John O'Meara - Academia.edu (original) (raw)
BOOKS by John O'Meara
HcP Ottawa, 2020
The following collection of essays could have had as a subtitle "Towards a New Sophiology." Essay... more The following collection of essays could have had as a subtitle "Towards a New Sophiology." Essays 3, 4, 5, and 8 bear directly on this subject. Apart from the final essay, “Valentin Tomberg and Dostoevski,” all the other essays presented here appeared (in this same order) as articles in the Starlight Journal of the Sophia Foundation of North America over the years 2014-2019. The production of these articles took place during the period that immediately followed the publication of O’Meara’s book, "The Way of Novalis," and should be seen as an outgrowth from the Sophianic direction of that book. In these essays, slightly expanded from the articles, O’Meara elaborates on the Sophianic mission of the Foundation with reference to the main Master-Individualities to whom the Foundation has linked itself, notably Rudolf Steiner, Valentin Tomberg, Novalis (Friedrich von Hardenberg), as well as the Master Peter Deunov. However, other well-known individuals are also considered in some depth, including Vladimir Solovyov, Pavel Florensky, Sergius Bulgakov, Fyodor Dostoevski, Carl Jung, as well as some of the Master-artists of the Renaissance, most notably Michelangelo and da Vinci. Estelle Isaacson and Ita Wegman also assume a significant role in this collection. How to put our arms around the demands being made on us with respect to our spiritual evolution now and in the future may be said to have been the main purpose of this series of essays.
Visit the author's website at johnomeara.squarespace.com
HcP Ottawa, 2020
The following collection of essays could have had as a subtitle "Towards a New Sophiology." Essay... more The following collection of essays could have had as a subtitle "Towards a New Sophiology." Essays 3, 4, 5, and 8 bear directly on this subject. Apart from the final essay, “Valentin Tomberg and Dostoevski,” all the other essays presented here appeared (in this same order) as articles in the Starlight Journal of the Sophia Foundation of North America over the years 2014-2019. The production of these articles took place during the period that immediately followed the publication of O’Meara’s book, "The Way of Novalis," and should be seen as an outgrowth from the Sophianic direction of that book. In these essays, slightly expanded from the articles, O’Meara elaborates on the Sophianic mission of the Foundation with reference to the main Master-Individualities to whom the Foundation has linked itself, notably Rudolf Steiner, Valentin Tomberg, Novalis (Friedrich von Hardenberg), as well as the Master Peter Deunov. However, other well-known individuals are also considered in some depth, including Vladimir Solovyov, Pavel Florensky, Sergius Bulgakov, Fyodor Dostoevski, Carl Jung, as well as some of the Master-artists of the Renaissance, most notably Michelangelo and da Vinci. Estelle Isaacson and Ita Wegman also assume a significant role in this collection. How to put our arms around the demands being made on us with respect to our spiritual evolution now and in the future may be said to have been the main purpose of this series of essays.
Visit the author's website at johnomeara.squarespace.com
HcP Ottawa, 2023
In part through critical biography, in part through a close reading of almost all of the poems R... more In part through critical biography, in part through a close reading of
almost all of the poems Rilke wrote, including many poems from
his Diaries, this large book challenges new ideas about what went
into the making of Rilke over twenty years of production, from his
early beginnings under the tutelage of Lou Salomé, right through, to
his famous final works, the Sonnets to Orpheus and the Duino Elegies.
Volume 1 focuses largely on The Book of Hours; Volume 2 on The Book
of Images, the two parts of New Poems, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids
Brigge, and the first Elegies written while at Duino; Volume 3 on those
all-crucial, self-transforming ten years beyond Duino that lead up to
the Sonnets to Orpheus and Rilke’s eventual completion of the Elegies.
Two major theses are put forward in this book, the first touching
on Rilke’s well-known relationship to his former lover and mentor,
Lou Salomé, who is understood to have been a far more problematic
influence on him than we had supposed, the second touching on an
equally crucial and at some point saving influence on Rilke from the
literary sphere, which is shown to be that of the great visionary poet
who went by the name of Novalis. Behind the grand story of Rilke’s
poetic emergence lies the fundamental and long-standing reality of his
repression by Lou and what that would sow, paradoxically, by way of
a sublimated achievement as sublimely poignant as it is finally tragic.
“My admiration for O’Meara’s close textual reading and analytical abilities in this Rilke text knows no bounds.”
{ Gary Geddes, editor of "20th-Century Poetry and Poetics", Oxford University Press, and author of "Active Trading: Selected Poems 1970-1995." }
Visit the author's website at
johnomeara.squarespace.com
iUniverse, Bloomington, Indiana, 2012
"Shakespeare, the Goddess, and Modernity" was conceived as a companion-piece to John O'Meara's o... more "Shakespeare, the Goddess, and Modernity" was conceived as a companion-piece to John O'Meara's other big collection, "On Nature and the Goddess." A measure of the close symbiosis between the two works is that the latter collection could well have borne the title "Shakespeare, the Goddess, and Modernity," and perhaps better, though it is more about the Goddess and Modernity than it is about Shakespeare, while the present collection explains Shakespeare more in relation to the themes of the Goddess and Modernity, but otherwise presents him very much as his own subject. Also, the chapter on Rudolf Steiner's Mystery Plays, which are presented in relation in both Romantic tradition and the Modern scene, could be the first place to go after a reading of "On Nature."
For more details, visit the author's website at johnomeara.squarespace.com
“profoundly philosophical ... a most significant contribution to the ongoing discussion of Shakespeare’s values.” {Charles Forker, author of "Fancy’s Images: Contexts, Settings, and Perspectives in Shakespeare and His Contemporaries,'" 1996}
iUniverse, Bloomington IN, 2012
(Collecting 'The Modern Debacle'/ 'Myth, Depavity, Impasse'/ 'This Life, This Death: Wordsworth... more (Collecting 'The Modern Debacle'/ 'Myth, Depavity, Impasse'/ 'This Life, This Death: Wordsworth's Poetic Destiny')
Authors covered:
in "The Modern Debacle": T.S.Eliot, Ernest Hemingway, Samuel Beckett, Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, Bertolt Brecht, Sylvia Plath, Ted Hughes, Robert Graves, and W.B. Yeats
in 'Myth, Depavity, Impasse': Mircea Eliade, Ernst Cassirer, Owen Barfield, Carl Jung, Joseph Campbell, Robert Graves, Ted Hughes, (Shakespeare), and John Keats
in 'This Life, This Death': William Wordsowrth
How worthy can we be today of actual mythical experience? How are we related to that experience in our deepest depravity? And why has the mythical experience grown so opaque to us in our post-Romantic, modern world?
“beautifully and fluently written and ingenious in its combination of catastrophes” {Anthony Gash, Drama Head, the University of East Anglia}
"A wonderful writer on myth" {Robert A. Segal, author of 'Theorizing about Myth'}
Visit the author's website at johnomeara.squarespace.com
HcP Ottawa, 2014
Recent translations of Novalis’s work into English should occasion fresh endeavours in the field ... more Recent translations of Novalis’s work into English should occasion fresh endeavours in the field of Novalis studies, aimed at English readers who are without German. In this book John O’Meara presents his own understanding of what Novalis offers to these readers, who have been given firmer access to his life and to his philosophical works than ever before. O’Meara traces Novalis’s philosophical development meticulously, finishing up with an in-depth analysis of his Hymns to the Night, the Spiritual Songs, and his main and unfinished novel, Henry von Ofterdingen. Emphasis is on the process by which Novalis’s literary works manifest as direct expressions of his philosophical explorations, which bear fruit, eventually, in visions of sweeping majesty and annunciatory grandeur.
See, also, an Addendum to my remarks on Friedrich Schlegel's "Lucinde" in my 'Preface' to "The Way of Novalis" at https://issuu.com/johnomeara1797/docs/novalis_and_friedrich_schlegel_s_lucinde
In his romantic narrative, "Lucinde," Friedrich Schlegel defers to the tragic romantic life of Novalis...
“O'Meara is to be commended for his grasp of the philosophical questions that profoundly motivated Novalis and for his ability to integrate Novalis's life and thought into one narrative.” {Bernhard Radloff, from a book review in 'Studies in Romanticism,' Vol.55, no.4, Winter 2016}
Visit the author's website at http://johnomeara.squarespace.com/
Guernica Editions, Toronto, 2016
The longstanding challenge and problem of living through tragedy, as opposed to living beyond it ... more The longstanding challenge and problem of living through tragedy, as opposed to living beyond it or simply carrying on in spite of it, is highlighted in this extensive and in-depth scholarly study. Shakespeare was able to live through tragedy and consequently could come into those higher evolutionary states of mind and being, until now so little known, that are so impressively represented in his last plays.
“… rigorous … highly pertinent … the present book, especially the final chapter, “Prospero’s Powers: Shakespeare’s Last Phase,” is the culmination of a long journey [in O’Meara’s study of Shakespeare’s work].” {R.W. Desai, 'The Critical Endeavour', Vol. XXIV, January 2018}
Visit the author's website at johnomeara.squarespace.com
DRAFTS by John O'Meara
[Re-uploaded, with, to date, 197 views.] Intended as a counterbalancing complement to "... more [Re-uploaded, with, to date, 197 views.]
Intended as a counterbalancing complement to "Tragical Historical: Essays in Western Cultural History from Boethius to Beckett"
A summation of the author's life-work, with Notes and a Table of Concordances.
From the Introduction:
"There are perhaps, in the end, as many canons of literature as there are seriously engaged readers of literature ... but in my own life's work as a critical reader of literature and of culture, it would appear that I upheld one as the most significant of all for our time. In the case of the canon I bring forward, a good number of other authors are concerned, but the two that have stood out as the Jachin and Boaz among the lot are Shakespeare and Novalis."
See, additionally, John O'Meara's full-scale studies of these authors: 'The Way of Novalis' (2014) and 'Remembering Shakespeare' (2016).
Authors studied include Boethius, Jean de Meun, Baldassare Castiglione, Montaigne, Marlowe, Sha... more Authors studied include Boethius, Jean de Meun, Baldassare Castiglione, Montaigne, Marlowe, Shakespeare, Pascal, Racine, Swift, Rousseau (Abelard and Heloise), Goethe, Arnold, Emerson, Nietzsche, Camus, Hemingway, Marcuse, Freud, Jung, Beckett
· An overdetermining of our ends in moralistic tradition that has left
us with a lack of nerve before the tragic depths of human experience;
· a put-on contempt for passion-love that has otherwise haunted us
with its promises to this day;
· the pretension to naturalism as a deliberate flouting of the ideal world;
· the barren struggle of the individual
—these are among the themes covered in this wide-ranging study of
some of the most significant authors of Western cultural tradition, from
Boethius in the 5th century to Beckett in the 20th.
Altogether, these themes broadly highlight the Western world’s
pretension to a cultural possession of the historical process generally,
which was bound to fail.
We thus come to a dead-end the way out of which is yet provided by the central stream of authors and their progress that are covered in John O’Meara’s other “work of the centre,” his main books on Shakespeare and Steiner, Novalis, and Rilke (Robert Graves in his seminal influence is also thought of as belonging to this central group).
JOHN O’MEARA received his Ph.D in 1986 from the University
of East Anglia, Norwich, England. He taught for many years at Concordia
University, the University of Toronto, and the University of Ottawa. He is
the author of numerous publications on Shakespeare, Romanticism, and
Modernity.
Visit this author's website at
johnomeara.squarespace.com
CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS by John O'Meara
[Re-uploaded since recently put up, with, to date, 141 views.] After his beloved Sophie's deat... more [Re-uploaded since recently put up, with, to date, 141 views.]
After his beloved Sophie's death, great vistas of spiritual visionary imagination gradually open up for Novalis, as he gives himself to a rigorous life of the most intense study both of Nature and himself …
[Re-uploaded and re-located since first put up, with, to date, 155 views.] This presentation o... more [Re-uploaded and re-located since first put up, with, to date, 155 views.]
This presentation offers a radical view of the post-Renaissance, Western literary scene inasmuch as Rudolf Steiner's Anthroposophy bears a relation to it, principally through his Mystery Plays. A number of major authors are highlighted as having an intrinsic connection with the Anthroposophical revelation--notably T.S. Eliot, and especially S.T. Coleridge. The prospect of a new cultural poetic for the future is outlined in connection especially with these two major figures of English critical-poetic tradition. Other authors that are considered include: Wordsworth, Goethe, D.H. Lawrence, Yeats; Robert Graves, Ted Hughes; Milton, Swift, and Blake; Strindberg, Hemingway, and Beckett. Steiner's Plays were never intended as Literature as we know the discipline today, but they provide a singular point of view from which the idea of Literature can be re-evaluated and new directions set forth that represent a transformed prospect for Literature in the future. Some of our most distinguished authors of the past are seen in a new light, as if it had been their struggle to reach out to the possibilities Steiner's Plays bring forth.
Visit the author's website at johnomeara.squarespace.com
PUBLISHED MONOGRAPHS by John O'Meara
An introduction to Shakespeare's Sonnets, his Tragedies, and the Late Plays. Re-appears as a c... more An introduction to Shakespeare's Sonnets, his Tragedies, and the Late Plays.
Re-appears as a chapter in "Remembering Shakespeare".
An emblematic study of three major experiences in the history of Western culture as reflected in ... more An emblematic study of three major experiences in the history of Western culture as reflected in the work of three major English authors
Re-appears as a chapter in "On Nature and the Goddess in Romantic and post-Romantic Literature".
SOME RECENT PAPERS by John O'Meara
Reconfigured and re-uploaded with, to date, a total of 177 views. A thorough revaluation of tr... more Reconfigured and re-uploaded with, to date, a total of 177 views.
A thorough revaluation of tragic developments in Act I scene 1 of 'King Lear.' The many problems with critical reception of this scene. In every sphere of commentary on this scene, the main point of Cordelia’s pretensions has been missed (pretensions forced upon her by her social inability at a certain level of performance)--namely, that there is an absolute limit to non-participation and that ‘nothing’, as an actual condition of existence, reserves a power that no one can pretend to revert to, let alone champion, or brave—as we see from the awful event it unleashes that is beyond the control of everyone.
For more of John O'Meara's work, visit the author's website at johnomeara.squarespace.com
Re-uploaded with, to date, 27 views. The serious claims passion-love would make on behalf of i... more Re-uploaded with, to date, 27 views.
The serious claims passion-love would make on behalf of itself are not only not developed in Tolstoy's novel, they are swiftly stymied from the first. The extraordinary phenomenon of passion-love, and the great tradition associated with it, is never taken up, is eschewed. It was an easy way out of the challenge. Impossible not to see in all this narrative license, which defies any notion of verisimiltude, that Tolstoy is wilfully, even zestfully, having it all his own way.
AFTERPIECE by John O'Meara
Re-uploaded with, to date, 148 views. Traces, in detail, along what anguished route Wordsworth... more Re-uploaded with, to date, 148 views.
Traces, in detail, along what anguished route Wordsworth, with his 'Intimations Ode,' came to achieve his famous version of 'Life against Death.'
HcP Ottawa, 2020
The following collection of essays could have had as a subtitle "Towards a New Sophiology." Essay... more The following collection of essays could have had as a subtitle "Towards a New Sophiology." Essays 3, 4, 5, and 8 bear directly on this subject. Apart from the final essay, “Valentin Tomberg and Dostoevski,” all the other essays presented here appeared (in this same order) as articles in the Starlight Journal of the Sophia Foundation of North America over the years 2014-2019. The production of these articles took place during the period that immediately followed the publication of O’Meara’s book, "The Way of Novalis," and should be seen as an outgrowth from the Sophianic direction of that book. In these essays, slightly expanded from the articles, O’Meara elaborates on the Sophianic mission of the Foundation with reference to the main Master-Individualities to whom the Foundation has linked itself, notably Rudolf Steiner, Valentin Tomberg, Novalis (Friedrich von Hardenberg), as well as the Master Peter Deunov. However, other well-known individuals are also considered in some depth, including Vladimir Solovyov, Pavel Florensky, Sergius Bulgakov, Fyodor Dostoevski, Carl Jung, as well as some of the Master-artists of the Renaissance, most notably Michelangelo and da Vinci. Estelle Isaacson and Ita Wegman also assume a significant role in this collection. How to put our arms around the demands being made on us with respect to our spiritual evolution now and in the future may be said to have been the main purpose of this series of essays.
Visit the author's website at johnomeara.squarespace.com
HcP Ottawa, 2020
The following collection of essays could have had as a subtitle "Towards a New Sophiology." Essay... more The following collection of essays could have had as a subtitle "Towards a New Sophiology." Essays 3, 4, 5, and 8 bear directly on this subject. Apart from the final essay, “Valentin Tomberg and Dostoevski,” all the other essays presented here appeared (in this same order) as articles in the Starlight Journal of the Sophia Foundation of North America over the years 2014-2019. The production of these articles took place during the period that immediately followed the publication of O’Meara’s book, "The Way of Novalis," and should be seen as an outgrowth from the Sophianic direction of that book. In these essays, slightly expanded from the articles, O’Meara elaborates on the Sophianic mission of the Foundation with reference to the main Master-Individualities to whom the Foundation has linked itself, notably Rudolf Steiner, Valentin Tomberg, Novalis (Friedrich von Hardenberg), as well as the Master Peter Deunov. However, other well-known individuals are also considered in some depth, including Vladimir Solovyov, Pavel Florensky, Sergius Bulgakov, Fyodor Dostoevski, Carl Jung, as well as some of the Master-artists of the Renaissance, most notably Michelangelo and da Vinci. Estelle Isaacson and Ita Wegman also assume a significant role in this collection. How to put our arms around the demands being made on us with respect to our spiritual evolution now and in the future may be said to have been the main purpose of this series of essays.
Visit the author's website at johnomeara.squarespace.com
HcP Ottawa, 2023
In part through critical biography, in part through a close reading of almost all of the poems R... more In part through critical biography, in part through a close reading of
almost all of the poems Rilke wrote, including many poems from
his Diaries, this large book challenges new ideas about what went
into the making of Rilke over twenty years of production, from his
early beginnings under the tutelage of Lou Salomé, right through, to
his famous final works, the Sonnets to Orpheus and the Duino Elegies.
Volume 1 focuses largely on The Book of Hours; Volume 2 on The Book
of Images, the two parts of New Poems, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids
Brigge, and the first Elegies written while at Duino; Volume 3 on those
all-crucial, self-transforming ten years beyond Duino that lead up to
the Sonnets to Orpheus and Rilke’s eventual completion of the Elegies.
Two major theses are put forward in this book, the first touching
on Rilke’s well-known relationship to his former lover and mentor,
Lou Salomé, who is understood to have been a far more problematic
influence on him than we had supposed, the second touching on an
equally crucial and at some point saving influence on Rilke from the
literary sphere, which is shown to be that of the great visionary poet
who went by the name of Novalis. Behind the grand story of Rilke’s
poetic emergence lies the fundamental and long-standing reality of his
repression by Lou and what that would sow, paradoxically, by way of
a sublimated achievement as sublimely poignant as it is finally tragic.
“My admiration for O’Meara’s close textual reading and analytical abilities in this Rilke text knows no bounds.”
{ Gary Geddes, editor of "20th-Century Poetry and Poetics", Oxford University Press, and author of "Active Trading: Selected Poems 1970-1995." }
Visit the author's website at
johnomeara.squarespace.com
iUniverse, Bloomington, Indiana, 2012
"Shakespeare, the Goddess, and Modernity" was conceived as a companion-piece to John O'Meara's o... more "Shakespeare, the Goddess, and Modernity" was conceived as a companion-piece to John O'Meara's other big collection, "On Nature and the Goddess." A measure of the close symbiosis between the two works is that the latter collection could well have borne the title "Shakespeare, the Goddess, and Modernity," and perhaps better, though it is more about the Goddess and Modernity than it is about Shakespeare, while the present collection explains Shakespeare more in relation to the themes of the Goddess and Modernity, but otherwise presents him very much as his own subject. Also, the chapter on Rudolf Steiner's Mystery Plays, which are presented in relation in both Romantic tradition and the Modern scene, could be the first place to go after a reading of "On Nature."
For more details, visit the author's website at johnomeara.squarespace.com
“profoundly philosophical ... a most significant contribution to the ongoing discussion of Shakespeare’s values.” {Charles Forker, author of "Fancy’s Images: Contexts, Settings, and Perspectives in Shakespeare and His Contemporaries,'" 1996}
iUniverse, Bloomington IN, 2012
(Collecting 'The Modern Debacle'/ 'Myth, Depavity, Impasse'/ 'This Life, This Death: Wordsworth... more (Collecting 'The Modern Debacle'/ 'Myth, Depavity, Impasse'/ 'This Life, This Death: Wordsworth's Poetic Destiny')
Authors covered:
in "The Modern Debacle": T.S.Eliot, Ernest Hemingway, Samuel Beckett, Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, Bertolt Brecht, Sylvia Plath, Ted Hughes, Robert Graves, and W.B. Yeats
in 'Myth, Depavity, Impasse': Mircea Eliade, Ernst Cassirer, Owen Barfield, Carl Jung, Joseph Campbell, Robert Graves, Ted Hughes, (Shakespeare), and John Keats
in 'This Life, This Death': William Wordsowrth
How worthy can we be today of actual mythical experience? How are we related to that experience in our deepest depravity? And why has the mythical experience grown so opaque to us in our post-Romantic, modern world?
“beautifully and fluently written and ingenious in its combination of catastrophes” {Anthony Gash, Drama Head, the University of East Anglia}
"A wonderful writer on myth" {Robert A. Segal, author of 'Theorizing about Myth'}
Visit the author's website at johnomeara.squarespace.com
HcP Ottawa, 2014
Recent translations of Novalis’s work into English should occasion fresh endeavours in the field ... more Recent translations of Novalis’s work into English should occasion fresh endeavours in the field of Novalis studies, aimed at English readers who are without German. In this book John O’Meara presents his own understanding of what Novalis offers to these readers, who have been given firmer access to his life and to his philosophical works than ever before. O’Meara traces Novalis’s philosophical development meticulously, finishing up with an in-depth analysis of his Hymns to the Night, the Spiritual Songs, and his main and unfinished novel, Henry von Ofterdingen. Emphasis is on the process by which Novalis’s literary works manifest as direct expressions of his philosophical explorations, which bear fruit, eventually, in visions of sweeping majesty and annunciatory grandeur.
See, also, an Addendum to my remarks on Friedrich Schlegel's "Lucinde" in my 'Preface' to "The Way of Novalis" at https://issuu.com/johnomeara1797/docs/novalis_and_friedrich_schlegel_s_lucinde
In his romantic narrative, "Lucinde," Friedrich Schlegel defers to the tragic romantic life of Novalis...
“O'Meara is to be commended for his grasp of the philosophical questions that profoundly motivated Novalis and for his ability to integrate Novalis's life and thought into one narrative.” {Bernhard Radloff, from a book review in 'Studies in Romanticism,' Vol.55, no.4, Winter 2016}
Visit the author's website at http://johnomeara.squarespace.com/
Guernica Editions, Toronto, 2016
The longstanding challenge and problem of living through tragedy, as opposed to living beyond it ... more The longstanding challenge and problem of living through tragedy, as opposed to living beyond it or simply carrying on in spite of it, is highlighted in this extensive and in-depth scholarly study. Shakespeare was able to live through tragedy and consequently could come into those higher evolutionary states of mind and being, until now so little known, that are so impressively represented in his last plays.
“… rigorous … highly pertinent … the present book, especially the final chapter, “Prospero’s Powers: Shakespeare’s Last Phase,” is the culmination of a long journey [in O’Meara’s study of Shakespeare’s work].” {R.W. Desai, 'The Critical Endeavour', Vol. XXIV, January 2018}
Visit the author's website at johnomeara.squarespace.com
[Re-uploaded, with, to date, 197 views.] Intended as a counterbalancing complement to "... more [Re-uploaded, with, to date, 197 views.]
Intended as a counterbalancing complement to "Tragical Historical: Essays in Western Cultural History from Boethius to Beckett"
A summation of the author's life-work, with Notes and a Table of Concordances.
From the Introduction:
"There are perhaps, in the end, as many canons of literature as there are seriously engaged readers of literature ... but in my own life's work as a critical reader of literature and of culture, it would appear that I upheld one as the most significant of all for our time. In the case of the canon I bring forward, a good number of other authors are concerned, but the two that have stood out as the Jachin and Boaz among the lot are Shakespeare and Novalis."
See, additionally, John O'Meara's full-scale studies of these authors: 'The Way of Novalis' (2014) and 'Remembering Shakespeare' (2016).
Authors studied include Boethius, Jean de Meun, Baldassare Castiglione, Montaigne, Marlowe, Sha... more Authors studied include Boethius, Jean de Meun, Baldassare Castiglione, Montaigne, Marlowe, Shakespeare, Pascal, Racine, Swift, Rousseau (Abelard and Heloise), Goethe, Arnold, Emerson, Nietzsche, Camus, Hemingway, Marcuse, Freud, Jung, Beckett
· An overdetermining of our ends in moralistic tradition that has left
us with a lack of nerve before the tragic depths of human experience;
· a put-on contempt for passion-love that has otherwise haunted us
with its promises to this day;
· the pretension to naturalism as a deliberate flouting of the ideal world;
· the barren struggle of the individual
—these are among the themes covered in this wide-ranging study of
some of the most significant authors of Western cultural tradition, from
Boethius in the 5th century to Beckett in the 20th.
Altogether, these themes broadly highlight the Western world’s
pretension to a cultural possession of the historical process generally,
which was bound to fail.
We thus come to a dead-end the way out of which is yet provided by the central stream of authors and their progress that are covered in John O’Meara’s other “work of the centre,” his main books on Shakespeare and Steiner, Novalis, and Rilke (Robert Graves in his seminal influence is also thought of as belonging to this central group).
JOHN O’MEARA received his Ph.D in 1986 from the University
of East Anglia, Norwich, England. He taught for many years at Concordia
University, the University of Toronto, and the University of Ottawa. He is
the author of numerous publications on Shakespeare, Romanticism, and
Modernity.
Visit this author's website at
johnomeara.squarespace.com
[Re-uploaded since recently put up, with, to date, 141 views.] After his beloved Sophie's deat... more [Re-uploaded since recently put up, with, to date, 141 views.]
After his beloved Sophie's death, great vistas of spiritual visionary imagination gradually open up for Novalis, as he gives himself to a rigorous life of the most intense study both of Nature and himself …
[Re-uploaded and re-located since first put up, with, to date, 155 views.] This presentation o... more [Re-uploaded and re-located since first put up, with, to date, 155 views.]
This presentation offers a radical view of the post-Renaissance, Western literary scene inasmuch as Rudolf Steiner's Anthroposophy bears a relation to it, principally through his Mystery Plays. A number of major authors are highlighted as having an intrinsic connection with the Anthroposophical revelation--notably T.S. Eliot, and especially S.T. Coleridge. The prospect of a new cultural poetic for the future is outlined in connection especially with these two major figures of English critical-poetic tradition. Other authors that are considered include: Wordsworth, Goethe, D.H. Lawrence, Yeats; Robert Graves, Ted Hughes; Milton, Swift, and Blake; Strindberg, Hemingway, and Beckett. Steiner's Plays were never intended as Literature as we know the discipline today, but they provide a singular point of view from which the idea of Literature can be re-evaluated and new directions set forth that represent a transformed prospect for Literature in the future. Some of our most distinguished authors of the past are seen in a new light, as if it had been their struggle to reach out to the possibilities Steiner's Plays bring forth.
Visit the author's website at johnomeara.squarespace.com
An introduction to Shakespeare's Sonnets, his Tragedies, and the Late Plays. Re-appears as a c... more An introduction to Shakespeare's Sonnets, his Tragedies, and the Late Plays.
Re-appears as a chapter in "Remembering Shakespeare".
An emblematic study of three major experiences in the history of Western culture as reflected in ... more An emblematic study of three major experiences in the history of Western culture as reflected in the work of three major English authors
Re-appears as a chapter in "On Nature and the Goddess in Romantic and post-Romantic Literature".
Reconfigured and re-uploaded with, to date, a total of 177 views. A thorough revaluation of tr... more Reconfigured and re-uploaded with, to date, a total of 177 views.
A thorough revaluation of tragic developments in Act I scene 1 of 'King Lear.' The many problems with critical reception of this scene. In every sphere of commentary on this scene, the main point of Cordelia’s pretensions has been missed (pretensions forced upon her by her social inability at a certain level of performance)--namely, that there is an absolute limit to non-participation and that ‘nothing’, as an actual condition of existence, reserves a power that no one can pretend to revert to, let alone champion, or brave—as we see from the awful event it unleashes that is beyond the control of everyone.
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Re-uploaded with, to date, 27 views. The serious claims passion-love would make on behalf of i... more Re-uploaded with, to date, 27 views.
The serious claims passion-love would make on behalf of itself are not only not developed in Tolstoy's novel, they are swiftly stymied from the first. The extraordinary phenomenon of passion-love, and the great tradition associated with it, is never taken up, is eschewed. It was an easy way out of the challenge. Impossible not to see in all this narrative license, which defies any notion of verisimiltude, that Tolstoy is wilfully, even zestfully, having it all his own way.
Re-uploaded with, to date, 148 views. Traces, in detail, along what anguished route Wordsworth... more Re-uploaded with, to date, 148 views.
Traces, in detail, along what anguished route Wordsworth, with his 'Intimations Ode,' came to achieve his famous version of 'Life against Death.'