Abstract
The juxtaposition of cultural eras and belief systems reached a new encyclopedic scale in poetic narratives and anthropological treatises from the Renaissance onward as we see in the works of Rabelais and Kircher. In the romantic age, Goethe’s completed Faust established a new epochal standard for probing the story of human spiritual development over millennia. Heirs to this rich tradition, authors such as Mann and Joyce felt liberated to re-examine mythological patterns and varieties of religious consciousness as a crucial heritage against the backdrop of modern strains of negation and deconstruction of belief systems. Combining self-critical irony with brilliant depictions of literary and psycho-historical avatars, their novels finally suggest a spiritual super-reality that emerges from the colossal repertory of evolutionary evidence.
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Gillespie, G.E.P. Newer archaeologies of the soul: avatars of religious consciousness in modern European fiction. Neohelicon 42, 415–423 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11059-014-0280-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11059-014-0280-7