Abstract

This dissertation takes as its subject the four book-length autobiographical narratives of the Catholic anarchist-pacifist Dorothy Day . Written over the course of forty years, and repeatedly re-narrating many of the same events in Day's life, these books constitute a rich and fascinating subject of study and reveal the maturation of Day's narrative self-presentation, the evolving relation of religiosity, social radicalism, and writing in her life, the significant accompanying shifts in her writings' formal structure as well as in its themes, and the way these shaped and were shaped by Day's personal and socio-cultural context. ;I employ a methodology that is founded on close readings of specific passages of Day's autobiographies, historically and culturally contextualized. These concrete readings anchor correlated theoretical discussions of American and Western subjectivity, autobiography, and socio-cultural criticism for which I draw on literary theory, cultural studies, theology, and philosophy. ;Day's autobiographical narratives exhibit many qualities associated by scholars with postmodern writing---fragmentation, multiplicity of standpoints, a lack of teleology and closure, extensive dialogism, and the lack of a self-originating, clearly bounded "self." In this respect, both the content and form of Day's writing differ significantly from the canonical American and Western autobiographical tradition, in which the narrator has generally sought to establish a distinct and plenary "self" as well as a sense of narrative coherence and control to reflect and sustain that "self." Significantly, however, these postmodern qualities derive not from specifically literary aspirations on Day's part, but from her commitment to offering an alternative, pacifist, communal worldview and way of life that would radically challenge American capitalism, individualism, and bellicosity. ;Correspondingly, my goal is two-fold: on the one hand, to develop the tools for "reading" Day's writing in a way that does justice to its complexity and achievements and, on the other hand, to consider the ways in which Day's writings, on the basis of their integration of Christian religiosity and social radicalism, sustain an innovative, critical "philosophy" of narrative subjectivity and of the self's relation to the greater social community