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" Spiritual Grammar: "
F. Dominic Longo
W. P. Heinrichs
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Latin Dissertation
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| Language of Document
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English
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| Record Number
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1103765
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| Doc. No
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TLpq879441168
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| Main Entry
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F. Dominic Longo
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W. P. Heinrichs
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| Title & Author
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Spiritual Grammar:\ F. Dominic LongoW. P. Heinrichs
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| College
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Harvard University
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| Date
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2011
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| student score
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2011
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| Degree
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Ph.D.
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| Page No
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558
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| Abstract
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This dissertation is a comparative theological study of an Islamic and a Christian text, which, though seemingly unrelated, share a commonality that allows one text to illuminate the other. One is Nah[dotbelow]w al-qulub by Sufi master `Abd al-Karim al-Qushayri (d. 1072), and the other is Donatus moralizatus by Catholic theologian Jean Gerson (d. 1429). My study reveals that they are a hybrid genre, an intermixture of the grammatical and religious, for which I have coined the name "spiritual grammar." A central finding of my inquiry is that the mystery of grammar, the structure of that reality within us and within which we abide, provides the two masters with a way of explaining spiritual reality to their pupils and a discipline for training wayfarers in how to conduct themselves properly in the language of reality. An equally important finding is that, while these texts are just two vivid examples of "spiritual grammar," this hybrid genre is a pervasive phenomenon across historical periods and religious traditions. The defining marks of "spiritual grammar" are interconnected metaphorical schemes relating language to spiritual reality on the one hand, and relating grammar to the structure of that reality on the other. This is of enduring interest because it so powerfully expresses the interconnections among the linguistic and spiritual dimensions of the human condition. Put in Ricoeur's terms, this genre epitomizes the hermeneutic relationship between textuality and subjectivity--a relationship that holds for all texts. A further contribution is the interdisplinary methodology matching the hybridity of the authors' own compositions. From the field of theology, I draw on the pioneering approach of Francis X. Clooney, who engages in a kind of back-and-forth comparison that is "vulnerable" to the truth claims of texts from one's own and other religious traditions. From contemporary genre theory, I draw on Jauss, Derrida, and others who challenge outmoded taxonomic models of genre. My methodology is also historically grounded through a comparison of the respective educational and sociolinguistic contexts of the two "spiritual grammars." I thus elaborate the most detailed comparison to date of the medieval Arabic Islamic and Latin Christian sociolinguistic contexts.
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| Subject
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Christian
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Islam
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Language, literature and linguistics
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Medieval
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Philosophy, religion and theology
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Sufism
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