Author: Patrick J. Keane File Type: pdf As much a doubter as a believer, Emily Dickinson often expressed views about God in generaland God with respect to suffering in particular. In many of her poems, she contemplates the question posed by countless theologians and poets before her how can one reconcile a benevolent deity with evil in the world?Examining Dickinsons perspectives on the role played by a supposedly omnipotent and all-loving God in a world marked by violence and pain, Patrick Keane initially focuses on her poem Apparently with no surprise, in which frost, a blonde Assassin, beheads a happy Flower, a spectacle presided over by an Approving God. This tiny lyric,Keane shows, epitomizes the poets embattled relationship with the deity of her Calvinist tradition.Although the problem of sufferingis usually couched in terms of natural disasters or human injustice, Dickinson found new ways of considering it. By choosing a flower as her innocent victim, she bypassed standard answers to the dilemma (suffering as justified punishment for wickedness, or as attributable to the assertion of free will) in order to focus on the problem in its purest symbolic form. Keane goes on toprovide close readings of many of Dickinsons poems and letters engaging God, showing how she addressed the challenges posedby her own experience and by an innate skepticism reinforced by a nascent Darwinismto the argument from design and the concept of a benevolent deity.More than a dissection of a single poem, Keanes book is a sweeping personal reflection on literature and religion, faith and skepticism, theology and science. He traces the evolving history of the Problem of Suffering from the Hebrew Scriptures (Job and Ecclesiastes), through the writings of Paul, Augustine, and Aquinas, to the most recent theological and philosophical studies of the problem. Keane is interested in how readers today respond to Emily Dickinsons often combative poems about God at the same time, she is located as a poet whose creative life coincided with the momentous changes and challenges to religious faith associated with Darwin andNietzsche.Keane also considers Dickinsons poems and letters in the context of the great Romantic tradition, as it runs fromMilton throughWordsworth, demonstrating how thework of these poets (perhaps surprisingly in the case of the latter)helps illuminate Dickinsons poetry and thought. Because Dickinson the poet was also Emily the gardener, her love of flowers was an appropriate vehicle for her observations on mortality and her expressions of doubt. Emily Dickinsons Approving God is a graceful study that reveals not only the audacity of Dickinsons thought but also its relevance to modern readers. In light of ongoing confrontations between Darwinism and design, science and literal conceptions of a divine Creator, it is an equally provocative read for students of literature and students of life.**

Author: Steve Marti File Type: pdf Canadians often characterize their military history as a march toward nationhood, but in the first eighty years of Confederation they were fighting for the British Empire. War forced Canadians to re-examine their relationship to Britain and to one another. As French Canadians, Indigenous peoples, and those with roots in continental Europe and beyond mobilized for war, their participation challenged the imagined homogeneity of Canada as a British nation. Fighting with the Empire examines the paradox of a national contribution to an imperial war effort, finding middle ground between affirming the emergence of a nation through warfare and equating Canadian nationalism with British imperialism. __Review Canadians often characterize their military history as a march toward nationhood, but in the first eighty years of Confederation they were fighting for the British Empire. From 1867 to 1947, war or threat of war forced Canadians to consider what bound them as a nation and entangled them in a string of overseas conflicts. The contribution of Canadian lives and resources to imperial warfare supported a constitutional transition from colony to nation, but it also disrupted the comfortable logic of national imperialism and fundamentally transformed popular perceptions of Canadas relationship to the Empire. As French Canadians, Indigenous peoples, and those with roots in Continental Europe and beyond mobilized in support of war and to protect their rights as British subjects, their participation challenged the imagined homogeneity of Canada as a British nation. From soldiers overseas to workers and volunteers on the home front - and from the cultural ties of imperial pageantry to the social bonds of race and class - Fighting with the Empire examines the paradox of a national contribution to an imperial war effort. This insightful collection of connected case studies explores the middle ground between narratives that celebrate the emergence of a nation through warfare and those that equate Canadian nationalism with British imperialism. Review Fighting with the Empire addresses central controversies about the very nature of Canadian national history and how imperialism and nationalism intersect. It exposes ethnic and racist assumptions and offers original insights into how different groups used the Crown and British heritage in their pursuit of particular goals. I highly recommend it. (Isabel Campbell, Directorate of History and Heritage, Canadian Department of National Defence)