Eighteenth International Conference on New Directions in the Humanities

Abstract

I’m a scholar of French literature. However, lately I’ve been editing the last works of my late husband, Wilmer Mills, a rising poet in the New Formalist movement when he died in 2011. Along the way, I’ve published articles on the epistemology and esthetics of both Mills’ poetry and that of a contemporary poet, Christian Wiman. On a formal level, I consider how those two artists use rhetorical figures, notably paradox and metaphor, to express the inexpressible. On a personal and cultural level, I explore how they reject their fundamentalist backgrounds, incorporating doubt to their faith. In consequence, Wiman and Mills explore Christianity without reducing it to their own terms, in the literal and figurative senses. And the ambiguities of their art reach audiences with opposing views and cultures. For example, in the title, The World That Isn’t There, words invoke a world that is both present and absent. This interdisciplinary project draws on biography, theology, close readings, and the cultural and religious divides within twenty-first century America. Additionally, it interrogates the poets’ evolving identities and the role of the critic, who in this case is also a wife. Since the 1940’s, with New Criticism, literary criticism has fallen into changing and often compartmentalized schools of thought. Today, universities as well as society increasingly prioritize vocational studies over the liberal arts. Using literature and criticism to explore the breadth, depth, and complexity of human experience makes a good case for the value of the humanities in lives and educational institutions.