The Naked Vine (A Novel) Return to the Theophanic Theatre: Shamanism, Magical Realism and the Ontology of the Imaginal Realm (A Critical Exegesis)

Abstract

This thesis is comprised of two distinct but related components; a novel-length work of magical/shamanic realist fiction entitled The Naked Vine, and a critical exegesis entitled Return to the Theophanic Theatre: Shamanism, Magical Realism and the Ontology of the Imaginal Realm. Set in a contemporary Australian environment, the major component of my dissertation, The Naked Vine, explores issues of spiritual identity and psychological crisis experienced by a group of characters whose stories converge in the coastal hinterland of south-east Queensland. In narrating the emotional breakdown of the protagonist’s marriage following the diagnosis of his wife’s dementia, the novel dramatises aspects of the phenomena of the personal shamanic/initiatic journey, and is intended to be read as an example of what my exegesis would term ‘shamanic realism’. Through a fictional encounter with one of the world’s oldest and most powerful traditional medicines (Ayahuasca, and its Persian variant Haoma), experienced through the prism of the protagonist’s understanding of the nature of ‘gardening’ and shamanic conceptions of the knowledge and spiritual significance of plant ‘intelligence’, the narrative also explores the connections and tensions between traditional spiritual knowledge, humanity’s relationship to food and the natural world, and the potential implications for this relationship raised by the proliferation of certain biotechnology-driven agricultural and agribusiness practices. This fictional work is complemented by a critical exegesis which examines a specific issue raised in the study and practice of what has become broadly termed the Magical Realist literary mode. It firstly seeks to address the theoretical and narratological status of so called shamanic and/or esoteric elements and influences within these texts; elements which can in many instances be considered as comprising the genre’s supernatural or magical aspect. In doing so, it also seeks to illustrate the way in which many dominant forms of Western literary criticism have thus far been limited by their failure to adequately contextualise this shamanic element outside of certain covert positivist psychological and/or semiotic frameworks. Secondly, it discusses the implications of applying the ontology and causal structure of narrative ‘theophany’ in the work of Henry Corbin to both contemporary and traditional spiritual texts, and argues that Corbin’s work on the metaphysics of the Imaginal Realm represents a highly sophisticated means of distinguishing the dramaturgical aspects of magical realist texts from the positivist dualities of ‘magical fantasy’, and provides a novel means to approach the content and symbolism of the potential sub-genre of shamanic realism. Thirdly, it seeks to demonstrate the manner in which these metaphysical and ontological considerations relate to a wider critical appreciation of the relationship between storytelling, narrative and causality in shamanic/esoteric practice itself, and to discuss this relationship in terms of my own creative praxis and methods of symbolic representation.