During my time at grad school, and especially while writing my dissertation, I imagine I'll investigate the confluence of the following four questions:
1. Biblical Scholarship: What is the biblical understanding of time? What is the Christian's eschatology?
2. Historical Theology: How did the Victorians read the Biblical texts in developing their eschatology?
3. Poetics: How do Victorian poets create expectations for a poem's ending, and how do they fulfill or deny those expectations?
4. Cognitive Science: What are the physical and mental aspects influence our experience of expectation and fulfillment, and how might these insights be applied to reading or hearing poetry?
The general goal will be to develop a faithful interdisciplinary project which seeks to understand human knowledge, expectations, and belief in light of the writing and reception of Victorian poetry. I'll examine the importance of the ending for human understanding in light of Christian eschatology.
