Silence, Darkness, and Dirt: Mysticism and Materiality in The Years and Between the Acts
Elizabeth Anderson
Liverpool University Press eBooks 2018 DOI: 10.5949/liverpool/9781942954422.003.0014 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Topics | Mysticism |
| Key points | Argues that Woolf's novels do not simply set religiosity against secularism but instead intertwine spirituality and materiality, a 'material mysticism' in which mystical consciousness emerges from mundane locations and objects and in which darkness and silence, traditionally markers of an absent transcendent divine, are located in the material and present. The author contends this material mysticism is a crucial component of modernism's religious imagination. |
Abstract
Recent treatments of the role of religion in Virginia Woolf’s novels have posited a tension between religiosity and secularism, but this paper explores the conjunction of spirituality and materiality in Woolf’s work. Rather than posing a tension between mainstream religion and materiality, I argue for an unorthodox view of spirituality in which, despite their apparent contradiction, the mystical and the material are deeply interrelated. This material mysticism is demonstrated in the sacred charge of everyday objects, mystical consciousness (one interpretation of ‘moments of being’) emerging out of mundane locations and encounters (explored here in relation to The Years and Between the Acts) and the redeployment of key tropes of the mystical tradition. In the tradition of negative theology or apophatic mysticism, darkness and silence are frequently used to describe the divine as transcendent, unknowable and absent. Yet in Woolf’s novels darkness and silence are configured as located in the mundane, the material and presence. This paper argues that the material mysticism of Woolf’s writing provides a crucial component of the religious imagination of modernism.
Comparable studies
Other theoretical and historical papers on mysticism, most cited first.
| Study | Year | Design | Participants |
|---|---|---|---|
| The mystical mind: probing the biology of religious experience | 2000 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Religious and Mystical Experiences as Artifacts of Temporal Lobe Function: A General Hypothesis | 1983 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| The Problem of Pure Consciousness: Mysticism and Philosophy | 1993 | Edited collection of essays | |
| Irreducible Mind: Toward a Psychology for the 21st Century | 2020 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Mysticism and schizophrenia: A phenomenological exploration of the structure of consciousness in the schizophrenia spectrum disorders. | 2016 | Theoretical or philosophical paper |