Beyond the Temple and the Cave: William James, E.J. Pratt, and Christian-Spiritualist Syncretisms
| Autor: | Graham Jensen |
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| Rok vydání: | 2017 |
| Předmět: |
History
Spiritualism Poetry General Arts and Humanities Environmental ethics 06 humanities and the arts Religious syncretism Liberal Protestant 060202 literary studies 03 medical and health sciences 030502 gerontology Religious experience 0602 languages and literature Religious studies 0305 other medical science Christian Spiritualist Relation (history of concept) Mysticism |
| Zdroj: | University of Toronto Quarterly. 86:1-26 |
| ISSN: | 1712-5278 0042-0247 |
| Popis: | Although the Canadian poet E.J. Pratt had lifelong attachments to the Methodist and then United Church, critics have struggled to reconcile the various aspects of Pratt's religious vision as they materialize in his writing. Focusing on one largely ignored aspect of that vision, this article examines Pratt's mystical and spiritualist poetry of the 1920s and 1930s. More precisely, it considers Pratt's blending of spiritualist and Christian thought in relation to the syncretistic, non-dogmatic, anti-institutional notion of “personal religion” advanced in William James's The Varieties of Religious Experience, thus illuminating at once both Pratt's religious commitments and a seldom-discussed point of contact between James's philosophy and modernist literature. Ultimately, this article argues that, as a result of his exposure to James and to spiritualism in the crucible of Toronto's liberal Protestant milieu, Pratt – like many other writers of his time – began to move beyond the polarities of personal and institutional religion. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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