James Mark Shields McGill University, Montréal 1 March 1997 A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Master of Arts O James Mark Shields, 1997 National Library Bibliothèque nationale 1+1 of Canada du Canada Acquisitions and Acquisitions et Bibliographie Services services bibliographiques 395 Wellington Street 395, nie Wellington OttawaON K1AON4 Ottawa ON K1A ON4 Canada Canada The author has granted a non- L'auteur a accordé une licence non exclusive licence allowing the exclusive permettant a la National Library of Canada to Bibliothèque nationale du Canada de reproduce, loan, distribute or sell reproduire, prêter, distribuer ou copies of this thesis in microform, vendre des copies de cette thèse sous paper or electronic formats. la forme de microfiche/fïlm, de reproduction sur papier ou sur format électronique. The author retains ownership of the L'auteur conserve la propriété du copyright in this thesis. Neither the droit d'auteur qui protège cette thèse. thesis nor substantial extracts fiom it Ni la thèse ni des edtssubstantiels may be printed or othewise de celle-ci ne doivent être imprimés reproduced without the author's ou autrement reproduits sans son permission. autorisation. fifre 1 Cnicifxion (Ernst Fuchs, 1957) CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS INTRODUCTION Excursus One: Romanticism-A Sense of Symbol HAPTER ONE: ROMANTlCISM AND [POST-!MODERNITY 1. ROMANCING THE POSTMODERN A. The Forge and the FIame B. A "True" Post-Modernism C. The Two Faces of Romanticism O. Worldmaking: Romant icism as Reality-lnscript ion E. Romantic Realism II. ALLEGORY RUN AMOK A. St ructuralism's Revenge B. The Rhetoric of Atemporality III. COUNTERPROPOSALS A. Symbol and Sernblance 1. Schein 2. Der Stil: ln-die- Welt-Schein B. Romantic Expressivism C. Sprachdenken N. WHAT THE LlGHTNlNG SAlD A. Romantic Modernis m: The Attraction of l mperfect ion 8. The Lyric as Norm: The Poetics of the Moment C. The Melody of Language D. Janus: A Summing Up 1. Per speculum ... facie ad faciem 2. Through the Looking Glass Excursus Two: Realism in the Balance 1. UNDERSTANDING IN TlME A. Romanticism and Religion: A Fearful Symmetry 1. Rornantic Scripture: The Great Code 2. Deictics: Diction of the Deity? B. Myth and History 1. Kairos and Chronos 2. Myth as Symbolic History 3. The Melody of History II. PARTIAL MAGIC A. Myth, Metaphor, Meaning B. Supreme Fictions: The Truth of Masks III. A MAGIC OF THE QUOTlDlAN A. The Alchemist in the City 1. On the Worldliness of Texts 2. Magic Mirrors: Strange Presences and Imaginative Truths B. Kairotic Love C. Magic Realism: A Third Face D. Magical Realism as Work on Myth W. ENTMYTHOLOGISIERUNG A. Euhemeros Redux B. Demys t if ication C. Re: Demythologization D. Rethinking the Coy "de' Ackno wledgmentç I would like to thank my supervisors, both official and unofficial, Kathleen Roberts Skerrett, Joseph C. Mclelland, and Barbara Galli, for their helpful editing and comments. I would also like to acknowledge a debt to the teaching staff ât the McGill Faculty of Religious Studies, particularly professors Maurice Boutin, Ed Furcha, Arvind Sharrna, and Douglas John Hall, as well as Professor Karen Lebacqz, at the Pacific School of Religion, and Professor Anthony Giddens at the University of Cambridge. Lastly, my thanks to my friends, family, and books, for their support. And, of course, to Kim Smiley, research assistant and muse. vii this Master's thesis examines the status of myth and symbol in postmodern religious discourse, and proposes a new way of understanding representation in religion. The first chapter deals with the sense of symbol as it emerged out of Iiterary and philosophical romanticism. and explores several divergent interpretations of the meaning of the symbol according to modemist and stnicturalist criticism. The second chapter, after analysing the function of myth and history in religious understanding, connects the romantic syrnbol to a contemporary hermeneutics based on the aesthetic and epistemological tenets of magic realism. It is my contention in this thesis that magic realism, in its conflation (and deconstruction) of the ideologically charged dichotomy of myth and reality, provides a hermeneutical tool with which to critique demythologization; and that, in its dual aspect as heir to both romanticism and realism, magic realism may be a more fertile source than either neo- romanticism or post-structuralism fcr a truly postrnodern religious criticism. m.... ..a.. Ce mémoire de maîtrise examine le mythe et le symbole dans le discours religieux postmoderne et propose une nouvelle façon de comprendre la représentation religieuse. Le premier chapitre discute des racines romantiques du symbole et explore plusieurs interprétations des critiques modernistes et structuralistes du symbole. Le deuxième chapitre analysé le rôle du mythe et de I'histoire dans la pensée religieuse, en reliant le symbole romantique à l'herméneutique contemporaine inspirée par la philosophie et l'esthétique du aréalisrne magique>>.Ce mémoire prétend que le créal lis me magiques) est un outil d'analyse herméneutique qui permet de dévoiler le mythe et le symbole sans leur préjugés politiques qui ont été acquir au couer de l'histoire. Le 4alisrne magique~a,l'héritier du romantisme et du réalisme, est un outil d'analyse herméneutique indispensable pour critiquer la dérnythologisation. En fait, <<réalisme magique)>pourrait représenter une perspective plus pertinente dans la critique religieuse postmoderne que ne peuvent être le néo-romantisme ou le post-structuralisme. INTRODUCTION The theoretical void which has been left by the bankruptcy of post-structuralist theory is necessarily also a spiritual void. The French-based literary-culturaltheorking of post-Saussureanism, with its callow and philosophically incoherent anti-metaphysical posturings, has tried to disengage literature from its troublesorne spiriiual dimension altogether-by simply denying the existence of that dimension. m.... My suspicion that theology is now an entirely sterile subject ...has been strengthened by the absence of any sensible responses or reviews from that particular quarter. For the most part it seerns to me that more religious sense has come out of New Guinea or the jungles of South America in recent decades than out of the combined lucubrations of the world's churches. - Colin Falck, Myth, Tmth and Litemture 'What is today more boring," asks Frederick Turner, in a recent essay published in Hurper's Magazine, "than the up-to-date?" Al1 of our arts, ail of what we cal1 "culture," including sculpture, music, painting, performance art and fiction, "tread the same postmodern circle," in which the following alchernical formula is applied: Fust. the subversion of the traditional means of representation, which are held to serve the intetests of the power eIite; next, what post-suucturalist critics cal1 the 'play of the signifiers', designed to undennine the expectations of the public; finally, the reminder that the sucker who buys the thing is cornpiicit in the fraud descrïbed by the fashion magazines as the late capitalist cornodification of desire. (Turner 1995,59) The problem with this circle, as Turner sees it, is that there is no escape; it is an endless loop, in which the reality of anything "outside" ("the text," in postmodem parlance) is not only bracketed, but forgottendenied. Spinning out of control, like the child's hula hoop in the crowded fairground, the process nonetheless rnakes a rem, the "joke" (if it is a joke) "always turns in upon itself," and the perpetrators find themselves "trapped in the present, in a narrow Little moving box of power stniggle and injured self-esteem" (59). Turner's remarks reflect a "backlash" which has been brewing in scholarly circles for some time now. The past decade, in particular, has witnessed a polyphonie reaction to the hegemony of so-called "postmodern" modes. models, and methods; panicularly those going by the labels "poststructuralisrn" and "deconstruction." These are not. of course, completely synonymous tems (though many, pro as well as contra, rnight have it so), yet deconstruction, as a catchword for the programme of one of post-structuralism's patriarchs, Jacques Demda, became, in the 1960s and 1970s, the archetypal instance of post-Saussurean criticism; and, as such, left its indelible starnp upon continental and Anglo-American academies. Turner's skepticism notwithstanding, his formula for postmodemism is an apt summation of the deconstructive process: subversion of traditional means of representation; resultant play of the signifiers, liberated from the shackies of "Western metaphysics"-from the shadows of Plato's caves; and "finaily," the deconstruction of textual "meaning," which serves to undermine (dualistic) expectations and challenges traditional hierarchies. It is the f~st"stage" in this process which will be most crucial to the purposes of the present examination, and it is this first assumption that Colin Falck questions most vociferously: Why, he asks, do we feel the need to subvert traditional means of representation? What, exactly, is the problem with the metaphysics of presence; and what are the implications of subverting the sense of presence, while proclairning the dawn of a new, freer world, where unchained signifiers float languidly in the matinal breeze? Though this is al1 to be done, "without positive termsW-that is, without setting up new dichotomies to replace the old-it is obvious upon which side deconstruction