Graduation Year
2007
Document Type
Thesis
Degree
M.A.
Degree Granting Department
English
Major Professor
John Fleming, Ph.D.
Committee Member
Marty Gould, Ph.D.
Committee Member
Jay Hopler, M.F.A.
Keywords
William James, Liberal Christianity, Roman Catholic modernism, Methodism, Religious novel
Abstract
A comparison between Ware, Forbes, and Soulsby from The Damnation of Theron Ware provides a glimpse into one aspect of the theological upheaval of the time. A comparison between Ware, Forbes, and Algarcife, from Phases of an Inferior Planet, however, hearkens forward to the alienation and questioning of identity so much a part of the Twentieth Century. By viewing Ware as a foil for Forbes and Soulsby in tandem with Algarcife, a more complete picture of the transition between nineteenth and twentieth-century religion and theology may be found.
Understanding the encounter between the traditional and the liberal clergy requires a close examination of the way Ware, Forbes, Soulsby, and Algarcife interact with religions and theologies and adjust their actions in order to maintain the balance between the two, and how each character's interaction with the figure of the aesthete aids in the negotiation.
Ware cannot aspire to the erudition of scholars like Forbes and Algarcife, nor is he able to understand the aestheticism, the "art for art," of Madden, from Damnation, and Musin, from Phases. He is unable to maintain a dogmatic theology in the service of religion like Soulsby. He is an anachronism, caught between centuries, caught between two religious, theological, and aesthetic historical moments.
Scholar Commons Citation
Antonio, Matthew, "The Pragmatist and the Aesthete: Late Nineteenth-Century Religion and Theology in Harold Frederic’s The Damnation of Theron Ware and Ellen Glasgow’s Phases of an Inferior Planet" (2007). USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations.
https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/etd/606
