The Fickle Pendulum: A Poetic Investigation of Belief and Doubt Through Three “Historical” Personages – Saint Thomas the Apostle, Galileo Galilei and Laura (Riding) Jackson

Abstract

This Doctor of Arts dissertation combines a critical exegesis and a volume of poetry in a creative and scholarly inquiry into belief and doubt. In both detailed research and poetic reflection they examine and contemplate tests of faith experienced by three significant personages – Saint Thomas the Apostle, who is challenged by Jesus to touch His risen body after Thomas has expressed a need to do so before he can believe in the Resurrection; Galileo Galilei, who is examined by the Inquisition after advocating the heliocentrism of Copernicus despite the Church’s injunctions against it; and the modernist American poet Laura (Riding) Jackson, who ultimately rejects poetry as the language of truth after having been one of its most passionate advocates. Despite differences in eras and in the genera of belief and doubt the three represent, there are rich “concordances” between their respective fidelities and dubieties to be observed: the hunger for truth, the role of language and texts, the need for evidence, concepts of substantiality and how the quest for the absolute is ultimately a study in human variability. The tests of faith themselves, the issues and personalities in contention, and broader situational and literary contexts are appraised critically and decanted into the medium of poetry, deepening the dissertation’s meditation on “the Fickle Pendulum” of human spiritualty, thought and art.