"extricateyourselffrom this 'contrarynature'by some kind of philosophical iat orgestureof spiritualwithdrawal"123).Language nthatcharacter senemycountry.This makes a problemforreligion,which the churchesresolveasbesttheycan by allowingan aurato suffuse heirritualsandprayers.There is anotherdifficulty.KennethBurkenotedthat there is no special


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DENIS DONOGHUE 33vocabulary or the supernatural. ndeed, the words "supernatural"nd"preternatural"remerely nflectionsof "natural." he ineffablehas to gowithoutsayingbecausetheonly sayingsare defeatedsubstitutes or it. Thatis one reasonwhy,as Patermaintained,"allartconstantly spires oward heconditionof music," orm and contentin that mediumbeingone and thesame(106).There are a few wordswhich seem to be applicable o religiousexperience, uch as (inthe Christian alendar)God, divine,spirit,sacrifice,prayer,sacrament,Word as in Word of God grace, Father,Son, andHoly Ghost. Butthese words with the possibleexceptionof "God" is-sue fromnaturalor socialexperience,andthen areapplied iguratively ndratherdesperately o one'sreligiousoccasions."And he Word was madefleshand dweltamongstus"is clearenough if faith clarifies t; otherwisenot. EmersonanticipatedBurke n hissense of the limitationsof language,buthe was not dismayedbythem.In his firstbook,Nature,e observed hat"wordsaresignsof natural acts. .. Everywordwhich is used to expressamoralor intellectualact,if tracedto itsroot,is found to be borrowed romsome materialappearance" 4).In Paradiseost,God has to speakEnglishand,worsestill,has to use ordinaryEnglishwords.When he speaks o Hisson in BookIII,his speechis that of anydevotedfatherto anydutifulson.He cannottranscendhedictionandsyntaxof seventeenth-century nglish.When He explainsto His son the facultyof free will and the conditionsunderwhichMan liveswithit

Man shallnot be quitelost,butsavedwho will,Yetnot of will in him, butgracein meFreelyvoutsafed (61)thewords"will" firstaverb,thena noun and"grace" ettheirmeaningfromsociallife, even if theologiansand moralphilosophers reatboth astechnicalterms.In BookV,Raphaeltells Adam thatMan'sspeechis dis-cursivewhile thatof angelsis intuitive lines487-89).To explainto Adam"whatsurmounts he reach/ Of humansense"

I shall delineateso,By lik'ningspiritual o corporal orms,As mayexpress hembest. . (118)

Dr.Johnsonwastroubledby this,andthought"the confusionof spiritandmatter" aused"incongruity"nthewholenarrative.Raphaelhimselfwasn'tat easewiththe device.He immediatelywondered

. . . thoughwhatif earth


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34 Religion& LiteratureBe but the shadow of heav'n,andthingsthereinEach to the otherlike,more than on earth is thought? 118)

He seems to meanthat theanalogybetweenspiritualandcorporal orms sdoubtful,becausethings n heaven don'tdiffer,one fromanother,as muchas theircounterparts n earthappearto do. Still,he retains he analogy, fonlybecause no otherwayof explainingspiritual orms is conceivable.A nuance of this situationarisesagaininNaturewhere Emersonsetstheanalogy stirring reely, hings n naturearesignsof spiritual orrelatives:Sensibleobjectsconform to thepremonitionsof Reason and reflect he conscience.All thingsare moral;and in their boundlesschangeshave an unceasingreferenceto spiritualnature.Therefore s naturegloriouswithform, color,and motion;thateveryglobe in the remotestheaven,everychemicalchangefrom the rudestcrystalup to the lawsof life,every changeof vegetation rom the firstprincipleof growthin the eye of a leaf,to the tropical orestand antediluvian oal-mine,everyanimalfunctionfrom the spongeup to Hercules,shall hint or thunderto man the laws ofrightandwrong,and echo the Ten Commandments.Therefore s Nature ever theallyof Religion: ends all herpomp andrichesto the religious entiment. 22-23)

Near the end of thatpassage,Emerson drives the analogyfrom sweet tosour we hear of religion hrough he lawsof rightandwrongand the TenCommandments,but in the last sentence he reverts o easy alliancesandsentiments.The wholepassage dependson the assertion,not self-evident,that "allthingsare moral."The historyof Romanticism hows hatmanywritersactedon Emerson'scongenialassumptions:he moretheydelightednlandscapes,he moretheythoughtof themselves ssomehow,howevernformally,cknowledgingGodandexpressing verything"upon he bosomof a Natureperceivedasholy,"as CynthiaOzick has described t (193).There were moments,especiallyin Wordsworth nd Coleridge,when the hoped-forrevelationbetween theworld and one'spresence n it went blank,and these moments constituteda crisis.The questionwas: whose fault was the blank the human mindlookingwrongly impiouslyor sullenly at the world or God arbitrarilywithholdingHis good will?Hopkinsis the most extremeexampleof thisin Englishpoetry.He had his blankmoments and usuallyblamedhimself,but sometimesGod. But he had manymomentsof fulfilledpresencein alandscapehe deemed the workof God. He also believedin God withthe certitudethat adds two to three and gets five independentlyof thelandscapeshe tookpleasure n. Itwas harder o retainthissentimentwhenthe landscapesgave way to cities, heavy industry,noise, and traffic,butthe Romanticconvictionremained n place and stilldoes, forparticularwriters despiteI. A. Richards'snsistence,nSciencendPoetry,n the"neu-


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DENIS DONOGHUE 35tralizationof nature."Richards houghtit a markof modern writers hattheyhad given up thinkingof nature and God as kin,and he regardedasanachronistiche writerswho held on to such a belief.Richards'spositionis a blunt versionof the "secularization f inheritedtheological deas andwaysof thinking"hatM. H. Abramshas elucidatednNaturalupernaturalism(12).RichardRortyhas carried hesecularizing rocess urtherby assertingthat "theworld does not speak;onlywe do"(Rorty6-7; Larmore51).Thetroublewith thatquip is that it doesn'thelpus to decide whetherwhat wesayis true or false.The consideration hat there is no dictionspecificto experienceof thesupernaturaleads to another issue. Burkehas again clarified t. I quotefrom TheRhetoricof Religion:

Insofaras man is the"typicallyymbol-using nimal,"t shouldnot be surprisinghatmen'sthoughtson the natureof the Divineembodytheprinciplesof verbalization.And insofaras "God" s a.ormalprinciple,any thoroughstatementsabout"God"shouldbeexpected o reveal heformalityunderlyingheirgeniusas statements.TheBiblicalavowalthat man s made in God'smage as made us wary of the reversedanthropomorphicendency o conceiveof God'mman'smage. ut thepresent nquirystandsmidwaybetween thosetwopositions,contendingmerelythat,insofaras reli-giousdoctrine s verbal, t willnecessarily xemplify ts natureasverbalization; ndinsofaras religiousdoctrine s thorough, tswaysof exemplifyingverbalprinciplesshould be correspondinglyhorough. 1)

But many modern writershave not been wary of the anthropomorphictendencyto conceive of God in man'simage, and that is preciselywhattheyhavedone, especially n the act of exaltingman beyond any reason-able conceptionof Him. When Stevenswritesin "FinalSoliloquyof theInteriorParamour," Godand the imaginationare one"(524), t is as if hereported hat theonlymeaningwe arewilling o ascribe o the word "God"is theword"imagination"nd thenclaimedthatthe humanimaginationssomehowdivineor as closeas one can imagineto divinity.IIStevens'ssayings(andmuch else)promptme towarda propositionsostark hatI musttryto mellowit at once. The proposition s that modernAmerican iteratures a substituteorreligion,buta substitutenwhich theoriginalhas been absorbed.2What could that mean?It could mean thatwhile the "culturalunconscious"n Americamay be religious, he cultureso far as it is conscious s secular. t mayobserve ts Sabbath oran hour ortwo once a week,but the rest of the weekis dedicatedto worldlypursuits.It couldmean thatits "political onceptsare secularized heologico-politi-cal concepts"(Derrida103). Or that the distinctivemerits of American


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36 Religion& Literatureliteratureare regularly oughtin default of the credencesof religion.Orthat some writerswho do not hold any religiousbeliefsregard hat stateasa predicamentand do the best they can with it, as Stevens wrotehis po-ems without Christianconvictions,despitethe plaintiveyearning or suchwhichhe ascribedto the woman in "SundayMorning."The propositioncould also mean (toacknowledge hat these sentimentsare not confinedtoAmericanwriters)whatMatthewArnoldsaid n "TheStudyof Poetry,"ndSantayanavirtuallyrepeated n Interpretationsf PoetryndReligion,hatthestrongestpartof ourreligion s itsunconsciouspoetry."Ourreligion s thepoetryin which we believe,"Santayanaclaimed.He lookedupon religion"ason a kindof poetry. .thatexpressesmoralvaluesand reactsbeneficentlyuponlife"(26, 105).The propositiondoes not saythat modernliterature sa valid oreffective ubstitute orreligion,or even that it is a poorsubstitute,of necessity.Nor does it say that literature s the only substitute hat hasbeen tried. Allen Tate maintained n "Religionand the Old South"thatbecause he South "never reatedafittingreligion, he socialstructure f theSouthbegan grievouslyo breakdown twogenerations fter he CivilWar,""for he social structuredependson the economicstructure, nd economicconviction s still, n spiteof the beliefsof economists romAdamSmith toMarx,the secularimageof religion" 570).In the sameessay,Tate saidthatSoutherners nheritedThomasJefferson'sbelief that the ends of man aresufficiently ontained n hispoliticaldestinyand "maybe fullyachievedbypoliticalmeans" 575).This is now a commonsentiment,especiallyamongphilosophersn the Pragmatistraditionwho want to turnphilosophy ntopoliticsandwho regard ruthas nothingbut an axiom of intersubjectivity,in force for the time being only.But in anothercontext,W. B. Yeatscom-ing upon Thomas Mann'sassertion hat "thedestinyof man presents tsmeaning n political erms,"wrotea poem called "Politics"o say, n effect,thatyou could makethe same claimforanycomprehensive erm, such assex (631).So we have religion,politics,economics,and sex as ambitiousvalues.It is to be expectedthatone of thesewill be in the culturalascendantat aparticularmoment. But if with Schellingand Coleridgea writer choosesreligion as supreme in principle if rarely in practice, it is because, asNorthropFryemaintained,"the ranscendentalndapocalyptic erspectiveof religioncomes as a tremendousemancipationof the imaginativemind"(125).Or because the ultimate ermappears o be religiousandanalogousto the divineact of creation.As Coleridgesays,againfollowingSchelling,in the Biographiaiteraria,illingto see religiousbelief absorbed n worldlyor humanistterminologies:


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DENIS DONOGHUE 37The IMAGINATION henI considereitherasprimary, rsecondary.The primaryIMAGINATIONI holdto be the livingPowerandprime Agentof all human Per-ception,and as a repetition n the finite mind of the eternal act of creation n theinfiniteI AM. The secondaryI consideras an echo of the former,co-existingwiththe consciouswill,yetstillas identicalwith theprimary n the kind f itsagency,anddifferingonlyin degree,nd in the mode f itsoperation. 1 304)

It is a pitythatColeridgecalled the two forms of imaginationprimaryandsecondary.The one he callsprimarycan hardlybe primary f it repeats nthe finitemindthe eternalact of creation n the infiniteI AM. The eternalactmustbeprimary,irst nprinciple, o the laterkinds houldrespectively esecondaryandtertiary.But theanalogywith the divinepower s stilldeemedto hold,and it guarantees o thehumanimaginationa traceof religiousaf-filiation, venin the lineI quotedfromStevens.The otherambitious erms,by comparison,aremerelysocialinstruments, oweverpreponderant heymaybe in socialpractice.

IllModernAmerican iction shardly heplaceonewouldvisitto find theseissues takenseriously.Why they are takenlightly,on the whole, is a ques-tion for Emerson.But I beginwith a storyin which religion n the formsof doctrine,ritual,and sacramentalpractice s takenvery seriouslyndeed.AndreDubus's"AFather'sStory" s toldin the firstpersonbyLukeRipley,a man in his middleyearswho livesin northeasternMassachusetts.n hisworldlyife he ownsa stableof thirtyhorses.He hasyoungpeoplewho teachridingand he boardshorses,too. He seems to make a fairlycomfortableliving,buthe livesby himself.Hiswife Gloria efthim someyearsago andtookthe childrenwith her to Florida three sonsanda daughter,ennifer,who is now twentyand comes everysummerto Massachusettso visitherfatherforsixweeks.MeanwhileRipleyliveshis life as a RomanCatholic.He goestoMassandreceivesCommunioneveryday.He goesto Confessiononce a month.Everymorningwhilemakingthe bed andboilingwater forcoffee,he talks o God:

I offerHim my day,everyact of my body and spirit,my thoughtsandmoods,as aprayerof thanksgiving,ndfor Gloriaandmychildrenandmyfriendsand the twowomenI made lovewithafterGloria eft.This morningoffertorys a habit frommyboyhoodin a Catholicschool;or then itwasa habit,butas I keptit andgrewolderitbecamea ritual.Then I saythe Lord'sPrayer,ryinghard not to recite t, and onemorning t occurred o me thata prayer,whetherrecitedor saidwithconcentration,is alwaysan act of faith.(458)

Ripley'sbestfriend s thelocalpriest,FatherPaulLeBoeuf,an olderFrench-


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38 Religion& LiteratureCanadianman. One night heytalkabout aith,and FatherPaulsays:"Beliefisbelieving n God;faith is believing hatGod believes n you"(461).Lukeacceptsthis and takes t to heart.WhenJennifercomes on her summervisit, she gathers up her friends,youngwomen like herself and at herstageof womanlybloom.This doesn'ttroubleRipleymuch,buthe is susceptible o its intimations:

...it was womanhoodtheywere entering, he deep forestof it, and no matter howmanywomen and men too aresaying hesedaysthatthere s littledifferencebetweenus, the truth s that menfind theirwayinto thatforestonlyon clearlymarked rails,while womenmoveabout in it like birds.So hearingjenniferand her friends alkingso quietly,yet intensely, wantedverymuchto have a wife.(462)

One evening, ennifergoesto meeta few friendsand drinksmorebeerthanshe should.Drivingback to Ripley'shouse,shehitssomethingon the road.She tells her fatherabout the accident. He goes to the scene and findsayoungman dying,not dead.However,Ripleydoes nothingabout it:I stood. Then I kneeledagainandprayed or his soul tojoin in peace andjoy all thedead andliving;and,doingso,confrontedmyfirstsinagainsthim, not stopping orFatherPaul,who could havegivenhimthe lastrites,andimmediatelyhenmysecondone, or I sawthen,myfirst,notcallingan ambulance o meet methere,andI stoodand turned into the wind, sliddown the ditch and crawledout of it, and went upthe hillanddownit, across he roadto the streetof houses whosepeople I had leftbehindforever, o thatI moved withstealth n the shadows o my truck. 471)

Later,RipleytakesJennifer'scar and, to conceal the damagedfront of it,crashest into an oldpinetreebesideFatherPaul's hurch.He cannotconfesswhat he hasdone,but he receivesCommunion.The storyends:I do not feel the peace I once did:not withGod, nor the earth,or anyoneon it.I havebegunto prefer hisstate,to rememberwithfondness he other one asa periodof peaceI neitherearned nor deserved.Now in the morningswhileIwatchpurplefinchesdriving arger itmice fromthe feeder,I sayto Him:I woulddo it again.Forwhen sheknockedon my door,then calledme, she woke what hadfloweddormant n my blood since herbirth,so that whatrose from the bedwasnot a stableowner or a Catholicor anyother LukeRipleyI had lived with for alongtime,butthe fatherof a girl.And He says:I ama Father oo.Yes,I say,asyou area Son Whom thismorningI willreceive;unlessYoukillme on thewayto church,thenI trustYouwillreceiveme. And as a Son You madeYourplea.Yes,He says,butI would not lift the cup.

True,andI don'twant You to lift it fromme either.And if one of mysonshadcome to me thatnight,I would havephoned thepoliceand toldthem to meet uswith an ambulanceat the top of the hill.


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DENIS DONOGHUE 39Why?Do youlove themless?I tellHim no, it is not thatI love themless,but thatI could bear the painofwatchingandknowingmy sons'pain,could bear it withprideas theytook thewhipand nails. But You never had a daughterand, if Youhad,You could nothave borne herpassion.So, He says,youlove her more than You love me.I love her more thanI love truth.Then youlovein weakness,He says.As You loveme, I say,and I go withan appleor carrotout to the barn.(475-76)

"AFather's tory"has been much discussed.The onlyaspectof it I needto remark or the momentis its saturationn thevocabularyof religion, tsappeal doomedas thatmaybe to the idiom of God and sin and sacra-ment,confessionandEucharist, nd therival diom of fatheranddaughter.Whatever he moralof LukeRipley'sstory maybe, the moral of Dubus'stelling t is that one is not compelledto capitulate o the humanistZeitgeist.Or to settlefor silence.One culturalpracticedoes notvetoanother, houghthe rhetoricsof sequentialityand progress ry to persuadeus that it does.Even after the accident,LukeRipleykeepson talking o God;he may nothaveadequatewords,but he speaks he wordshe has.I leaveasidethe questionwhetheror not the emphasison faith,obser-vance,grace,andsin,whichwe find nDubus's toryandJ. E Powers's ThePresenceof Grace," s nowto be foundonlyin Roman Catholicwriters,asin FlanneryO'Connor,who said that "the Catholicnovelistbelievesthatyou destroyyourfreedomby sin;the modernreaderbelieves,I think,thatyougainit thatway"(116).Thereare othernarrative raditions. thinkofthe Yiddishstory if it is a storyrather hana memoir byChaimGrade,called"MyQuarrelwith HershRasseyner"whichtakes ssuesof belief andobservancewithappropriate eriousness.IVI haveimpliedin my remarkaboutthe ZeitgeisthatI do not regardthe"spiritof the age"as havingdecisiveor inescapable orce;nordo I believein the veridical tatusof sequence,exceptlocally.So I doubtmyselfwhenIsaythatHawthorne akesupwhereEmersoneft off.Theyareevidently erydifferentwriters;Emersonbuoyantncastingasidehis Christianministry ndurginghis audienceat theHarvardDivinitySchoolto takeon themselvesheresponsibilityf Christ.No wonderAlfredKazin couldsayof himthat"hebeganas a religionbutendedas literature"13).Althoughreluctantly ndmostlywithcontempt,Hawthorneobsessivelyeturnedo thePuritanmagesthathauntedhisimagination.But EmersonandHawthorneare alike none


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respect: ach of themtriedto find theproseforGod.I takethisphrase roman episodein HarleyGranville-Barker'slay Waste here two politicians,Henry Trebell and Sir CharlesCantelupe,have been discussingreligion."Now shallwe finish he conversationnprose,"Trebellproposes."What stheprose or God?"Sir Charles ounters."That'swhatwe irreligious eoplearegivingourlives to discover,"Trebellsays(269). Emerson, rreligiousothisextent,triedthe experimentof replacingGod by nature,and deemedthe soul to be indistinguishablerom the autonomousself,psychologicallyunderstood.He had behindhim if farbehindhim thePuritan ermon,the essay accordingto Montaigne,and the periodicalessay accordingtoAddisonand Steele. Hawthornewasa novelist,or at leasta romancer, ndhe hadbehindhim the lostepic, in keepingwith Lukacs's bservation hat"the novel is the epic of a world that has been abandonedby God"(88).Itis my contention thatHawthornereplacedGod with nature and commu-nity,natureas an Emersonian ubstitute orGod in His notionallybenignaspects, ommunityas a substitute orHim inhisstringency, romulgator fthe Ten Commandments.Hawthornethen reducedsin to a socialoffense,a transgression gainstthe community,but a transgressionhat had to becommitted f a self were determinedto claim its independence.In "TheMay-Poleof MerryMount,"the festivitiesand mummeriesof the forest"poursunshineover New England's uggedhills"until GovernorEndicottand his Puritanlegion arriveto put a stop to the merriment 360).In thechapterof TheScarlet etteralled"AFlood of Sunshine,"when Dimmesdalehas agreedwith Hester that they will take Pearl and set out for a new orresuscitatedife togetherin Europe,Hesterthrowsawaythe scarlet etterand lets her hair fallover her shoulders:"See!With thissymbol,I undo itall,andmake it as if it had neverbeen!"Immediately,he sun comes out torejoicethatthe loversaretogetheragain.The narrator omments:

Such was the sympathyof Nature thatwild,heathen Nature of the forest,neversubjugatedby human law,nor illuminedby highertruth with the bliss of thesetwo spirits!Love,whethernewlyborn, or arousedfrom a deathlikeslumber,mustalwayscreate a sunshine, illingthe heart so full of radiance, hat it overflowsuponthe outwardworld.(145-46)Human law and highertruthwould be equallyrepellent n such a forest:inevitably,Dimmesdalegoesback to the community, nd thepastoral dyllis destroyed.Butthe onlysin he recognizes s that of keepingone's actionssecret: hatalone istheoffenseagainstone'scommunity. t is EthanBrand'sunpardonablein,aswell asParsonHooper's n"TheMinister'sBlackVeil."But the offense of secrecy s, in Hawthorne's erms,horrific: t is the onlycorrelativehe can imagineto a mortalsin.


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DENIS DONOGHUE 4 1Thisisquitedifferent romMelville's ense of sininPierre, hosays"yes"to sinonly if it is grandenough likeSatan's:And as the moreimmensetheVirtue,so shouldbe the more immenseourapproba-tion; ikewise he more immense he Sin, the more infiniteourpity.Insomesort,Sinhath tssacredness, otlessthan holiness.AndgreatSin calls orthmoremagnanimitythan smallVirtue.Whatman,who is a man,does not feel livelierand moregenerousemotionstowardthe great god of Sin Satan, than towardyonderhaberdasher,who only is a sinner n the small and entirelyhonorablewayof trade? 177-78)

But Hester's in iscommonplace, t callsforth romHawthornenothing ikeBlake's or Melville's thrilledassentto Satan's.HenryJames'sexplanation f Hawthorne's eligious ense or theexpla-nationhe arrivedat aftermuchtalk of sin andgloom is thatHawthornetookimageslightly n the end by takingthem aesthetically.His relation ohis Puritan nheritance"wasonly,as one may say,intellectual;t was notmoral andtheological" 363).He was not hauntedbyit, having oundhim-self capableof being lightand airy despiteits oppression. ames seems tomean thatevenwhenHawthornedisposeshisimagesand themes such thata comprehensivemaginingof them wouldentailenteringmetaphysical rmoraldarkness,he resorted n the end to an aestheticsense of them andheld off fromtheirimportunity.ames saysof "YoungGoodmanBrown"that "itevidentlymeansnothingasregardsHawthorne's wn stateof mind,his convictionof humandepravityandhisconsequentmelancholy; or thesimplereasonthatif it meantanything, t wouldmean too much"(396).In"HawthorneandhisMosses,"Melvillemaintained hat"inspiteof all theIndian-summer unlighton the hither sideof Hawthorne's oul,the otherside like thedarkhalf of thephysical phere is shrouded n a blackness,ten timesblack."WhetherHawthorne"hassimplyavailedhimselfof this

mysticalblacknessas a meansto the wondrouseffects he makes it to pro-duce in hislightsand shades;or whethertherereally urks n him,perhapsunknown o himself,a touchof Puritanicgloom,"Melvillesaid," this,Icannotaltogether ell"(540).Melvillewas determineda fewmonthsbeforethe publicationof Moby-Dicko make Hawthorneseem blood-brother ohimself,bothwriterswithanimmensepowerof blackness.Butthecase s stilldisputed.LionelTrillinghasgivenus reasons orthinking t a limitation nHawthorne's eniusthathe did nottakethe riskof havinghis fictionsmeantoo much,if theywere to meanat all.Trilling's omparisonof HawthornewithKafkacarries hiscritical udgment.He saysof them:They stoodin equivalentrelations o religion:unbelieversboth, theirimaginationswerecaptivatedbythefaiths o whichtheywere connectedby family radition,andfrom these unavowedfaithsthey derivedthe license for the mythicgenre which


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42 Religion& Literatureconstitutes o much of theirappeal,for the representation f agenciesof humandestinywhich are not of the actualworld.(197-98)

Butfinally, sTrilling ays n thespiritofJames'smonograph:"Hawthornealwaysconsented to the powerof his imaginationbeingcontrolledby thepowerof the world" 204).This ispersuasive,but thereis,I think,a furtherexplanation.Hawthorne'sreplacement f thehiddenGodbythedualvaluesof natureand communitywas so tacticallyreductive hat neitherof thosevaluescouldcompelthe fullstretchof hisimagination.Naturemeantmostlythe forest,the placeof pastoral reedomand guiltlessness, houghit couldhaveentailedmoredangerousorces f "YoungGoodmanBrown"had beenimaginedas fullyas it mighthave been. It could have entailedredemptiveforces,too, as Ike's maginingof the wildernessdoes in Faulkner's DeltaAutumn,"a conceptionof nature that "amounts o the sacramental," sCleanthBrookssays(Brooks262;quotedin Weatherby 3).Communityo Hawthornemeantmostly aw and its observances.Onlyin"MyCousinMajorMolyneux"and"YoungGoodmanBrown" and thenambiguously did he imaginethat a communitycouldeasilyturn into anorgiasticcrowd,a mob, as Elias Canetti showsin CrowdsndPower.BeforeCanetti,Durkheimremarked n the forceof enthusiasm o whicha societyis susceptible:

The aptitudeof societyforsetting tself up as a god or forcreatinggodswas nevermoreapparent handuring he firstyearsof the FrenchRevolution.At thattime,infact,underthe influence of the generalenthusiasm, hingspurelylaicalby naturewere transformedby publicopinioninto sacredthings: hese were the Fatherland,Liberty,Reason.(Durkheim244-45;Derrida22)Such a transformation,s RobertoCalassoexplains nLiteraturend heGods,became mostappallingwhen it soundedmost natural: t expressed tself intautology, elf-advertising.What wasonce the preserveof religionbecamethe powerof society, aken for granted."Beinganti-socialwould becomethe equivalentof sinning againstthe Holy Ghost"(173).In a more recentbook,/f, Calassorefines hisperception n terms of socialabsorption:

Certainly t's not the case, as some continue to maintain,that the religiousor thesacredor the divine hasbeen shattered,dissolved,obviated,bysomeoutsideagent,by the lightof the Enlightenment.That would have resulted n a world made ofsecularfunerals, n all theirawfulbleakness.What happened instead is that suchthingsas the religiousor the sacredor thedivine,byan obscureprocessof osmosis,were absorbedand hidden in somethingalien,which no longerhas need of suchnamesbecause t is self-sufficient nd is content to be describedassociety:ll the restis, at best,itsobjectof study, tsguineapig even allof nature. 22)


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44 Religion& Literaturewhale is not a figureof evil in the world,but rathera figureof the worlditself,of Being,which Ahab hatesas much as he hates the God of Calvinhe holds accountable or it.They make the doubleobjectof hisblasphemy,theonlymode inwhich Melville's maginationsreligious.DavidReynoldshas noted that Calvinism n Americanfictionin the late Eighteenth-andearlyNineteenth-Centurieswasgradually eplacedbythe doctrineof goodworks,but it had a remarkable rowthagainin the yearsup to 1840(100).Melvillemay have had pressingreasonto be appalledby it duringthoseyears,though by the 1850s the questionof one's religiousdenomination,if religious iction is evidence,became "inconsequentialor the Protestantnovelist" 121).Many years ago, LawranceThompson argued n Melville'sQuarrel ithGod hat Melville'spervasiveattitudeto Christiandogmaandthe Christianconceptof God was one of "taunting idicule,"mostclearlyseen in TheConfidence-Mannd Pierre239).I find that hard to refute.

VButthereareotherpossibilitiesf experiencebetween rreligion nd devo-tion. Allen Tate hasargued, n an essayon EmilyDickinson hat was takenup anddevelopedby R. P.Blackmur,hat Dickinsoncameat a time whichmayhave been arduous or her soul but wasenablingto herpoems,a timewhen the theocracyof New Englandhadnearlycollapsedbut was stillfeltas sufficientlyn force to be interrogated nd challenged,mocked as oftenas respected.While it lasted,the theocracyhad "animmense, ncalculablevalue for literature: t dramatized he human soul." It gave meaning orleast the possibilityof meaning to life:"the life of piousand impious,oflearned and vulgaralike."Puritanism"could not be to Dickinsonwhat ithad been to thegenerationof Cotton Mather a bodyof absolute ruths;twas anunconciousdiscipline imed to thepulseof herlife" 294).Blackmurveersfrom Tate at thispoint. He does not believe that Puritanismwas forDickinson an uncompromisingdisciplineor that the timingwas rightforherpulse:

Faithwassophisticated,reed,and terrified but still ived; maginationhadsuddenlyto do all the workof embodying aithformerlydonebyhabit,and to embody t withthe old machinery o faras it couldbe used.{Essays78)In such conditions,faith in the hands of the individualand while theinstitutions f faitharecrumbling "becomesan imaginativeexperimentof whichalltheelementsareopento new andevenblasphemeous ombina-tions,andwhich ssubjecto theadditionof newinsights." uritanism as nolongermuchgoodasdoctrineorreceivedwisdom,but t wasgood enoughtobe teasedandprovoked.The theocracywas still hereasmachinery, hough


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DENIS DONOGHUE 45feeblefor morepersonalpurposes.As a result,Dickinsoncould haveonlyan experimental elation o it;but that was what she needed,hersensibilitybeingwhat it was. She came at the most fortunatemoment for the poetryshehad it in her to write:"thepoetryof sophisticated, ccentricvision,"asBlackmur alls it (195).It had to be eccentricandprobablywillfulbecauseit did not issue froma livingtraditionof faith and observance.It had tobe sophisticatedbecause it could not be simple,sensuous,and passionateall at once. That explainswhyher poems,like the Bible,can be quotedinfavorof nearlyeverycause,for she is neverdoctrinal.Blackmur laimsthat"thegreatadvantage or a poet to come at a time of disintegratingultureis [that]the actualityof what we are andwhat we believe is suddenlyseento be nearlymeaninglessas habit,and must,to be adequatelyknown,betranslated o the termsand modes of imagination"179).Emerson,according o thisemphasis nTate andBlackmur, ardlyknewwhat he wasdoing,but he endedup removingany tragicpossibilitiesromtheculturehe addressed.The effectof Emerson's octrineof individualism,according o Tate,is that "there s no dramain humancharacterbecausethereis no tragicfault" 285).There is no sin, no action for whichanyonewould thinkof seeking orgiveness.One of the most shockingpassages nEmerson's"Experience"s this flourishof exoneration:

We believe in ourselves,as we do not believe in others. We permit all thingstoourselves,and that which we call sin in othersis experimentfor us... Saintsaresad,becausetheybehold sin (evenwhen theyspeculate), rom the pointof view ofthe conscience,and not of the intellect;a confusionof thought.Sin, seen fromthethought, s a diminutionor less; eenfrom the conscienceor will,it ispravityor bad.The intellectnames t shade,absenceof light,and no essence.The consciencemustfeel it as essence,essentialevil. This it is not; it has an objectiveexistence,but nosubjective.360-61)I wonderwhatEmmanuelLevinas who regardedas the primaryact theacknowledgment f anotherperson,andtheacknowledgment f one's selfas secondaryand derivative wouldthinkof that.Tatethought hatHawthorne"keptpure, n theprimitive erms,thepri-mativevision;hebrings hepuritan ragedy o its climax."Man,"measuredby a greatidea outsidehimself, s foundwanting" 284).I doubtthis,andthinkthatBlackmurhad the bettercasewhen he asserted:

Some sayHawthornewas a greatstudentof evil;I thinkrather hat he studiedhowto avoidand ignore it by interposing he frames of his tales betweenevil and theexperienceof it. (Outsider72)

Perhaps his is to say that Hawthornesaw evil as omnivorousbut diffuse,


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46 Religion& Literatureandthat his imaginationwas notwillingto identifyevil with its localmani-festations.There had to be more evil at largethan he couldspecify.But ifhe rejected heworld,he did not do it blithely.Tatesays:

Masteryof the worldby rejectinghe worldwas thedoctrine, venif it was notalwaysthe practice,ofJonathanEdwardsand Cotton Mather. t is the meaningof fateinHawthorne:his people are fated to withdraw rom the world and to be destroyed.And it is one of the greatthemes of HenryJames. (287)But the theme was muchdiminishedby the timeJamestook it up:BetweenHawthorneandJamesliesanepoch.The temptation o sin,in Hawthorne,is, inJames,transformed nto the temptationnot to do the "decent hing."A wholeworld-scheme, completecosmicbackground,has shrunk o the dimensionsof theindividualconscience. 287)Tate does not saywhat this reductionof scaleentails.Presumably e meanswhat Dickinsonmeant: "The abdicationof belief / Makes the behaviorsmall" Poem1581in Franklin'sdition).But inJames there is more to it more left to it than the temptationnot to do the "right hing."The problemforJameswas to implya contextof gravereferencewithinwhich his little fablewould workout its life.In adifferentcultureand a differentsocialclass,sucha context would be reli-gious,butJamescould notgivehimself to thatresource.Hissenseof religionwasinert.Trillingremarksn "Art nd Fortune" hat whattheologianscall"faith" s whatJames,in the Preface o TheAmerican,alls "romance":

The realrepresentso myperception hethingswe cannotpossiblynotknow, ooneror later, n one way or another; t beingbut one of the accidentsof our hamperedstate,andone of theincidentsof theirquantityandnumber, hatparticularnstanceshave not yetcome ourway.The romanticstands,on the otherhand,for the thingsthat,withall the facilitiesn theworld,all the wealth and all thecourageand all thewit and all the adventure,we never candirectlyknow;the thingsthat can reach usonlythrough he beautifulcircuitandsubterfugeof our thoughtand desire. 262)

Sometimesthe subterfugegivesitself away.Though there is much talkofwingsanddovesin TheWings f theDove,none of the characters,ncludingMilly,could be expectedto recall the Psalm fromwhichJames culled histitle,which is Psalm55: 'Tearfulnessand tremblingare come upon me,and horrorhath overwhelmedme. And I said: Oh thatI had wingslike adove!Forthen I wouldfly away,and be at rest."And Psalm 68: "Thoughye havelien amongthe pots, yet shallye be as the wingsof a dovecoveredwithsilver, nd herfeatherswithyellowgold." amesisrememberingor hischaracters, ryingto givethemsomethingof his own affluenceof sensitiv-ity.Hisreligious ensebeinglethargic,he had to find otherwaysof making


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DENIS DONOGHUE 47stories seem weighted,even if the weightwas entirelya matter of socialacquisitionand taste.The storyof TheWings f theDove s so odiousthatonly the successionof high-tonedreflectionsand conversations eflectsusfrom seeing how odious it is. References o the Bible are consistentwitha culturalperiodin which it was becomingcommon to read the Bible asliterature, he first of the Great Books,to be read withoutincurringtheobligationof believinga word of it.In Henry Adams,the conclusionto every questionof religionis fore-gone.He had no faith,onlythe need of it becauseonlya greatfaithwouldhave seizedhis energyand given it form. He wrote the Educationo showcause pathetic, ndeed whynone of the interestshe tookup was worthhissustainedattention.His accountof religion n Bostonin theyearsfrom1848 to 1852 is predictablyand appropriatelydismissive.Even in Mont-Saint-MichelndChartres,here he expendedeverynuance of appreciationand tenderness or theVirgin,he couldnot let hergo untilhe hadpresentedher "lookingdown from a desertedheaven, into an empty church,on adead faith"(197). Nothing appeasedhis desire but failure.In his novelofreligion,Esther, damsmakeshis heroine EstherDudleyan agnostic.Shecouldbe drawn, n frailtheory, o the ministerRev.StephenHazard,wholovesher.Butin the end she ismore takenwith theNiagaraFalls hanwithanythingStephenHazardfinds to sayto her.The penuryof her imagina-tion is made clearwhen she says to Stephen:"Is it not enough to knowmyself?...Some peopleare madewith faith.I am madewithoutit"(159).A bolderman thanStephenwouldhave answered:"No,it is not enoughtoknowyourself,especially f you don'tknow thatyourtalk of 'somepeople'who aremadewithfaith and T without t is specious.Haveyou no partinyourown making?"A subterfuge imilartoJames'sin its enhancingreachis resorted o inTheGreatGatsby hen Nick meditateson Gatsby:

The truthwas thatJay Gatsby,of WestEgg,LongIsland,sprang rom his Platonicconceptionof himself.He wasa sonof God a phrasewhich,if it meansanything,means ust that and he must be aboutHis Father'sBusiness, he serviceof a vast,vulgarandmeretriciousbeauty. 104)Nick is endowingGatsbywith mythicjustification,and for that purposehe needsto givehim a secondself independentof his first.The allusion simpudent.Thereis noproperanalogybetweentheyoungjesusteachinghispeersin the templeandJay Gatsby nventinghimself to makemoneyandachievea style.The analogy, peciousas it is,is Nick'swayof accepting hatGatsby s at worsta minorgod, evenif the causehe serves s meretricious.Nick has become one of those millionsof ProtestantAmericanswho, as


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48 Religion& Literature

NorthropFryeobserved,"havedrifted,and are continuingto drift,awayfrom their earlierreligiousmoorings,not alwaysthrough ndifference,butveryoften becausetheyfeel that a secular ife is the mostmature,civilized,and seriousform of the kind of Christian ibertyofferedthem by Protes-tantism" 255-56).William ames'sVarietiesf Religiousxperiencend RobertBellah'sHabitsof theHeartmight be quoted to make Frye'spoint. I thinkFryemeansmiddle-classAmerican Protestants.Working-class rotestantsresortto God and the Bible at least in moments of crisis,as Mrs.Griffithdoes in AnAmericanragedyhen her son Clydeis foundguiltyand awaitsexecution:Clydemustprayfor her and for himself. Read Isaiah. Read the psalms the 23rdand the 51stand the 91stdaily.Also Habakuk."Are here wallsagainst he Hand ofthe Lord?" 356)

These are not the prayersof Northrop Frye'sAmericanProtestants.Forthe samereason,HenryAdamsthoughtthatallAmericanswerenaturallyConservativeChristian Anarchists.To Adams, as Blackmurexplained,"whatkeptAmericansocietytogetherandplasticwas the fact thatdeep initsunconcious eelingfor the human ideal it had never committed tself toany singleversion of the good as supreme" Adams 02). One littlegod isas good as another.The reason or thismaybe that the Americanreligion s not what t thinksit is. Harold Bloom has put forward he claim arguingthat the Americanreligionis a bewilderedmixtureof Christianityand Gnosticism,Christi-anityother than it knowsitself,Gnosticismas it doesn'tknow itself at all.The religiousexperienceis apartfrom clergyor church. "No Americanpragmaticallyeelsfreeif she is not alone,"Bloomsays,"andno Americanultimately oncedesthat she ispartof nature" 15).That seemsto makeherpost-Emersonandpost-Stevens,a point insistedon later when Bloomsaysthat "thefreedomassuredbytheAmericanreligion s not what Protestantsonce calledChristianLiberty, ut is a solitude nwhich the inner onelinessis at home in an outerloneliness."That seemsto make it at once post-Ste-vensandpost-Frost, redactionof Stevens's"SnowMan"and Frost's"AnOld Man'sWinterNight."Much laterin TheAmericaneligion, loom asksa questionthat seems odd until we reflect that any Americanreligionhepositsmustsubmitto poeticand aestheticcriteria.The questionhe asks s:Why is it thatwe haveproducedso few masterpiecesof overtlyreligiousliterature "we"meaningAmericans."Devotionalpoetryor narrativeordrama,of any aestheticeminence,or of any profoundspirituality, ardlyexistsamongus"(257).Bloomdoesn't tay orananswer.He merely uggestsmoreEmerson."The issue snotself-worship;t isacquaintancewith a God


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DENIS DONOGHUE 49withintheself"(259).Americanecstasy,Bloomsays, ssolitary,"evenwhenit requires he presenceof others as audiencefor the self'sglory" (264).Ithoughtwe alreadyhad that with"SelfReliance"and"Songof Myself." tappears hatthere s no fiction,nopoetry, ommensuratewithBloom's enseof the Americanreligion:only "afull-scalereturnto the wars of religion"is foreseen.After that impasseon Bloom'spart, it is time to returnto Dubus's"AFather'sStory." n thatconversationwith God at the end, how does LukeRipleyknow that he is not merely talking o himself? He has shownnoneof the misgivingthat would hobble the discourseof one who knew thatthereis no special anguageforsupernatural xperience.He has not beenseeking heprosefor God orbroodingon thedifferences etweenthatproseand some sublimepoetry.He has committedhimself to the middlestyle.Yethere he is, afterall that has happened, talkingto God: it is a difficultconversation,but a conversationnonetheless.What enablesit, and whatprotectshim from the lonelinesson which Bloom'sputativecitizeninsists,is his membershipof the Church,the sacraments, he rituals,the Mass,Confession, ndCommunion. t is notenoughthatthesemakea communityutterly ree fromthevigilantandpunitivemission hat held thecommunitytogether n TheScarletetter. he sacraments ivehimaccessto participa-tionin themodesof sacrifice ndmeaningwhichhe entersbyhimself butnot entirelyby himself: hereare the others.He is not lookingfor "a Godwithin the self."

New YorkUniversity

NOTES1 Cf. Larmore,512. 1owe thismotif,andmuch else in the essay, o RichardLehan.3. 1owe this reference o Ian GregorandWalterKlein.


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50 Religion& LiteratureWORKSCITED

Abrams, M. H. NaturalSupernaturalism:raditionndRevolutionn RomanticLiterature. ew York:W.W.Norton, 1973.Adams,Henry.Esther. d. Lisa Macfarlane.Harmondsworth: enguinBooks,1999. . Mont-Saint-MichelndChartres.oston:HoughtonMifflin,1937.Blackmur,R. P.HenryAdams.Ed. VeronicaA. Makowski.New York:HarcourtBraceJova-novich,1980. . Outsidert theHeart f Things.Ed.James T.Jones.Urbana:U of IllinoisP, 1989. . Selectedssays.Ed. Denis Donoghue.New York:EccoP, 1986.Bloom, Harold. The AmericanReligion:The Emergence f the Post-ChristianNation.New York:Simon &Schuster,1992.Brooks, Cleanth. WilliamFaulkner:The Toknapatawpha ountry. ew Haven: Yale UP, 1963.Burke, Kenneth. TheRhetoricof Religion:Studies n Logology. oston: Beacon P, 196 1Calosso,Roberto.K. Trans.GeoffreyBrock.New York:Knopf,2005. . Literaturend heGods.Trans.Tim Parks.New York:VintageInternational, 002.Coleridge,SamuelTaylor.Biographiaiteraria.d.James EngellandW.JacksonBate.Princ-eton:PrincetonUP, 1983.Derrida, acques.TheGift fDeath.Trans.David Wills.Chicagoand London:U of ChicagoP, 1995.Dreiser,Theodore.AnAmericanragedy.ew York:Horace Liveright,1929.Dubus,Andre. Selectedtories. ew York:VintageBooks,1989.Durkheim,Emile. TheElementaryormsf theReligiousife.Trans. osephWardSwain. NewYork:The FreePress,1965.Emerson,Ralph Waldo."Experience."SelectedWritings.d. BrooksAtkinson.New York:ModernLibrary,1950.342-64. . "Nature." SelectedWritings. -42.Fitzgerald,F. Scott. TheGreatGatsby.d. Matthew . Bruccoli.New York:Simon&Schuster,1992.Frye,Northrop.Anatomyf Criticism:ourEssays. rinceton:PrincetonUP, 1990. . Northroprye nModernCulture.d.Jan Gorak.Toronto:U of TorontoP,2003.Granville-Barker,arley.Three lays.London:Sidsrwick&Jackson,1909.Hawthorne,Nathaniel. Tales ndSketchestc.New York:The Libraryof America,1982. . TheScarletetter. d. SculleyBradley,Richmond CroomBeatty,E. HudsonLong,andSeymourGross.New York:W. W.Norton, 1978.Hill, Geoffrey.Style ndFaith.New York:Counterpoint,2004.James, Henry. EssaysonLiterature: mericanWriters, nglishWriters.New York: The Library ofAmerica,1984. . TheArtof theNovel:Critical refaces.d. Richard P.Blackmur.New York:Scribner's,1962.Kazin,Alfred. God nd heAmericanWriter.ew York:VintageBooks, 1997.Larmore,Charles."Historyand Truth."Daedalus,ummer2004: 46-55.Lukacs,Georg. TheTheory f theNovel.Trans. Anna Bostock.Cambridge,Mass:MIT P,1971.McHugh, Heather."WhatHe Thought."Hinge& Sign:Poems 968-1993. Middletown:

WesleyanUP,1994.4.Melville,Herman. "Hawthorneand His Mosses."Moby-Dick.d. HarrisonHayfordandHershelParker.New York:Norton, 1967.535-51.


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DENISDONOGHUE 51 . Moby-Dick.Ed. Harrison Hayford, Herschel Parker,and G. Thomas Tanselle. Evanston,Illinois: Northwestern UP, 1988. . Pierre,or TheAmbiguities. vanston: Northwestern UP, 1971.Milton, John. ParadiseLost. Ed. Scott Elledge. New York:W. W. Norton, 1975.Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Genealogyf Morals. Ed. Oscar Levy. New York: Gordon P, 1974.O'Brien, Tim. The Things TheyCarried.New York:Penguin Books, 1991.O'Connor, Flannery. Mystery ndManners.Ed. Sally and Robert Fitzgerald. New York:Farrar,Straus and Giroux, 1983.Ozick, Cynthia. Art & Ardor:Essays.New York:Dutton, 1984.Pater, Walter. The Renaissance: tudies n Art and Poetry.Ed. Donald L. Hill. Berkeley: U of

California P, 1980.Reynolds, David S. Faith in Fiction: The Emergence f ReligiousFiction n America.Cambridge,Mass: Harvard UP, 1981.Rorty, Richard. Contingency,rony, ndSolidarity.Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1989.Santayana, George. Interpretationsf Poetry ndReligion.New York:Scribner, 1900.Stevens, Wallace. "Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour." Collected oems.New York:

Vintage Books, 1954. 524.Tate, Allen. Essaysof FourDecades.Chicago: Swallow, 1968. . "Religion in the Old South." Essaysof FourDecades.(1968) Rpt. Wilmington, Delaware:ISI Books, 1999.Thompson, Lawrence. Melville'sQuarrelwith God.Princeton: Princeton UP, 1952.Trilling, Lionel. BeyondCulture:EssaysonLiterature ndLearning.New York:Viking P, 1965. . TheLiberalImagination: ssayson LiteraturendSociety.New York: Anchor Books, 1953.Weatherby, H. L. "Faulkner s Wilderness. Place n American iction:Excursions ndExplorations.Ed. H. L. Weatherby nd GeorgeCore.Columbia:U of MissouriP,2004. 85-96.Yeats, W. B. Variorumditionof thePoemsofW.B. Teats.Ed. Peter Allt and Russell K. Alspach.New York:Macmillan, 1957.

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