Beyond Belief: Literature, Esotericism Studies, and the Challenges of Biographical Reading in Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Land of Mist
Over the last decade, esotericism studies has witnessed a distinct literary turn, as more and more of the field’s primarily religious studies-based researchers have recognized the value, and indeed, centrality, of imaginative literature to the transmission of occult and new religious ideas. Although...
| Published in: | Aries |
|---|---|
| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
|
| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Brill
2022
|
| In: |
Aries
|
| Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains: | B
Doyle, Arthur Conan 1859-1930, The Land of mist
/ Literature
/ Esotericism
|
| RelBib Classification: | AD Sociology of religion; religious policy AZ New religious movements KBF British Isles |
| Further subjects: | B
afterlife writing
B biographical interpretation B The Land of Mist (1925–1926) B Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930) B Professor Challenger B Spiritualism B Literature and Esotericism Studies |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (kostenfrei) Volltext (kostenfrei) |
| Summary: | Over the last decade, esotericism studies has witnessed a distinct literary turn, as more and more of the field’s primarily religious studies-based researchers have recognized the value, and indeed, centrality, of imaginative literature to the transmission of occult and new religious ideas. Although welcome, this impetus has sometimes taken an anti-aesthetic shape, reducing the texts it incorporates to little more than empirical evidence of authorial belief or practical occult experience. Accompanying this tendency has been a suspicion of the formalist, post-modern, and/or political forms of interpretation common within contemporary literary studies as being ideologically tainted or even wilfully perverse in their resistance to surface meaning. My article uses a case study of Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Land of Mist (1926), a seemingly straightforward example of an emic novel whose author’s spiritualist belief and conversionist intentions are well known, to demonstrate the limitations of such a biographically reductionist hermeneutic, and to call for a greater diversity of approach within literary esotericism studies. |
|---|---|
| ISSN: | 1570-0593 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Aries
|
| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1163/15700593-20211002 |