The Call of the Bell: A Comparative Analysis of Existentialism and Mysticism in Line with Jungian Individuation in Virginia Woolf’s and Iris Murdoch’s Selected Works
Aleyna Durmuş
IDEAS: Journal of English Literary Studies May 4, 2024 DOI: 10.62352/ideas.1451795 (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 Between the Acts and Murdoch's The Bell both trace a 'night sea journey' in which the individual moves from solipsistic isolation toward a broader, Platonic understanding of the world. The authors contend that Woolf's modernism explores the individual standing for the community, while Murdoch's work extends this existentialist viewpoint into the mystical, casting the modern hero's journey as one from existential fragmentation to mystical integration. |
Abstract
Against the backdrop of transitions that was witnessed throughout the era, the twentieth century was marked by social unrest and existential concerns. In an era identified as a rupture from the linearity of history, modernist writers sought to communicate and compensate for the loss of meaning that was immanent, attempting to address the multifaceted and intricate nature of the human condition. There emerged the exploration of the individual standing for the community, the dynamic of which can be traced in most of Virginia Woolf’s novels in the first part of the twentieth century; it is in the following wave of literary works where this existentialist viewpoint the individual was grappling with branches out into the mystical, a recurrent theme in Iris Murdoch’s works. The comparative analysis of these writers’ selected works, thus, notably Woolf’s Between the Acts and Murdoch’s The Bell, explores the themes of the process of self-exploration and integration against the prevailing sense of angst and chaos. With an interdisciplinary comparative analysis combining psychology, philosophy and literature, the article seeks to shed light on Woolf and Murdoch’s explorations of the human existence and their projections in the modernist scheme. Murdoch’s philosophical framework, her insights into the mystical aspects of existence, Woolf’s narrative techniques, the tracing of certain imageries existent in the novels lay the groundwork for tracing the ‘night sea journey’ of the hero: a process of transformation of the individual from solipsistic standpoint to a broader, Platonic understanding of the world, the modern hero’s journey from existential fragmentation to mystical integration.
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 |