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Beyond Sins and Symptoms: Suffering in Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited

Miller, Sarah Elizabeth
http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8779-1321
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=dayton1619704946246834

Abstract Details

2021, Master of Arts (M.A.), University of Dayton, English.
This work interrogates the ongoing popularity of Catholic Modern novelist Evelyn Waugh's 1945 classic Brideshead Revisited as a novel that depicts the modern struggle to find hope and meaning in the midst of suffering after the widespread onset of modernity and decline of Christianity in the wake of World Wars I and II. I argue that Waugh's characterization of Sebastian Flyte, a lapsed Catholic aristocrat struggling with familial dysfunction and subsequent alcoholism, confounds both traditional models of sin as well as psychological frameworks of diagnosis. Employing close readings from the novel as well as historical and theological context, I demonstrate that Sebastian's suffering falls into the no-mans-land between modernity and spirituality, highlighting the failures of each to support healing and the importance of embracing suffering with compassion.
David Fine, Ph.D. (Advisor)
Susan Trollinger, Ph.D. (Committee Member)
Thomas Wendorf, Ph.D. (Committee Member)
Literature; Religion
Evelyn Waugh; Brideshead Revisited; suffering; Catholicism; modernism; sin; diagnosis

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Miller, S. E. (2021). Beyond Sins and Symptoms: Suffering in Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited [Master's thesis, University of Dayton]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=dayton1619704946246834

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Miller, Sarah. Beyond Sins and Symptoms: Suffering in Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited. 2021. University of Dayton, Master's thesis. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=dayton1619704946246834.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Miller, Sarah. "Beyond Sins and Symptoms: Suffering in Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited." Master's thesis, University of Dayton, 2021. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=dayton1619704946246834

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

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This open access ETD is published by University of Dayton and OhioLINK.