While aspects of mysticism appear in the poetry of both George Herbert and Henry Vaughan, the general consensus among critics has acknowledged the mysticism of Vaughan while ignoring its roots in Herbert's writings. Among the leading authorities on the poetry of Herbert, there has been a general tendency to dismiss, ignore, or explain away mystical elements. A study of representative works by prominent critics to ascertain their positions on this issue reveals not only what can be known for certain about Herbert's theology, but also the interpretations that have been offered for his most famous poems. While these interpretations are useful, the discerning reader must look beyond them, both to the tradition of mysticism and to the Bible, to understand the intensely personal nature of Herbert's spiritual journey. Only then can the full extent of his influence on Vaughan be understood.

The artist discusses the work for his Masters of Fine Arts exhibition, Mind under Matter, held at the Tipton Gallery in downtown Johnson City, Tennessee. Exhibition dates are from March 27th through April 5th 2017. ‘Matter under Mind’ explores the balance of control and non-control within the art-making process. This technique creates an automatic dialogue resulting in abstraction guided by the subconscious. The title ‘Matter under Mind’ is a slight play on the phrase ‘mind over matter’ emphasizing how matter/material is manipulated by the mind through the making of artwork, and within the mind’s eye or imagination. The video installation featuring the work is accompanied by a soundscape to bring the viewer deeper into the creative process. The video symbolizes the idea of ‘solve et coagula’ or, dissolve and coagulate, destroy to recreate by revealing how the process of cleaning paint off of a surface creates artwork in itself.

Ce travail s’intéresse aux états dont les personnages joyciens font l’expérience. Il vise à rendre compte des fluctuations de présence au monde par le repérage et l’analyse de tout un éventail d’états cliniques, mystiques et cognitifs dans les premières œuvres de James Joyce : Dubliners, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, et Stephen Hero.Si nous replaçons la notion d’état dans le contexte historique des textes de Joyce à travers l’influence combinée de Walter Pater, William James et Friedrich Nietzsche, nous l’utilisons également dans une acception très contemporaine en nous appuyant sur les neurosciences.L’état joycien est envisagé dans sa dimension pathologique par le biais, sur un plan médical,d’Hippocrate et de William Harvey, entre autres, et par l’intermédiaire, sur un plan littéraire, de Gerard Manley Hopkins et Thomas Stearns Eliot. Les notions de tempérament et d’état sont ensuite repensées à l’aune du mysticisme par le relais de Denys l’Aréopagite (Pseudo-), Thérèse d’Avila et Marguerite-Marie Alacoque. La cognition permet de mettre en valeur les processus mentaux à l’origine de ces états.Cette réflexion sur la notion d’état se double d’une approche linguistique du texte. Il s’agit de formaliser le passage d’états spirituels à des états grammaticaux. Les adverbes d’intensité et de manière, ainsi que leur combinaison, peuvent être indicateurs de dispositions mentales et physiologiques.L’éclairage linguistique corrobore notre représentation de l’état joycien comme un réceptacle qui oscille entre la saturation et la disponibilité, de même qu’il permet de saisir la contiguïté poreuse qui existe entre l’état et l’événement dans le texte joycien. / This thesis explores various states as they are experienced by Joycean characters. It is concerned with the fluctuations of subjective presence in the world through the observation and analysis of a range of clinical, mystical and cognitive states in James Joyce’s early works: Dubliners, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and Stephen Hero.In this study, the notion of state is replaced in the historical context of Joyce’s work, through thecombined influence of Walter Pater, William James and Friedrich Nietzsche, and is also used in a morecontemporary meaning that draws on neurosciences.Joycean states are considered in their pathological dimension from the medical points of view,among others, of Hippocrates and William Harvey, and from the literary perspectives of Gerard ManleyHopkins and Thomas Stearns Eliot. The notions of state and temperament are then assessed in relation to mysticism, with Dionysius the Areopagite (Pseudo-), Teresa of Avila and Blessed Margaret-MaryAlacoque as the main points of focus. Cognition makes it possible to enhance the mental processes underlying those states.This research on the notion of state is coupled with a linguistic approach to the text. The aim isto formalize the transition between spiritual states and grammatical ones. The various occurrences and combinations of adverbs of manner and degree can indicate mental and physiological dispositions.The linguistic perspective vindicates our representation of the Joycean state as a process poisedbetween saturation and emptiness, and enables us to grasp the porous contiguity between state and event in Joyce’s work.

Dans le contexte d’une société américaine où la religion occupe une place primordiale, une approche lacanienne des romans de Tom Robbins s’avère particulièrement utile pour dégager les thèmes directeurs de ses œuvres : le messianisme, le mysticisme et le monothéisme. Non seulement ces manifestations religieuses jouent un rôle central dans son œuvre romanesque, mais elles servent aussi à mieux exploiter les outils psychanalytiques développés par Jacques Lacan, et en particulier le Symbolique, l’Imaginaire et le Réel. Comment le RSI peut-il éclaircir le débat religieux dans les œuvres de Tom Robbins ou dans d’autres œuvres postmodernes ? Cette étude multidisciplinaire répond à cette problématique en se portant sur trois axes principaux. Premièrement, l’envergure de la messianité dans la société américaine donne lieu au phénomène littéraire que nous appelons « le sujet messianique », se caractérisant par son ancrage topologique dans le Symbolique lacanien. Ensuite, la prévalence d’une approche mystique de la spiritualité dans les œuvres robbinsiennes s’exprime par une relation mystique entre un être divin d’une part, et le croyant d’autre part – rapport symbiotique propre à l’instance Imaginaire. Enfin, le Réel lacanien met en exergue l’impossibilité de la réconciliation structurale entre ces deux instances en explorant le thème du monothéisme dans les œuvres de Tom Robbins. Cette thèse a l’ambition non seulement de faire connaître un écrivain américain peu connu du public francophone, mais aussi de mieux définir l’articulation entre la religion, la psychanalyse et les romans de Tom Robbins / In the context of an American society where the importance of religion takes on epic proportions, a Lacanian approach to analyzing Tom Robbins’ novels is particularly useful in the identification of his works’ major themes: messianism, mysticism and monotheism. Not only do these particular religious events play a central role in his fiction, but they also serve to put psychoanalytic tools to use, such tools as the Symbolic, the Imaginary and the Real developed by Jacques Lacan. How can RSI define the religious debate in the works of Tom Robbins? This multidisciplinary study addresses this problem by focusing on three main areas. First of all, American society’s infatuation with messianism has given rise to a literary phenomenon that I have termed « the messianic subject », characterized by its topological anchorage in the Symbolic order. Moreover, the prevalence of mystical approaches to spirituality in Robbins’ novels – expressed by a mystical relationship between a divine being on the one hand, and believers on the other – constitute a symbiotic relationship present in Lacan’s Imaginary order. Finally, the realm of the Lacanian Real highlights the impossibility of reconciliation between these two structural instances by exploring the theme of monotheism in the works of Tom Robbins. This dissertation aims not only to make a little-known American writer known to Francophone audiences, but also to better define the relationship between religion and psychoanalysis in the novels of Tom Robbins

In this paper, we explore mystical experiences and knowledge through the application of Miranda Fricker's framework of epistemic injustice. Focusing on experiences in which the usual division between Self and Other temporarily dissolves (brought about spontaneously, through contemplative or religious practice, or through the ingestion of psychedelics), we examine the knowledge gained from these experiences in its multiple forms and discuss how the mystic, when attempting to share the knowledge she has gained, may face challenges to effective testimonial exchange which constitute testimonial injustices. Similarly, due to a cultural privileging of the rational and objective, we imagine how the mystic’s interlocutor in an exchange may lack the necessary epistemic resources to understand an account of the mystic’s experience and its epistemic fruits as knowledge, thus subjecting the mystic to a hermeneutical injustice. Exploring the possibility of an anti-mystical bias, we present a new realm for the application of Miranda Fricker’s concepts.

The objective of my dissertation is an analysis of selected passages from the Book of Zohar. The selected texts are analyzed from the synchronic and diachronic point of view. The synchronic approach consists of detailed grammatical study of all contained lexical units and its result is a Czech translation that reflects the interpretative variations as well. The diachronic approach incorporates Czech translation of important rabbinical commentaries and scientific discourse on analyzed themes. My dissertation gives a discussion of the nature of zoharic Aramaic and its literary sources. The scientific question is an evaluation of Moses de-Le'on's success rate in his endeavor to imitate the Aramaic of Targum Onkelos.

Cette thèse est une étude comparative entre L. S. Senghor, poète sénégalais d’expression française, et Mohamed Al-Faytouri, poète soudano-libyen d’expression arabe. Elle consiste à révéler et comparer les dimensions spirituelles de leurs poésies. Elle vise également à mettre en évidence la multivalence de la quête qui est indissociable de leur écriture. Leurs œuvres s’articulent sur les rapports féconds et ambigus entre l’humain et le divin, le matériel et le spirituel, les vivants et les morts, le visible et l’invisible. La démarche critique suit les deux poètes dans leur aventure poético-spirituelle qui correspond à la trajectoire du mystique à la recherche du surréel et de l’absolu. La poésie senghorienne se nourrit du souffle animiste et de l’esprit chrétien. La poésie faytourienne est marquée par la spiritualité soufie et par la mystique africaine. Elle renferme aussi des allusions animistes et chrétiennes.Quel que soit le degré d’originalité propre à chacun d’eux, ils ont en commun des thèmes qui forment un ensemble cohérent. Leurs poèmes sont intrinsèquement imprégnés du mysticisme africain qui se manifeste dans l’omniprésence des Esprits et des Ancêtres. Les deux poètes ont le même désir de retourner aux origines, de réintégrer l’innocence originelle et d’entrer en communion avec le sacré ; ils ont la même aspiration à une pureté qu’ils cherchent dans une voie jalonnée de difficultés. Ils s’efforcent de sonder le sens de l’existence et de vivre en harmonie parfaite avec le cosmos. Ils recourent à la médiation de la femme, de la musique, de la nuit et de la nature afin d’établir la communication avec l’univers intime et secret de l’invisible. / This thesis concerns a comparative study between Senghor; a Senegalese poet who writes in French and Mohamed AL-Faytouri, half Sudanese half Libyan poet who writes in Arabic. It targets comparing the spiritual dimensions of their poems. Furthermore, it aims to show the multiple meanings of the quest that cannot be separated from their poems. Their writings describe the search of unity between human and divine, material and spiritual, the living and the dead and finally visible and invisible. Our critical approach would follow the poetic and spiritual adventure of both poets regarding their search for the surreal and the absolute. Senghor's poetry is influenced by the animist and Christian spirituality, while Faytouri’s poetry is inspired by the Sufi spirituality and by African mysticism.In spite of their different origins, they use the same themes that complete each other in establishing a coherent form. The two poets have the same desire to return back to the origins, find the original innocence and have the mystical union. Their search for “purity” in human nature is surrounded by danger. They aim to emphasis on the idea of living in perfect coherence with the Universe. Last but not least, the poets refer to woman’s mediation, music, night and nature to communicate with the intimate and the secret of the invisible.

The practice of contemplative silence, in its manifestation as a mode of capable being, is a self-consciously spiritual and ethical activity that aims at a transformation of reflexive consciousness. I assert that contemplative silence manifests a mode of capable being in which we have an awareness of the awareness of the awareness of being with being whereby we can constitute and create a shared world of meaning(s) through poetically presencing our being as being with others. The doubling and tripling of the term "awareness" refers to five contextual levels of awareness, which are analyzed, including immediate self-awareness, immediate objective awareness, reflective awareness, reflexive awareness, and contemplative awareness. The analysis culminates with the claim that contemplative silence manifests a mode of capable being, one which creates the conditions of the possibility for contemplative awareness. A hermeneutics of contemplative silence manifests a deeper level of awareness--contemplative awareness--as a poetics of presencing our human solidarity. Contemplative awareness includes both an experience and an understanding of the proper ordering of our relational realities. My claim is that contemplative awareness can and should accompany the practice of contemplative silence in order to appropriate the meaning of a silence embodied in the here and now, through the hermeneutical endeavor. Contemplative awareness elicits movement in thinking, and involves the ongoing exercise of rethinking our relational realities in and for the world. I join three moments in the hermeneutical process--description, explanation, and interpretation--with the three moments in the traditional religious journey to spiritual and ethical maturity--the purgative, the illuminative, and the unitive. I present a conceptual framework that opens to hermeneutics, and a way to think about ongoing appropriation of a mode of capable being as growth in the human capacity to make and carry meaning. The threefold way, as it is interpreted in this study, is a heuristic model of the invariant elements of the tradition of contemplative silence. There is reflexivity to the structure, because a study of the practice is an exemplification of the practice, which produces the very practice that it is talking about.

The Medievalizing Process: Religious Medievalism in Romantic and Victorian Literature posits religious medievalism as one among many critical paradigms through which we might better understand literary efforts to bring notions of sanctity back into the modern world. As a cultural and artistic practice, medievalism processes the loss of medieval forms of understanding in the modern imagination and resuscitates these lost forms in new and imaginative ways to serve the purposes of the present. My dissertation proposes religious medievalism as a critical method that decodes modern texts’ lamentations over a perceived loss of the sacred. My project locates textual moments in select works of John Keats, Lord Byron, Charles Dickens, and Oscar Wilde that reveal concern over the consequences of modern dualism. It examines the ways in which these texts participate in a process of rejoining to enchant a rationalistic epistemology that stymies transcendental unity. I identify the body of Christ, the central organizing principle of medieval devotion, as the cynosure of nineteenth-century religious medievalism. This body offers a non-dualistic alternative that retroactively undermines and heals Cartesian divisions of mind and body and Kantian distinctions between noumenal and knowable realities. Inscribing the dynamic contours of the medieval religious body into a text’s linguistic structure, a method I call the “medievalizing process,” underscores the spiritual dimensions of its reform efforts and throws into relief a distinctly religious, collective agenda that undergirds many nineteenth-century texts.

Bibliography: leaves 250-258 / vii, 258, 50, [48] leaves : 48 facsims ; 31 cm. / Title page, contents and abstract only. The complete thesis in print form is available from the University Library. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Adelaide, 1985