Date of Award
Summer 8-15-2016
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Degree Type
Dissertation
Abstract
This dissertation argues that a tradition of modern American literary intellectuals, including Vida Dutton Scudder (1861-1954), T. S. Eliot (1888-1965), Claude McKay (1889-1948), Dorothy Day (1897-1980), Walker Percy (1916-1990), and Wendell Berry (1934-), leveraged sacred history to sanction surprisingly radical critiques of modern society. Devotion to the religious past energized, rather than enervated, the imaginations of these socialists, anarchists, and Catholic personalists. When they criticized American capitalist life, these writers looked back to past exemplars of radical community, from sixth-century monks to 1930s radical preachers of the U.S. South. By showing how Christian traditions nourished radical thinkers, Breaking Bread with the Dead challenges both secular Left historiographies that tie the spread of democracy to the demise of traditional religion and religious Right ideologies that assume the equivalence of doctrinal orthodoxy and political conservatism. It offers an alternative history of a modern American literary radical tradition deeply rooted in religious commitment.
Language
English (en)
Chair and Committee
William J. Maxwell
Committee Members
Long Le-Khac, Leigh E. Schmidt, Abram Van Engen, Rafia Zafar
Recommended Citation
McGregor, Jonathan David, "Breaking Bread with the Dead: Social Radicalism and Christian Traditions in Twentieth-Century American Literature" (2016). Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 870.
https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/art_sci_etds/870
Comments
Permanent URL: https://doi.org/doi:10.7936/K7Q81BFV