Date of Graduation
Spring 2016
Degree
Master of Arts in English
Department
English
Committee Chair
Shannon Wooden
Abstract
APOCRYPHA is a poetry portfolio which explores the relationship between knowledge and pain through the examination of Platonic epistemologies, Christian theologies, and Neoplatonic poetry. These poems are inspired by a crisis of faith which necessitated the telling of this story. Pain is then extrapolated into a state of suffering as delineated by theorist Eric Cassell, which then affects the intactness of the authentic self. Official Christian ideology and Christian folk knowledge compete within the foregrounds of knowledge for control over the authentic self of the individual whose pain necessitates the telling of stories, specifically health narratives as described by theorist Arthur Frank. The portfolio itself seeks to tell a complete story through the use of intertextuality of Frank's chaos narrative and quest narrative. Poetry then becomes the means by which these stories are told.
Keywords
poetry, knowledge, pain, suffering, doubt, Plato, Neoplatonism, Catholicism
Subject Categories
English Language and Literature
Copyright
© Robert Taylor Supplee
Recommended Citation
Supplee, Robert Taylor, "Apocrypha" (2016). MSU Graduate Theses/Dissertations. 2362.
https://bearworks.missouristate.edu/theses/2362
