Gaia: Knights & Maidens of the Roundtable - Arts - Literature as Spiritual Study

Accepting the unsettling of meaning as the new literary zeitgeist

http://flyingbasil.gaia.com — Sun, 19 Aug 2007 20:30:58 GMT

Looking back, literature in the 20th century seems to have been coloured by a stark contrast between trauma and liberation. Narratives of trauma, persecution, and repression juxtaposed with accounts of liberation, freedom, hope, and uncertainty.

Perhaps these are traits that characterize the human condition throughout the ages.

and the writers who are the most prominent in articulating the trials and tributations of the humanity in the past century are those who were repressed, oppressed or were in exile.

Gabriela Marquez, Gao Xingjian, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Salmon Rushdie, Tony Kushner, etc...

There also seems to be a proliferation of scar-literature on the market, where authors tell of their experiences under oppressive regimes, and also roots-literature where people speak of their diasporic lives away from home or as second-third generation migrants. I think for this kind of literature is illustrative of an authorial trend where writers engage in an immediate soul-searching about oneself and ones environment. Which also sells on the market.

As the world continues its paradoxical and perilous trend of factionalizing into different cultural/national entities whilst becoming entrenched in the globalization, I think there will be more literature that dwells on issues of uncertainty and ambiguity.

I think this idea can be applied to literature across the world. People are questioning the ideologies they embraced in the past century. In the West people are no longer certain of the supremacy of the dominant beliefs and most cherished principles, in spite of the politically much touted 'victory' in the coldwar. In post-communist countries a similar situation exists where people are caught between in an ambiguous love-hate relationship between their discredited soviet system and an inept and injustice of the present.

I don't think people anywhere, regardless of age, religion, or nationality can be sure of anything anymore...

a crisis of identity, morality, spirituality, and reason?

I guess this is what characterizes post-modernism?

--but also a crisis that gives us an unprecedented opportunity to see our hope in our potential?

Perhaps it is precisely this kind of instability that has us longing for works like Paulo Cohello's Alchemist, which suggests a meaning or purpose in the uncertainties of our situation, and our journey (our lives).

an acceptance of the notion that the

journey is the destination?

Re: Literature as Spiritual Study

http://enlightenedthinker.gaia.com — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 03:20:40 GMT

Agreed and perhaps you can start another thread here in the arts for that!
Architecture, mis-en-scene(props, costume, et al) contribute also to a films general texture!

go for it!

:)

Re: Literature as Spiritual Study

http://sunight.gaia.com — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 01:05:11 GMT

Hey, yeah, like Jean Luc Picard's holodeck!

Aley, there are many avenues for this discussion - even comics and fairy tales.

As an aside, I once took a class on architecture in film - two of the films were "Edward Scissorhands" and "It's a Wonderful Life". Do you think of architecture when you think of those films? They convery attitudes of the times about development. I think at some future point I'd like to see the arts in this pod move into other media as well.

Re: Literature as Spiritual Study

http://enlightenedthinker.gaia.com — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 02:22:27 GMT

Hey Burt!
Good to see you! I like what it is you say is coming...never considered it, but reminds me of those interactive headsets we put on and are involved in some sort of experience "inside" the goggles, is this what you mean?
I get the interactive part..and understand it to mean we can travel "into" a scenario and work through the plot and be part of the action?

Can I please be reborn when this happens if I am already transitioned?

i like this one...and as the Hero with 1000 faces, then we won't need movies will we?

correct me if I am misunderstandgin Burt...this is cool..!!!

Aley

Re: Literature as Spiritual Study

Sun, 05 Aug 2007 22:58:41 GMT

Very interesting thread, Aley. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that as the influence of the written word continues to wane, spiritual literature will not be encountered so much in sacred texts but in interactive programming that allows particpanst to customize their own metaphysical adventures and experiences. There will always be a place for myth and a shared cultural heritage, but eventually it will take a back seat as we each become a hero with a thousand faces.

Re: Literature as Spiritual Study

http://enlightenedthinker.gaia.com — Sun, 05 Aug 2007 19:11:14 GMT

Yep, you are probably right Johan. After all JM Barrie and Peter Pan and Baums Wizard of Oz are celebrated, but not in formal literary study. One author hated for many years was Heningway and look at him now!

Yarculdragonlord thanks too for weighing in here. Gender literature is already pretty rampant in colleges. Feminist and also Gay literature has made its way mainstream which is great as it celebrates the human condition of this century...

Perhaps elder literature will also be included? I woul dlike to see things come from more of a human condition, which includes all these things...I hate schisms though and hope for some kind of unity of experience, even though one cannot find it in all literature.

Archetypal literature is also most excellent...heros journey, mythic themes...full of all sorts of characters from this genre.

Re: Literature as Spiritual Study

http://yarculdragonlord.gaia.com — Sun, 05 Aug 2007 18:11:52 GMT

Literature of Gender is one direction in which to look. I do not mean by this, literature that studies or tries to define a specific gender. I mean literature that explores the very nature of our illusory variations in gender. One might read Wraeththu by Storm Constantine to better understand this literature.

Is there a natural split in the genders? Does gender and sex (male and female) mean the same thing? How do we use the concept of gender? Is the idea of gender a binary concept or is there far more to the concept?

These are some of the questions that literature of the 21st Century will explore.

Re: Literature as Spiritual Study

Sun, 05 Aug 2007 18:07:01 GMT

Dont hesitate to add Harry Potter!

I predict in less than 100 years the world s population would have taken Harry s emergence literally, and a few brave and outcast souls would argue that Harry was a character from a children's series of books and be either laughed at and/or ostracized and hated for saying that.

Re: Literature as Spiritual Study

http://enlightenedthinker.gaia.com — Sun, 05 Aug 2007 17:43:04 GMT

Ok, this thread got buried and I am attempting to see what we might envision our 21st century literary greats may be...

I hesitate to add Harry Potter, unless he is classified Childrens Lit, which is not to demean the work, but it is not the same genre as some other are...

Perhaps, Paulo Coelho? The Alchemist et al?

What are your thoughts about his work?

Another that comes to mind is: Jhumpa Lahiri: interpreter of Maladies.

Literature as Spiritual Study

http://enlightenedthinker.gaia.com — Sun, 05 Aug 2007 02:09:32 GMT

Ancient, Renaissance, Enlightenment, Romantic, Victorian, Modern, Post-Modern Literature all speaks to the human condition and transcends time.

What will the 21st century zeitgest in literature be? What will we inlude with the great pieces of literature and the archetypal characters we meet along the way? What themes will be discussed 100 years from now? Who will be the great poets and writers of our time?

Discussion board here for purpose of moving forward the great ideas literature brings to us and how we can learn form the great writers of the past and make them palletable to a 21st century audience?

First idea?

Who was Gilgamesh? What does this 25,000 BCE piece say about life then and now? Savage man and civiliazed man?This piece was found on a clay tablet many years after it was written..themes and archetypes also explored are the great flood and the search for everlasting life....

We need to start somewhere....