Glimpses of Her Father's Glory: Deification and Divine Light in Longfellow's Evangeline - Paperback

by Timothy E. G. Bartel (Author)

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's Evangeline was a bestseller in nineteenth-century America, inspiring generations of readers with a heroine who overcomes colonial violence and exile in her romantic and spiritual quest across America. Long ignored by modernist scholars, Evangeline is finally getting the critical attention it deserves. Drawing on original research in Longfellow's scholarly manuscripts, Bartel explores the theological sources and spiritual world of Evangeline, arguing that Longfellow was inspired by the church fathers to craft Evangeline into a heroine who uniquely exemplifies, in her epic quest, the ancient Christian doctrines of deification and divine light. Bartel's Glimpses of Her Father's Glory returns Evangeline to its rightful place as a major poem of American literature, one that takes as its theme nothing less than the ultimate purpose of human existence.

Author Biography

Timothy E. G. Bartel is assistant professor of Great Texts & Writing at The College at Saint Constantine. He holds a PhD in Divinity from University of St Andrews, and an MFA in Poetry from Seattle Pacific University. He is the author of Arroyos: Sijo and Other Poems (2015) and Aflame But Unconsumed: Poems (2019). . His essays and poems have appeared in Christianity and Literature, Notes & Queries, and Saint Katherine Review.