Dante, Bunyan and the Case for a Protestant Aesthetics

Abstract:  This article argues that, despite common assumptions, Protestants possess a unique aesthetic framework. Building on seventeenth-century ideas of the 'Protestant reader', aesthetic attitudes in Dante's Divine Comedy are contrasted with those in Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress . Dante's emphasis on images which spark desire is contrasted with Bunyan's hermeneutic of suspicion; the role of seeing in one replaced by reading in the other. This leads to an aesthetic framework emphasizing the brokenness of the world and a distrust of earthly beauty; a preference for aesthetic forms whose 'beauty' is hidden or allusive; and a prophetic engagement and resistance against the world's brokenness.     

RELATIONAL DISTANCE IN MANAGING CONFLICT

This study assessed the extent to which providing a problem-solving structure to conflicting dyads might impact members' use of language to mark their relational distance. It was hypothesized that conflicting subjects instructed to use a set of decision rules to resolve the conflict would use less immediate and more formal relational code choices than conflicting subjects free to resolve the conflict in any manner they chose. This hypothesis was confirmed for the immediacy, but not the formality variable. The discussion section suggested that because decision rules may encourage conflicting dyads to use less “liking” language to resolve their dispute, such rules may serve to discourage participants from creating more integrative solutions to conflicts.