Documenting the Dissertation

Recently, this post from @JonTyson made its way across my twitter feed and made my heart skip a beat.

With a lump in my throat, I read his words, a second, and then a third time.

Well folks. The time to finish my Doctorate has officially expired and I didn’t finish my dissertation in time. ABD. Just couldn’t get it done. Just want to encourage those who feel they aren’t getting enough done in the crisis 🙂 May try again at 50…

Try again at 50? Gulp! I sympathized with this pastor; mostly, however, I was trying process what it would mean for me if I found myself in those same shoes.

Like the one at the house of mourning in Ecclesiastes 7:2, I was laying this one to my heart.

For the past year and four months, I have been pecking away at my dissertation, mostly in the margins and via starts and fits as I negotiate all the usual “good things in life” that, ironically, become obstacles for this stage of doctoral work: family life, a start up education company, and a move.

My time has not expired, but the clock is ticking and Jon’s post made me realize I need to tighten my belt and dig in my heels. Instead of trying again at 50, I set a goal for finishing before I turn 50 (June 2021).

One way I thought might help keep me accountable while simultaneously creating the platform for which I intend to employ my doctorate would be to document my dissertation work here on the blog.

Truthfully, I don’t know if it will work, but I once read a book by Nina Amir titled, How to Blog a Book: write, publish, and promote your work one post at a time. The basic idea is to use the blog as a place to flesh out relevant ideas, get feedback from readers, and essentially write a rough draft while growing a tribe around your message. If one can blog a book, why not a dissertation?

Of course, given the nature of a dissertation, this means a few things. The blog posts will be a tad more academic in nature. Readers may not be as informed, or thus engaged, about the subject matter. The process will most likely be messy, which is going to be hard for me–maybe even a bit embarrassing.

Again, this may not work. Yet, for the sake of the goal, I’m going to give it a whirl. Your feedback would be incredibly interesting and valuable.

The question likely swimming around in your head at this point is what my dissertation is about. 

I’ve given the dissertation the working title, FIENDS, FREAKS, AND FANTASY: THE USE OF THE GROTESQUE IN THE CHRISTIAN HUMANIST LITERATURE OF C. S. LEWIS, FLANNERY O’CONNOR, AND J. R. R. TOLKIEN.

The introduction to my dissertation proposal reads:

In my dissertation, I propose to examine three twentieth century Christian humanists, C.S. Lewis, Flannery O’Connor, and J.R.R. Tolkien, and their use of the grotesque in literature as a means of reviving a Christian humanist vision for the human being (i.e., an incorporeal soul and human flourishing) in an epoch where human reality had been reduced to materialism, human knowledge to scientism, and human ethics to utilitarianism.

The questions I’m attempting to answer are: How does the use of grotesque characters in the imaginative literature of C.S. Lewis, Flannery O’Connor, and J.R.R. Tolkien give us a better understanding of the Christian humanists’ socio-theological vision for reality, epistemology, and ethics (i.e., human flourishing)?

By answering this question, I might be in a better position to answer the question of precisely how Western Civilization has fallen from a previously higher state of existence, regardless of how it is measured (i.e., in social, cultural, moral, or religious terms). This is a question raised by Gleaves Whitney in an article titled, “Decadence and its Critics.“

If I can identify a more precise standard, I can possibly answer the question: If Western civilization has been in such decline as each generation—and the generation before it—has claimed, “then why has not the West maneuvered itself back into the Neanderthal valley or Lascaux cave?” In other words, Why has the West not yet “gone to the dogs” if things are in such decline as is being claimed?

Additionally, in J. R. R. Tolkien’s Sanctifying Myth, Dr. Bradley Birzer argues that Tolkien’s vision for literature “attempted to use myth to return the Western world to faith and right reason,” and that it “parallels the sentiments of numerous twentieth-century scholars and artists collectively known as Christian humanists.”

Dr. Birzer’s observation raised the question in my mind that if Tolkien was attempting to use myth in this way, and he was part of the numerous twentieth-century scholars and artists collectively known as Christian humanists, who else of interest to me might have done similar.

Flannery O’Connor certainly had.

Then I wondered about C. S. Lewis as he was so close to Tolkien (e.g, Oxford, Inklings, etc.) and discovered he had as well.

As I begin to study these three twentieth Christian humanist writers and their works, I not only began to see many correlations between their respective cultures (American South and England after WW2), but the sustained influence of their writing on their own as well as the culture at large was enough to make that claim that “While the West was clamoring to reconcile its progress with the dehumanizing results (of WWI and WWII), there were many thoughtful writers with a vision for a different kind of progress, a more human progress that included both faith and right reason.”

And when I could not find a single author who brought the three particular writers previously mentioned into conversation on this subject, I knew there was room here for more research and, ultimately, a dissertation. My dissertation committee agreed.