| This dissertation consists of an examination which explores the juxtaposition of a 17th century Japanese repertoire text (sermon ballad or sekkyo) known as Oguri, with a 17th century English text, Pilgrim's Progress. The study is designed to address lacunae in scholarship regarding the female figure in both these texts. In exploring how matters of identity are mapped along cultural trajectories, this study provides an occasion for experiencing the strength of the sacred as a product of cultural hybridity while at the same time engaging in an experience with the sacred which is at the site of embodied practice.; This project is organized through the use of three thematic centers. In the first place, both Terute and Christiana's spiritual journeys take place under the rubric of a secret. Secondly, both texts use the phenomenology of fluids (in the imagery of water and of bodily fluids) to portray a hermeneutics of salvation. Fear is an issue for the women in both texts, and their salvic journeys specifically address the means of overcoming fear in order to realize spiritual fulfillment. As the texts are generated from differing epistemes (Buddhist/Shinto in Oguri and Judeo/Christian in Pilgrim's Progress) each episteme configures a different role for rhetoric in apprehending the divine, and Pilgrim's Progress Part II (unlike Oguri) takes the form of an allegory. The rhetorical frame of allegory as, a means to convey Christiana's salvatory venture invites the reader to witness her own journey of interpretive practice as we read through Christiana's text and engage in an aporetic encounter with the polysemous nature language in its ability to point to the sacred (as discussed in Maureen Quilligan's The Language of Allegory). Bunyan's language points to an apprehension of the sacred as felt experience (ascertaining/entertaining, obtaining/attaining, nourishing/vomiting) as realized through embodied practice. Both Terute's and Christiana's spiritual journies evolve along the coordinates of devotion, (in the figure of Stand-fast) and compassion (in the figure of Great-heart). |
