{"title":"Litanies of Poetic Seerhood: Magical Epithets in Modern Literary History","authors":"H. Poutiainen","doi":"10.5325/PRETERNATURE.8.1.0122","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"abstract:The nineteenth century, to a far greater degree than any other period, acclaimed its poets and writers with overwhelmingly spiritual honorifics: rather than mere poets and writers, they were priests and magicians, oracles and prophets, sorcerers and seers. In this essay, rather than repeat the various narratives in which literature is exalted as a secular religion and credited for salvaging magic from modern disenchantment, my aim, more philosophical than strictly historiographical, is to consider these honorifics as magical epithets—terms that give to their object the reputation of being magical—that are made effective by following a logic of their own: attributed to writers in acts of readerly judgment, these epithets, when the act of their attribution carries emotional conviction, are experienced as magical and thereby make themselves true in the moment in which they are uttered.","PeriodicalId":41216,"journal":{"name":"Preternature-Critical and Historical Studies on the Preternatural","volume":"6 1","pages":"122 - 147"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1000,"publicationDate":"2019-04-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Preternature-Critical and Historical Studies on the Preternatural","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.5325/PRETERNATURE.8.1.0122","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"HUMANITIES, MULTIDISCIPLINARY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
abstract:The nineteenth century, to a far greater degree than any other period, acclaimed its poets and writers with overwhelmingly spiritual honorifics: rather than mere poets and writers, they were priests and magicians, oracles and prophets, sorcerers and seers. In this essay, rather than repeat the various narratives in which literature is exalted as a secular religion and credited for salvaging magic from modern disenchantment, my aim, more philosophical than strictly historiographical, is to consider these honorifics as magical epithets—terms that give to their object the reputation of being magical—that are made effective by following a logic of their own: attributed to writers in acts of readerly judgment, these epithets, when the act of their attribution carries emotional conviction, are experienced as magical and thereby make themselves true in the moment in which they are uttered.
期刊介绍：
Preternature provides an interdisciplinary, inclusive forum for the study of topics that stand in the liminal space between the known world and the inexplicable. The journal embraces a broad and dynamic definition of the preternatural that encompasses the weird and uncanny—magic, witchcraft, spiritualism, occultism, esotericism, demonology, monstrophy, and more, recognizing that the areas of magic, religion, and science are fluid and that their intersections should continue to be explored, contextualized, and challenged.
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