Restanțierii din perioada de grație au putut da primul examen pe 29 mai, ora 15:00. Următoarele două oportunități de prezentare la examen sînt 3 iunie, ora 14:00 și 11 iunie, ora 15:00.
Atenție! Condițiile de intrare în restanță/reexaminare, adică eseu valabil și conspecte (+ prezență pentru 1a examinare din perioada de grație), rămîn aceleași.
Linkurile de acces sînt următoarele:
3 iunie - https://meet.google.com/wng-wpye-xdz
11 iunie - https://meet.google.com/bwe-pwjv-fte
Dacă nu primiți acces la meeting imediat, solicitați din nou după 5-10 min.
click here to see:
Tuesday, June 2, 2020
Friday, May 8, 2020
INFORMAȚII
DESPRE EXAMEN
(detalii suplimentare despre restanțe/reexaminări la sfîrșitul mesajului)
(detalii suplimentare despre restanțe/reexaminări la sfîrșitul mesajului)
1. MODALITATEA DE EXAMINARE.
Examenul pentru acest curs în
sesiunea iunie 2020 este oral și se va desfășura online pe data de 28 IUNIE, ORA 9:30.
N.B. În
cazuri cu totul excepționale și temeinic motivate în care un/o student(ă) nu
are mijloacele tehnice de a participa online la examen, se va putea întîlni
față în față, la aceeași dată, la sediul din Pitar Moș al facultății, cu
titularul cursului și va susține examenul acolo.
Pentru aceasta, respectiva/ul va trebui să anunțe titularul cursului în prealabil cu cel puțin o săptămînă înainte de examen.
Simultan, vor fi prezenți online ceilalți membri ai comisiei și încă 3-4 studenți.
Pentru aceasta, respectiva/ul va trebui să anunțe titularul cursului în prealabil cu cel puțin o săptămînă înainte de examen.
Simultan, vor fi prezenți online ceilalți membri ai comisiei și încă 3-4 studenți.
2. COMPORTAMENTUL ÎN TIMPUL EXAMENULUI.
Vor primi pe rînd permisiunea de a
intra simultan online cîte 4-5 studenți/studente.
Fiecăru/eia îi va fi alocat aleatoriu un singur subiect de examen.
Timp mediu de pregătire:
cca. 25-30 min. Timpul mediu de răspuns: 7-8 min.
Se poate schimba subiectul (dar se vor scădea
2 pct. din nota de examen) dacă se anunță acest lucru după maxim 5 min. de
la primirea primului subiect.
Studentul are obligația de a menține deschise camera video și microfonul de la momentul în care a fost admis în examen și pînă la sfîrșitul evaluării. În caz contrar, examinarea va trebui reluată ori, dacă problemele persistă, anulată.
Studentul are obligația de a menține deschise camera video și microfonul de la momentul în care a fost admis în examen și pînă la sfîrșitul evaluării. În caz contrar, examinarea va trebui reluată ori, dacă problemele persistă, anulată.
3. MANIERA DE EVALUARE ȘI SUGESTII PENTRU REZOLVAREA SUBIECTELOR:
Comisia va lua în considerare doar studierea directă și pe cont propriu a bibliografiei obligatorii (mai ales textele prime) de către student(ă) și va nota doar capacitatea personală de înțelegere și analiză.
Comisia va lua în considerare doar studierea directă și pe cont propriu a bibliografiei obligatorii (mai ales textele prime) de către student(ă) și va nota doar capacitatea personală de înțelegere și analiză.
De aceea, vă prevenim să nu studiați după
notițele de curs/examen ale altcuiva și să nu vă împărțiți între voi sarcina de
a pregăti doar unele dintre subiecte pentru ca apoi să faceți schimb de
informații.
Puteți și e bine să consultați și alte surse ori materiale (inclusiv cursurile online), dar acestea nu pot înlocui parcurgerea serioasă și pe cont propriu a întregii bibliografii obligatorii, care este condiția minimală de promovare.
Comisia va pune întrebări cu scopul de a afla ce știe, iar nu ce nu știe studentul/a și de a verifica dacă a fost parcursă bibliografia relevantă pentru acel subiect. Pentru o notă mai/foarte bună, comisia va aprecia capacitatea studentului/studentei
Puteți și e bine să consultați și alte surse ori materiale (inclusiv cursurile online), dar acestea nu pot înlocui parcurgerea serioasă și pe cont propriu a întregii bibliografii obligatorii, care este condiția minimală de promovare.
Comisia va pune întrebări cu scopul de a afla ce știe, iar nu ce nu știe studentul/a și de a verifica dacă a fost parcursă bibliografia relevantă pentru acel subiect. Pentru o notă mai/foarte bună, comisia va aprecia capacitatea studentului/studentei
- de a procesa și reformula informațiile,
- de a sugera concis maniere de a aplica ideile teoretice
și terminologia critică,
- de a face legături între texte sau idei,
- de a se exprima într-o engleză corectă, exactă și
nuanțată.
4. CONDIȚII DE INTRARE ÎN EXAMEN.
Conform condițiilor anunțate încă de la
început, sînt admiși în această sesiune de examinare doar cei care
- au
încărcat pe Turnitin un eseu critic valid (care nu e
plagiat și îndeplinește condițiile anunțate pe site și la seminar),
- au
trimis conspectele/notițele de lectură și
- au
îndeplinit baremul de prezență (5 din 7 ori 4 din 6
prezențe la seminar).
N.B. Date fiind condițiile speciale în care am
funcționat începînd cu 11 martie, se vor contabiliza ca prezențe la
seminar și transmiterea prin email la termen a temelor de
seminar.
Cei care nu au îndeplinit baremul, dar au cel puțin 3 prezențe din 7 seminarii, respectiv 2 din 6, vor putea intra la prima sesiune de examinare, dar vor primi un subiect suplimentar de analiză a unui (fragment) de text din bibliografia obligatorie.
Cei care nu au îndeplinit baremul, dar au cel puțin 3 prezențe din 7 seminarii, respectiv 2 din 6, vor putea intra la prima sesiune de examinare, dar vor primi un subiect suplimentar de analiză a unui (fragment) de text din bibliografia obligatorie.
Pentru a doua și a
treia sesiune de examen rămîne valabilă condiția eseului de seminar, dar se vor putea prezenta și cei care nu au fost admiși
prima dată din cauza absențelor de la seminar.
5. PROGRAMAREA.
Vom afișa pe site/blog și pe G. Classsroom o
programare a intrării în examen pe grupe deîndată
ce vom primi calendarul examenelor de la secretariatul FLLS (probabil spre
finele săpt. viitoare).
6. RĂSPUNDEREA STUDENȚILOR PRIVIND BUNA
INFORMARE
Nu se vor accepta
scuze privind necunoașterea informațiilor postate ori transmise prin email. Odată
comunicate informațiile despre curs/seminar/examen etc. pe siteul/blogul
cursului, pe Google Classroom, ori prin email (prin intermediul conducătorului
de seminar și a șefului de grupă), cade în sarcina fiecărui student/fiecărei
studente să parcurgă cu atenție acele informații.
Studenții au
obligația de a aduce deîndată la cunoștința profesorilor orice probleme
întîmpină, altfel ele nu pot fi
invocate ca scuză la finele semestrului ori la momentul examinării.
Dacă nu ați parcurs
încă informațiile de pe site/blog ori G. Classroom, ar fi bine să o faceți de
urgență.
Dacă după ce ați parcurs informațiile de pe site sau G. Classroom mai aveți nelămuriri, luați imediat legătura cu șefii de grupă și/sau cu profesorul de seminar:
Dacă după ce ați parcurs informațiile de pe site sau G. Classroom mai aveți nelămuriri, luați imediat legătura cu șefii de grupă și/sau cu profesorul de seminar:
Bogdan Ștefănescu - bogdan.stefanescu@lls.unibuc.ro
Andreea Paris-Popa - andreea.parispopa@lls.unibuc.ro
7. RESTANȚELE.
Modalitatea de examinare este cea anunțată
mai sus.
Restanțierii din anul III vor da reexaminarea pe 11 iunie, ora 15:00.
Restanțierii din anul III vor da reexaminarea pe 11 iunie, ora 15:00.
Restanțierii din perioada de
grație vor da primul examen pe 29 mai, ora 15:00. Următoarele două oportunități de prezentare la examen sînt 3 iunie, ora 14:00 și 11 iunie, ora 15:00.
Condițiile de intrare în restanță/reexaminare, adică eseu valabil și conspecte (+ prezență pentru 1a examinare din perioada de grație), rămîn aceleași.
Condițiile de intrare în restanță/reexaminare, adică eseu valabil și conspecte (+ prezență pentru 1a examinare din perioada de grație), rămîn aceleași.
Friday, April 10, 2020
FREE ACCESS TO LITERARY ENCYCLOPEDIA
Dear all,
Please note that you can use your institutional email account to sign up for the Literary Encyclopedia at https://www.litencyc.com/. Given the Covid 19 situation, L.E. is granting free access until 30 June.
Please note that you can use your institutional email account to sign up for the Literary Encyclopedia at https://www.litencyc.com/. Given the Covid 19 situation, L.E. is granting free access until 30 June.
Saturday, March 28, 2020
ONLINE TEACHING ANNOUNCEMENT
Dear students,
Please note that I have started uploading reading material and occasional presentations (see below).
Please also check the Google Classroom platform (link here). Make a note of the code: f5pdniq needed for you to join the class.
You can talk to me (ask, suggest or share things) at any time using the ”add comment” line here (below). I will try to answer ASAP. Alternatively, you can use the comments function on the Google Classroom ”Stream” page.
Starting 31 March, during our regular hours (Tuesdays 16-18) I will be available for real-time interchanges via the comments function here in Google Classroom. I intend to attempt live/synchronous classes via Google Meet possibly in two weeks' time. I will first announce it both here and on the Google Classroom site.
Stay safe and use this time to read and reflect. (But don't forget to have some fun as well!...)
Bogdan Ștefănescu
Please note that I have started uploading reading material and occasional presentations (see below).
Please also check the Google Classroom platform (link here). Make a note of the code: f5pdniq needed for you to join the class.
You can talk to me (ask, suggest or share things) at any time using the ”add comment” line here (below). I will try to answer ASAP. Alternatively, you can use the comments function on the Google Classroom ”Stream” page.
Starting 31 March, during our regular hours (Tuesdays 16-18) I will be available for real-time interchanges via the comments function here in Google Classroom. I intend to attempt live/synchronous classes via Google Meet possibly in two weeks' time. I will first announce it both here and on the Google Classroom site.
Stay safe and use this time to read and reflect. (But don't forget to have some fun as well!...)
Bogdan Ștefănescu
Tuesday, March 24, 2020
ONLINE TEACHING - LECTURE #5
LECTURE #5 (ONLINE)
MYTH AND MYSTICAL
EXPERIENCE IN 20TH-CENTURY BRITISH LITERATURE
The main argument of the course is that the
major contributions to and innovations in, 20th c. art in Britain and elsewhere
in Western culture occur under the sign of irrationalism
(i.e., a distrust of reason and rationalism, intellectualism, logic and
analysis, common sense etc.) which takes many forms and is pursued along
various avenues of literary exploration. One of these is the rediscovery of the
irrational experience of mysticism and the impenetrable nature of myth.
Perhaps it is natural
to start a review of writers attached to the incomprehensible world of myth with
Irish writer William Butler Yeats (1865-1939), a Nobel prize winner best known
and revered for his poetry which may still enchant us with its exquisite
combination of mystery and sensuality. Like Blake before him, whom he admired, Yeats’
imagination was steeped in a world of mystical fervor and of the occult (they
both admired Swedish mystic Swedenborg), but as an Irish nationalist his poetic
creativity drew avidly from Gaelic folklore, Celtic mythology. In reviving and
reshaping the myths and legends of yore, however, he combined them
imaginatively with idiosyncratic ideas from Gnostic and esoteric thought. This often
yielded a mythopoeic streak in Yeats’ poetry, who is credited as a myth-making
artist. His mystical opinions about the world and human history were
systematized in a book called A Vision (1925).
Yeats’ approach to poetry
shared a lot with Symbolism. The symbols that he uses in practically every poem
are neither gimmicks to induce a mysterious atmosphere, nor mere artistic ornaments.
Instead, they perform a mystical function of joining two worlds by endowing the
unassuming elements of the material and the physical life with transcendental
and eternal significance. Take, for instance, the poem The Song of the Old Mother:
I rise in the dawn, and I kneel and blow
Till the seed of the fire flicker and glow;
And then I must scrub and bake and sweep
Till stars are beginning to blink and peep;
And the young lie long and dream in their bed
Of the matching of ribbons for bosom and head,
And their day goes over in idleness,
And they sigh if the wind but lift up a tress:
While I must work because I am old,
And the seed of the fire gets feeble and cold.
Till the seed of the fire flicker and glow;
And then I must scrub and bake and sweep
Till stars are beginning to blink and peep;
And the young lie long and dream in their bed
Of the matching of ribbons for bosom and head,
And their day goes over in idleness,
And they sigh if the wind but lift up a tress:
While I must work because I am old,
And the seed of the fire gets feeble and cold.
At one level of
reading, this may be a snapshot of the decay and indignity of old age. The ancient
woman is reduced to a mere functional role where serving the young through hard
manual labor is her only reason for (still) being. At best, the fire getting
feeble and cold is an analogy for her dwindling vitality. But if one considers
the symbolic and archetypal implications of the elements and actions in the
poem, it all acquires unexpected transcendental significance. The hearth is a
central element in a home and the axis of human dwelling; taking care of the
fire and keeping it alive is a symbol of preserving both life and the eternal light
of the spirit which is ignored and endangered by the oblivious new generations
with their frivolous modern style. The use of the unexpected metaphor “the seed of the fire” suggests that this
might be a fertility ritual. In this archetypal reading, “old” now means
primeval and eternal.
In a similar fashion, Leda and the Swan is the brusque anatomy
of a beastly violent action such as Zeus who takes the shape of a swan in order
to rape an unsuspecting maiden, but Yeats insinuates that it all has
larger-than-life implications. Superficially, the poem may sound almost pornographic.
It could be seen as a no more than a voyeuristic, perverse fixation on the details
of the brutal sexual act (“…her thighs caressed/By the dark webs”, “How can
those terrified vague fingers push/The feathered glory from her loosening
thighs?”, or “A shudder in the loins”). Yet, there is an implication that the
omnipotent god is able to deliberately enact some impenetrable divine design by
a loosening of base mating instincts.
The poem also seems to
suggest that everything that happens is morally ambivalent in a world were contraries
coexist. Indeed, one constant concern in Yeats’ poetry is with the dialectical
battle and union of contradictory forces in the universe (coincidentia oppositorum). Destruction of an old order and
civilization (the Trojan war) is the premise of a new, glorious civilization
(Aeneas fleeing from fallen Troy is the ancestor of Romulus the legendary founder
of Rome – a great empire that start from a fratricide as Romulus kills his
brother Remus in some accounts). The penetration of the maiden is justified by impenetrable
godly intentions. A vile action such as a rape (or fratricide) leads to the
creation of a majestic civilization which is endowed with the glory of the divine
rapist. We are led to believe that making history and human progress are
predicated upon evil and wrong-doing.
Every time he discusses an individual
experience or a historical incident, Yeats does it by projecting these
incidents against a larger metaphysical frame where they acquire cosmic
significance in keeping with his mystical philosophy of the baffling union of the
sensual and the spiritual, of the material and the immaterial, and of all opposite
forces. (A similar intuition of the metaphysical force of the sensual will
later feature in the poetry of Ted Hughes or Seamus Heaney.) But the magnetism
of his work comes from the gifted matching of metaphysical sophistication with irresistible
music of his verse, as demonstrated by a host of poems of which The Song of Wandering Angus, The lake Isle
of Innisfree, He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven, or When You Are Old.
(You can hear Yeats reciting from
his own poetry here - link
to Yeats audio.)
In a modern world defined
by capitalism and technology, a world increasingly entrapped by materialism and
given to frivolity, the more reflexive and sensitive artists at the turn of the
20th century warned the public against these perils and tried to
point in the direction of more profound and mysterious realities. They wanted
to rekindle an appetite for the sacred power of myth, but in the new cultural
climate myths had to be reimagined and rephrased in a language that would both entice
and intrigue. Myth, archetype, symbol – these had become the new tools of the
literary trade for writers of the early 20th century such W. B.
Yeats, Thomas Hardy, Joseph, Conrad, D. H. Lawrence, Virginia Woolf, James Joyce,
T. S. Eliot, E. M. Forster or, in the second half of the century, Robert Graves,
John Fowles, William Golding, Geoffrey Hill, Thom Gunn, Ted Hughes, or Seamus
Heaney – to say nothing of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis and an entire literary
realm of (heroic) fantasies.
TO BE CONTINUED…
Tuesday, March 17, 2020
ONLINE TEACHING - LECTURE #4
Dear all,
I'm evaluating options to continue our classes online. I will be announcing shortly which of the available online teaching/conference platforms I will be using.
In the meantime, please find below an impromptu draft of my lecture for today.
Please use the "Follow" option/button and post comments (at the end of this post you have a button for that) should you have questions. I will be available from 16-18 h. to answer them in real time.
Until soon,
B. Ș.
I'm evaluating options to continue our classes online. I will be announcing shortly which of the available online teaching/conference platforms I will be using.
In the meantime, please find below an impromptu draft of my lecture for today.
Please use the "Follow" option/button and post comments (at the end of this post you have a button for that) should you have questions. I will be available from 16-18 h. to answer them in real time.
Until soon,
B. Ș.
LECTURE #4 (ONLINE)
THE REDISCOVERY OF MYTH
AND MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE
AND MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE
CONTINUITY
The main argument of
the course is that the major contributions to and innovations in, 20th c. art
in Britain and elsewhere in Western culture occur under the sign of irrationalism (i.e., a distrust of
reason and rationalism, intellectualism, logic and analysis, common sense etc.).
This stand was foreshadowed by the Romantic revolt against
reason/rationalism and materialism/the empirical (viz. the utilitarian,
pragmatic, and materialist bent of Western modernity).
Examples: Blake was a
mystical, prophetic artist and he saw Newton as an arch-villain whose
mechanistic rationalized account of the universal laws of physics he called
“single vision and Newton’s sleep”. Blake protested that there is no corporeal
existence, and “mental things alone are real”. In fact, all English Romantics
dwell in an inner universe of imagination and mystery, reverie, intuition,
empathy or melancholy, purged of the insufferable reason (Wordsworth called it
“our meddling intellect”) and free from the material.
LECTURE 4.
One such strand of
irrationalism in 20th-century Western thought and art is the rediscovery of irrationality in mythical imagination and in mystical
experience. The intellectual climate that proved influential in the
realm of the arts leading to a renewed awareness of the irrational included a
number of anthropological, theological, philosophical, psychoanalytical works
which reached the educated public in Britain and Europe.
One example of a work that
whetted the appetite for myth and non-Christian approaches to the divine was
the anthropological study by Sir James Frazer, The Golden Bough. It was
published from 1890-1915 in 12 successive volumes and in 1921 the one-volume
abridged edition came out, which, although heavily criticized by the experts,
was the text that became more readily available to non-specialized readers and
influenced the cultural elites. Frazer set out to conduct a minute comparative
survey and provide a (speculative) interpretation of the recurrent image or theme
(today you might call it an archetype) of the golden bough. His comparative
approach to diverse mythologies suggests that there may be one and the same
sacred story behind various myths from apparently unrelated cultures. It also
hints that the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ may be no more than one
of many variants of the same myth of the death and rebirth of nature, of the
(human) sacrifice required for a new cycle of life to begin and for fertility
to be restored.
Frazer discusses the nature of magic as embodied by
primitive/pagan mythology in relation to religion (Christian) and modern science.
Magic works by a misuse of the law of association, through similarity and
contiguity (proximity and/or contact). As opposed to magic, science can verify
its conclusions, its finds by induction of laws against reality. But both magic
and science believe in the existence of immutable impersonal laws governing
nature; they both use the laws of association/associative thinking in their
logical deductions and inferences. By contrast, religion believes that the
course taken by nature is elastic, unpredictable as dictated by the
unforeseeable powers of divinity that may change reality and produce unexpected
turns of events. In magic and science, the powers are subordinated to the human
will and knowledge (they can be predicted, controlled, and used), in religion
you can only propitiate, win over the grace/favors of the supernatural being to
whom you are inferior.
Frazer was not very sympathetic to mythology and the
mystical, he was a scientist with a rational, analytical, detached approach to
his object of study, which he felt was the product of superstitious, uneducated
minds that have not been exposed to the beneficial effects of science. Still,
Frazer’s book is an invaluable investigation of mythology especially since he
introduces comparative techniques and ventures beyond Classical mythology and
Christian faith into hitherto unstudied mythologies and religious beliefs.
In spite of the
controversy the work generated and of its unsympathetic critical reception
amongst other scholars, The Golden Bough inspired the creative literature
of the period. Frazer’s survey documented the complexity and wealth of mythical
representations of divinity, well beyond the Christian culture, and thus
stirred the imagination of many a writer. Examples include William Butler Yeats’
reference to the golden bough in his poem "Sailing to Byzantium", T.
S. Eliot’s acknowledged indebtedness to Frazer in the first note to his poem The
Waste Land, Robert Graves’ study on poetry, ritual, and myth, The White
Goddess (1948), where Frazer's concept of the royal sacrifice for the good
of the kingdom is adapted to the romantic idea of the poet's suffering for the
sake of his divine Muse. The substantial list of cultural personalities
influenced by Frazer’s book may also include writers like James Joyce, Ernest
Hemingway, David Herbert Lawrence, Ezra Pound, as well as psychoanalysts
Sigmund Freud and Carl Gustav Jung, the Cambridge ritualist anthropologists or comparatist
and myth critic Joseph Campbell.
Frazer’s contemporary,
German theologian and scholar of comparative religious studies Rudolph Otto,
had a totally different attitude towards religious experience and human
representations of the divine. He, too, set out to study religious culture and imagination
through a scientific and comparative methodology, but, unlike Frazer, he was
not unsympathetic to his object of study.
Influence on Paul Tillich and Mircea Eliade (viz. The Sacred and the Profane).
His most influential
book is Das Heilige - Über das Irrationale in der Idee des Göttlichen und
sein Verhältnis zum Rationalen (1917, translated into English as The Idea of the Holy: An
Inquiry into the Non-Rational Factor in the Idea of the Divine and its Relation
to the Rational, 1923), which claims that a rationalist approach is
counter-productive in understanding divinity/the sacred. He believes that
orthodox religious views have been reduced to a merely rational account of
divinity which is insufficient and inappropriate for understanding the true
nature of the divine. Therefore, Otto sets out to propose that the irrational is,
in fact, the essence of the divine. This is not an entirely new notion in the
Christian tradition, as one of the Fathers of the Christian Church (Tertulian) famously
pronounced “Credo quia absurdum est”
(I believe because it is absurd). He may have meant that if something makes sense to the limited human understanding, then it
cannot be divine. If we can produce a perfectly intelligible explanation of
divinity, then it must be unfaithful to the incommensurability and, therefore,
the incomprehensibility of the divine, which no human intellect can contain. But
if something looks absurd to us and incomprehensible, then it must surely come
from God.
To demonstrate this,
Otto invokes the old concept of arethon (Gk. ‘ineffable’),
unspeakable reality and proposes the “numinous” (from Lat. numen meaning "divine will or power"), an awe-inspiring presence of a non-representational supernatural
reality, devoid of a definite shape. He argues that the divine cannot be
perceived, therefore the holy is more of a sentiment, a sense of the sacred
best captured by the phrase mysterium tremendum, a feeling of
grandeur, of infinite energy, of an implacable and incomprehensible will (omnipotence).
The mystery is
nurtured by the very ineffability of the numinous. Yet, Otto posits that the
numinous can be somehow “transmitted”, though a more apt way of putting it
would be to say that it can only be “awakened… induced, incited, and aroused”.
The direct expression, the passing from mind to mind of this peculiar form of
consciousness can only be done by means of empathy, intuition or communion (“a
penetrative imaginative sympathy with what passes in the other person’s mind”).
There are also indirect means of expressing this inexpressible numinous inner
reality by means of a host of images of holy dread or fear, as well as by the
holy languages and vocabularies of religious ceremonies.
But Otto’s analysis
becomes especially relevant to literature when he talks about “means by which
the numinous is expressed in art”. Unsurprisingly, given the long cultural
tradition of the notion, Otto feels the artistic mode best equipped to express
the numinous is “the sublime” which he associates with the symbolic
architecture of Stonehenge or the pyramids. One is reminded both of Hegel’s
discussion of the symbolic nature of Egyptian architecture in his (Lectures on) Aesthetics, as well as of
Edmund Burke’s treatise On the Sublime and the Beautiful (1756)
where the English thinker claims, like Otto, that the sublime is the human
reaction to the incomprehensible experience of the transcendental, something that
goes beyond our understanding, beyond the quantitative and qualitative limits
of our human condition. The two authors also coincide in believing that the
transcendental can only be experienced through feelings of awe or fear (horror
sacrum). Otto also mentions the “magical” and the Gothic as
predilect modes of artistically expressing the numinous, but he insists that
art has more direct means of representing the numinous, and these are Darkness
(more precisely, the crepuscular or “semi-darkness”), Silence (euphemía or avoidance of inappropriate
language), and, for oriental art, Emptiness.
In 1932, another of Otto’s
influential books came out in English, Mysticism
East and West. A Comparative Analysis of the Nature of Mysticism (the
German original was published in 1926 - https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.281152/page/n7/mode/2up).
Another important charge
against reason and rationalism came from psychoanalysis, a discipline which
impacted artistic and critical circles in the West considerably. Psychoanalysis
proposed, among other things, that the human mind is dominated by the
irrational mechanisms of the unconscious which are at play in all cultural
fields, including religion, myth, and the arts. Although chiefly concerned with
the individual unconscious, Sigmund Freud was not
oblivious of the irrational nature of cultural practices such as mysticism, myth-making,
and religion. He published Totem and
Taboo (1913) and Moses and Monotheism
(1939) where, like Frazer, he also broaches the question of regicide from the
perspective of the Oedipus complex (patricide, therefore), of trauma and of
guilt.
Freud admitted to
having been prompted to write Totem and
Taboo by the works of James Frazer and of Carl Gustav Jung,
another famous and influential personality who undertook to study the sacred.
Jung proposed a larger explanation of the psyche than Freudian psychoanalysis,
which was his starting point. To that effect he resorted to the notion of the “collective
unconscious” and postulated that this type of irrational but trans-individual
unconscious activity takes forms which he called “archetypes”. Archetypes are
innate (part of racial memory) and internal (i.e., not available to our
sense-perceptions in the external world), but they are the structuring psychic principles
behind the symbolic manifestations that become available to us. Like Otto, Jung
found these mental manifestations to be indeterminate, elusive, ineffable. An
archetype is “an irrepresentable unconscious, pre-existent form that seems to
be part of the inherited structure of the psyche and can therefore manifest
itself spontaneously anywhere, at any time”.
The major archetypes that
Jung talks about include the ego (the rational and willful core of one’s
consciousness manifested through images, metaphors, themes), the shadow (the
dark, negative, repulsive part of the unconscious), the persona (a
fragment of the collective unconscious superimposed on the individual psyche), the
animus - anima pair by which Jung explains the human psyche to be
bi-sexual (the core of an individual’s unconscious is the principle of the
opposite gender—anima for a male, animus for a female—which we project
onto the outside world), the child (preconscious of the collective soul), the spirit (the opposite of the child and represented as
a wise old man), the androgene (containing both sides/principles/energies of
the world), the self (a totalizing representation of both the conscious
and the unconscious and a harmonizing of contraries).
Jung was an avid
student of myth(ologies), of the esoteric traditions, and of western and
eastern mysticism and his thoughts on these matters became influential in England after the publication in 1916 of the English
translation of his Psychology of the Unconscious (Wandlungen und
Symbole der Libido) and then again starting with the 1930s. In fact, Jung
and English literature acted as reciprocal influences: like Freud, Jung drew
some of his intuitions and found confirmation in Shakespeare’s dramas (e.g., Hamlet,
Macbeth) and he tried his hand at a… Jungian interpretation of Joyce’s Ulysses.
D. H. Lawrence confessed to being impressed by Jung’s work and so were literary
critics like Herbert Read and Maud Bodkin.
Starting with the 1950s, a renewed interest in myth grew in the United
States and, generally, in the English speaking literary world with the help of
literary critics like Joseph Campbell (The Hero with a Thousand Faces,
1946, The Masks of God, 1959-1967) and Northrop Frye (Anatomy of
Criticism, 1957) or philosophers like Ernst Cassirer (Language as Myth,
1953). In conclusion, the more popular contributions of anthropology, the comparative
study of religions, and psychoanalysis/Jungianism, together with literary
criticism and philosophy have sparked and entertained a constant fascination
with the world of myth and mystical imagination which lay beyond the reaches of
our rationalizations. Throughout the century, writers kept tapping onto the
notion that literature might be a modern(ist) avatar for the myth-making
creativity of the human imagination which challenges modern man’s rationalist
and materialist understanding of the world. The next (our fifth) lecture will
be looking at some examples of twentieth-century writing in this category.
Suggested readings:
Steven Connor, “Modernity and Myth”, The Cambridge History of
Twentieth-Century English Literature, edited by Laura Marcus and Peter
Nicholls, Cambridge University Press, 2008, pages 251-268.
Thursday, March 12, 2020
CLASSES SUSPENDED TILL 31 MARCH
As you have probably heard, the University has decided to suspend face-to-face classed until 31 March.
I will find an alternative solution for our classes and will post the information on this site.
Please ”stay tuned”. Also, be vigilent, but calm and reasonable.
I will find an alternative solution for our classes and will post the information on this site.
Please ”stay tuned”. Also, be vigilent, but calm and reasonable.
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