Criticism. This collection of essays is posited on the conviction that mythical, ecstatic and revelatory topoi in the modernist works of Yeats, Eliot, Williams, H.D., Pound, Joyce, et al, are motivated not by a sceptical and positivistic dismissal of the religious past -- as implausibly maintained by the New Criticism -- but rather these features arise out of a radical and reformist attempt to revive ancient pagan religious sensibilities. In essence, the modern occult amounts to a neo-pagan piety that is polytheistic, fleshly, erotic and ecstatic -- opposed to a Christian or Jewish piety that's monotheistic, otherworldly, ascetic and revealed. In short, the occult manifests itself in modernist literature in what Nietzsche would have called a Dionysian guise -- confused because of its rejection of Judeo-Christian sensibilities with a sceptical secularism. Among the dozen contributors here are Peter Liebregts, John Coggrave, Barry Ahearn, Leonora Woodman, M. Anthony Trembly and Archie Henderson.
Probing the relationship between modernist literary experimentation and several key strands of occult practice which emerged in Europe from roughly 1894 to 1944, this book sets the work of leading modernist writers alongside lesser known female writers and writers in languages other than English to more fully portray the aesthetic and philosophical connections between modernism and the occult. Although the early decades of the twentieth century-the era of cocktails, motorcars, bobbed hair, and war-are often described as a period of newness and innovation, many writers of the time found inspiration and visionary brilliance by turning to the mysterious occult past. This book's principle intervention is to reimagine the contours and boundaries of literary modernism by welcoming into the conversation a number of significant female writers and writers in languages other than English who are often still relegated to the fringes of modernist studies. Well-remembered poets and novelists such as Ezra Pound, W.B. Yeats, and Aleister Crowley were tied to occult beliefs, and this book sets these leading figures alongside less well-remembered but equally splendid modernists including Paul Brunton, Mary Butts, Alexandra David-Neel, Florence Farr, Dion Fortune, Hermann Hesse, and Rudolf Steiner. From the little magazines where occultism and Fabianism were comfortable companions, to consulting rooms of psychoanalysts where archetypes were revealed to be both mystical and mundane, to the forbidden mountain trails that led to formidable spiritual teachers, the conditions of modernism were invariably those conditions which inspired a return to the occult traditions that many thinkers believed had long evaporated. Indeed, in many ways these traditions were the making of the modern world. By uncovering hidden hopes and anxieties that faced a newly modern Western Europe, this book demonstrates how literary modernists understood occultism as a universal form of cultural expression which has inspired creative exuberance since the dawn of civilisation.
In The Birth of Modernism Leon Surette challenges our traditional understanding of modernism by situating the origins of modernist aesthetics in the occult.
Many modernist and avant-garde artists and authors were fascinated by the occult movements of their day. This volume explores how Occultism came to shape modernist art, literature, and film. Individual chapters examine the presence and role of Occultism in the work of such modernist luminaries as Rainer Maria Rilke, August Strindberg, W.B. Yeats, Joséphin Péladan and the artist Jan Švankmaier, as well as in avant-garde film, post-war Greek Surrealism, and Scandinavian Retrogardism. Combining the theoretical and methodological foundations of the field of Esotericism Studies with those of Literary Studies, Art History, and Cinema Studies, this volume provides in-depth and nuanced perspectives upon the relationship between Occultism and Modernism in the Western arts from the nineteenth century to the present day.
Professor Saurat's book gives us a common background of tradition for the works of such diverse poets as Milton, Blake, Shelley, Emerson & Whitman; Goethe, Heine, Wagner, & Nietzsche; Hugo, Vigny, Lamartine & Leconte de Lisle. A final chapter is devoted to a study of the philosophical ideas of Spenser's poetry.
This study of modernism's high imperial, occult-exotic affiliations presents many well-known figures from the period 1880-1960 in a new light. Modernism and the Occult traces the history of modernist engagement with 'irregular', heterodox and imported knowledge.
Probing the relationship between modernist literary experimentation and several key strands of occult practice which emerged in Europe from roughly 1894 to 1944, this book sets the work of leading modernist writers alongside lesser known female writers and writers in languages other than English to more fully portray the aesthetic and philosophical connections between modernism and the occult. Although the early decades of the twentieth century-the era of cocktails, motorcars, bobbed hair, and war-are often described as a period of newness and innovation, many writers of the time found inspiration and visionary brilliance by turning to the mysterious occult past. This book's principle intervention is to reimagine the contours and boundaries of literary modernism by welcoming into the conversation a number of significant female writers and writers in languages other than English who are often still relegated to the fringes of modernist studies. Well-remembered poets and novelists such as Ezra Pound, W.B. Yeats, and Aleister Crowley were tied to occult beliefs, and this book sets these leading figures alongside less well-remembered but equally splendid modernists including Paul Brunton, Mary Butts, Alexandra David-Neel, Florence Farr, Dion Fortune, Hermann Hesse, and Rudolf Steiner. From the little magazines where occultism and Fabianism were comfortable companions, to consulting rooms of psychoanalysts where archetypes were revealed to be both mystical and mundane, to the forbidden mountain trails that led to formidable spiritual teachers, the conditions of modernism were invariably those conditions which inspired a return to the occult traditions that many thinkers believed had long evaporated. Indeed, in many ways these traditions were the making of the modern world. By uncovering hidden hopes and anxieties that faced a newly modern Western Europe, this book demonstrates how literary modernists understood occultism as a universal form of cultural expression which has inspired creative exuberance since the dawn of civilisation.
Between 1890 and 1945, at least nine British and Irish dramatists—including W. B. Yeats, Charles Williams, and Aleister Crowley—were initiated into occult secret societies; yet scholarship has failed to acknowledge the importance of alternative spiritualities in modernist literature. This dissertation contributes a more complex, nuanced, and realistic understanding of modernism, especially drama, complicating received metanarratives about one-way cultural evolution towards secularization and literary “progress” favoring Ibsenesque and Shavian realism. Many modern plays enact the imagination’s magical power to create reality, but this truth has been erased from literary history due to selectivity bias towards texts featuring fragmentation, alienation, and nihilistic despair. Far from hiding away as atavistic reactionaries, occult playwrights posed the same questions as their avant-garde peers, presenting systems of symbolism designed to offer meaning-making strategies in the face of contemporary conditions. I provide three case-studies in support of my contentions that magic was modern, occult dramas were mainstream, and religion is essential to literary study. First is Yeats, the Hermetist, who smuggled magic into secular contexts. His Countess Cathleen and Words Upon the Window-Pane stage Golden Dawn ritual, enact his doctrine of the Daimon, and invoke audience members’ divine selves. Second is Williams, a Christian, whose Masques of Amen House, Judgement at Chelmsford, and Terror of Light snuck occultism into ecclesiastic contexts, but ultimately rejected initiatory Gnosticism. Finally, Crowley the Satanist performed spirit-summonings publicly in Rites of Eleusis. Each adapted esoteric tradition to their times, then invented new religions and innovative dramaturgical techniques for enlightening audiences. In a distinctively modernist move, each of thesewriters individualized the occult, creating new thaumaturgical systems and developing dramaturgical techniques and contexts through which to disseminate their nouveaux theologies. Given their genre-defying public performances of magic, I offer the first speech-act reading of theatrical language that takes into account the perlocutionary force of all drama, arguing that enchantments retain their illocutionary power when spoken on stage.
Examining the intersection of occult spirituality, text, and gender, this book provides a compelling analysis of the occult revival in literature from the 1880s through the course of the twentieth century. Bestselling novels such as The Da Vinci Code play with magic and the fascination of hidden knowledge, while occult and esoteric subjects have become very visible in literature during the twentieth century. This study analyses literature by women occultists such as Alice Bailey, Dion Fortune, and Starhawk, and revisits texts with occult motifs by canonical authors such as Sylvia Townsend Warner, Leonora Carrington, and Angela Carter. This material, which has never been analysed in a literary context, covers influential movements such as Theosophy, Spiritualism, Golden Dawn, Wicca, and Goddess spirituality. Wallraven engages with the question of how literature functions as the medium for creating occult worlds and powerful identities, particularly the female Lucifer, witch, priestess, and Goddess. Based on the concept of ancient wisdom, the occult in literature also incorporates topical discourses of the twentieth century, including psychoanalysis, feminism, pacifism, and ecology. Hence, as an ever-evolving discursive universe, it presents alternatives to religious truth claims that often lead to various forms of fundamentalism that we encounter today. This book offers a ground-breaking approach to interpreting the forms and functions of occult texts for scholars and students of literary and cultural studies, religious studies, sociology, and gender studies.
