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Acknowledgments I wish to begin by thanking Wendell Berry for the rich and honest work he has given, and continues to give, to his readers. I thank him, too, for his permission to quote more fully from the poems “Dante” and “Sabbath VII, 2008” than fair scholarly use customarily allows. I am also grateful to my editors at the University Press of Kentucky, Laura Sutton, Ann Malcolm, and Ila McEntire, and to the press director, Stephen Wrinn, for their wonderful encouragement and kind suggestions about the book. The readers of the manuscript offered careful criticism that has helped me to make this a better book than it would have been otherwise, and for this I thank them. Stanley Hauerwas and Norman Wirzba of Duke Divinity School read the manuscript and gave me important suggestions. My colleagues at Virginia Tech, Tom Gardner and Peter Graham, have been wonderful conversation partners over the years on all literary matters. I have learned a great deal from three groups of graduate students who have taken seminars with me devoted, in part, to Berry’s work. In particular, I wish to thank Sarah Parker-Clever, from whom I learned much about Remembering as she did her master’s capstone essay on that novel. I also want to thank Linda Patino and Jared Gibbs for their fine work as research assistants at different stages of the project. The English Department and College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences at Virginia Tech provided me with research assistance and a sabbatical leave that enabled me to finish the work. I especially thank my chairperson, Carolyn Rude, for her support. The staff of the Interlibrary Loan Department of the Virginia Tech Library helped me to find materials I needed, just as they have done so competently and cheerfully for the past thirty years. Finally, I wish to thank my wife, Deb, for her unfailing encouragement and kindness in all things. viii Acknowledgments ...

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