Literary representations of spirituality in the texts of Marilynne Robinson, Louise Erdrich, and Zora Neale Hurston

Lydia Magras, Purdue University

Abstract

In this dissertation, I argue that spiritual representations by characters, authored by Marilynne Robinson, Louise Erdrich, and Zora Neale Hurston, can be revealed through the prism of cognitive literary studies; specifically the constructs of Theory of Mind (ToM), Cognitive Blends, and Embodied Cognition. This project studies how these cognitive processes, engaged with issues of spirituality, emerge in narrative, especially as they serve to deepen the reader's understanding of character actions and motivations. The authors and texts discussed in this project offer diverse perspectives on spirituality. Marilynne Robinson's texts, Gilead and Home, use narrative perspectives to create rich and multilayered representations of spirituality and Protestantism as reflected by gender, race, and history, and as refracted through applications of Theory of Mind (ToM). Louise Erdrich's depictions of Ojibwe spirituality, and Catholicism, and Conceptual Blends in Love Medicine and Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse reveal those "in-between" spaces inhabited by those seeking to mediate their bifurcated, racial, tribal, and ethnic allegiances. Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God and Tell My Horse draw on Vodou to show that not only can Embodied Cognition be registered on the body, but a body itself can function as a kind of cognition. It is clear that there is a human tendency to spatialize, concretize, make embodied, and/or personify concepts of spirituality. Literary analysis and cognitive literary studies in particular, produce representations of spirituality that are complex and vital. This dissertation seeks to make a compelling argument for a valuable alliance between literature, spirituality, and cognitive science.

Degree

Ph.D.

Advisors

Peterson, Purdue University.

Subject Area

American literature

COinS