John Donne’s Metempsychosis: Unraveling the Manifold Deployments of Incorporeal Transmigration

유지애 대한영어영문학회 2017 영어영문학연구 Vol.43 No.2

Yu, Jie-Ae. “John Donne’s Metempsychosis: Unraveling the Manifold Deployments of Incorporeal Transmigration.” Studies in English Language & Literature 43.2 (2017): 181-197. The main purpose of this article is to examine how John Donne’s Metempsychosis deploys the multiple implications of the transmigration of the soul. The author’s treatment of the incorporeal movement is featured by its satirical observations on the tainted facets of both the internal and external worlds of human beings. In Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, Donne's last work before his death in 1631, he singles out his evident search for the invisible progress of the soul after one's evaporation. Donne's 1601 poem Metempsychosis, however, initiates his critical approach to the corrupted aspects of man and society, which he expands in An Anatomy of the World (1611) and The Second Anniversary (1612). This paper investigates how the writer anticipates his social and spiritual remedies, along with his five satires written before Metempsychosis. (Changwon National University)

『나 자신의 노래』 에 나타난 삶과 죽음에 대한 견해

최희섭(Choi, Hie Sup) 한국동서비교문학학회 2008 동서 비교문학저널 Vol.0 No.18

Walt Whitman’s intention, as he said in the preface of Leaves of Grass and Two Rivulets, was to chant the songs of the body and existence in Leaves of Grass and then to compose another volume on the soul. But he didn"t write another volume but rewrote and enlarged Leaves of Grass. Thus, Leaves of Grass became songs of body and soul. Whitman even asserts that he is the poet of the Body and of the Soul. In Song of Myself, he expresses his various thoughts on the body, nature, democracy, and the soul, etc. When he thinks of the body and the soul, he cannot help thinking of death. His thought on death and afterlife is based on the metempsychosis. Death is thought to be not a termination of existence or an entrance to heaven but a stage to go through to be born again. Though all the living existences experience many deaths and many births, their deaths and births are not a separate happening but a phase of a continuous life which appears in different forms and different bodies. The poet himself doesn’t know even the name of the existence in his self which doesn’t die and live everlastingly. But he firmly believes that something that makes metempsychosis possible exists in his self.

Yeats's Buddhism in “Among School Children”

Hie Sup Choi 한국예이츠학회 2012 한국예이츠 저널 Vol.37 No.-

본고는 「학생들 사이에서」에 나타나 있는 불교적인 개념을 살펴봄으로써 예이츠가 불교를 어떻게 이해하고 있으며, 그가 수용한 불교의 개념이 무엇인가? 그리고 그가 어느 정도까지 수용하고 있는가를 살펴보는 것을 목적으로 하고 있다. 서론부분에서 예이츠가 불교에 접하게 된 계기 및 과정을 고찰하여 예이츠의 작품을 불교적으로 해석하는 것이 무리가 아님을 논증한다. 시인이 불교에 대하여 알지 못하거나 불교를 접한 바가 없다 하더라도 시인의 작품을 불교적으로 해석하지 못하는 것은 아니다. 그렇지만 시인이 불교에 접하고 불교를 알고 있었다면 그의 작품에 그 영향이 남아 있을 수 있다. 그렇기 때문에 그의 작품을 불교적으로 해석하는 것이 보다 타당할 수 있다. This paper aims at examining the Buddhist thoughts in Yeats’s “Among School Children.” First, the author examines Yeats’s interest in the Oriental Thoughts. Many of his friends and teachers, including George Russel, Edward Dowden, Madame Blavatsky, Shri Purohit and Mohini Chatterjee, introduced Buddhism to him, with whom he remained a friend for life. “Among School Children” is based on the idea of the Great Wheel. The poem’s speaker and characters, chained to the Wheel, cannot escape from it. They have to be reincarnated according to the law of Karma. That is why they are suffering from the metempsychosis. The law of Karma emphasizes relativity/relatedness among objects and that the relativity is the cause of metempsychosis. And Yeats accepts and adapts Buddhism to his purpose: he creates his own religion.

Metempsychotic Textuality of Ulysses

이종일 한국제임스조이스학회 2008 제임스조이스저널 Vol.14 No.2

In James Joyce’s Ulysses, the concept of metempsychosis, that is, the pattern of a soul’s persistence through wanderings in different bodies, functions as one of major generating principles. On the level of the novel’s textuality, the principle of metempsychosis informs diverse modes of narrative method in which the same element recurs in varied forms contexts through the progress of the text. In so doing, the author’s artistic identity, or the metempsychotic soul of the textuality, is consistently demonstrated in its control of a great variety of heterogeneous factors. The textual metempsychosis is embodied on such levels as chapter difference —involving stylistic changes and narrative discontinuity—, motif development, and linguistic transformation. Each of the different chapters is a “body” which the “soul” of the novel, that is the artistic identity of the author, transits in its metempsychotic stream of narrative existence. The stylistic odyssey follows the metempsychotic pattern of “birth-wandering-death-rebirth” not only in sustaining implicitly the thematic soul but also in maintaining Joyce’s unique linguistic spirit. The narrative discontinuity between adjacent chapters is bridged by chapter links consisting of common motifs. Numberless motifs reappear, evolving themselves and contributing to renew the organic structures and meanings of the whole novel. The motif of “wandering,” involving enduring of identity and intermission of death is saliently incarnated on the levels of language and Bloom’s name. In James Joyce’s Ulysses, the concept of metempsychosis, that is, the pattern of a soul’s persistence through wanderings in different bodies, functions as one of major generating principles. On the level of the novel’s textuality, the principle of metempsychosis informs diverse modes of narrative method in which the same element recurs in varied forms contexts through the progress of the text. In so doing, the author’s artistic identity, or the metempsychotic soul of the textuality, is consistently demonstrated in its control of a great variety of heterogeneous factors. The textual metempsychosis is embodied on such levels as chapter difference —involving stylistic changes and narrative discontinuity—, motif development, and linguistic transformation. Each of the different chapters is a “body” which the “soul” of the novel, that is the artistic identity of the author, transits in its metempsychotic stream of narrative existence. The stylistic odyssey follows the metempsychotic pattern of “birth-wandering-death-rebirth” not only in sustaining implicitly the thematic soul but also in maintaining Joyce’s unique linguistic spirit. The narrative discontinuity between adjacent chapters is bridged by chapter links consisting of common motifs. Numberless motifs reappear, evolving themselves and contributing to renew the organic structures and meanings of the whole novel. The motif of “wandering,” involving enduring of identity and intermission of death is saliently incarnated on the levels of language and Bloom’s name.

“And show my story, in thy eternal book”: Metempsychosis and John Donne’s Sacramental Poetics

정영진 한국중세근세영문학회 2012 중세르네상스 영문학 Vol.20 No.1

This study offers a revisionist reading of John Donne’s Metempsychosis, or the Progress of the Soul (1601), a poem that has received only sporadic critical attention. The poem’s abrupt shifts of tone, narrative mode, and uses of generic conventions create a problem in accommodating it within the corpus of Donne’s poetry. Modern critics almost invariably categorizes the poem as a satire, paying disproportionate attention to the poem’s possible socio-political resonances. What is overlooked is Donne’s play with literary form and his spiritual inquiry into how to accommodate the itinerant soul with the charitable body. A combined attention to the poem’s search for the right form and righteous host helps us recuperate Donne’s interest in sacramental transformation, an interest hitherto obscured. Furthermore, the printing history of the poem, which has long been neglected by modern editors and critics, alerts us to its connection with Donne’s divine poems, namely, La Corona and Holy Sonnets. Along with Donne’s more apparently devotional and liturgical artifacts, Metempsychosis forms a meaningful sequence that suggests Donne’s personal progress of the soul and his serious undertaking of poetry-writing as sacramental devotion.

Metempsychotic Textuality of Ulysses

Jong Il Yi 한국제임스조이스학회 2008 제임스조이스저널 Vol.14 No.2

In James Joyce`s Ulysses, the concept of metempsychosis, that is, the pattern of a soul`s persistence through wanderings in different bodies, functions as one of major generating principles. On the level of the novel`s textuality, the principle of metempsychosis informs diverse modes of narrative method in which the same element recurs in varied forms contexts through the progress of the text. In so doing, the author`s artistic identity, or the metempsychotic soul of the textuality, is consistently demonstrated in its control of a great variety of heterogeneous factors. The textual metempsychosis is embodied on such levels as chapter difference-involving stylistic changes and narrative discontinuity-, motif development, and linguistic transformation. Each of the different chapters is a "body" which the "soul" of the novel, that is the artistic identity of the author, transits in its metempsychotic stream of narrative existence. The stylistic odyssey follows the metempsychotic pattern of "birth-wandering-death-rebirth" not only in sustaining implicitly the thematic soul but also in maintaining Joyce`s unique linguistic spirit. The narrative discontinuity between adjacent chapters is bridged by chapter links consisting of common motifs. Numberless motifs reappear, evolving themselves and contributing to renew the organic structures and meanings of the whole novel. The motif of "wandering," involving enduring of identity and intermission of death is saliently incarnated on the levels of language and Bloom`s name.

네르발과 오르페우스신화

조태남 한국외국어대학교 외국문학연구소 2002 외국문학연구 Vol.- No.12

Through the experience of dream, Nerval recognized the mysterious soul world and who believed the immortality and metempsychosis of the soul sublimates continually in his own personal fate. He also experiences the universal dimensions of humankind, by mythical thoughts and visions. It is the personage ‘Orpheus’ that Nerval found out in the myths and legends in order to talk about his own fate. ‘A descent to the world beyond’, in which the heroes of tragic love suffered, is not only an adventure to bring their dead wife or sweetheart into this world, but it's same with the trial of mysterious initiation to escape from death and the belief of immortality of the soul. For Nerval, Orpheus is a hero of the myth related and is with his lost wife Eurydice. Orpheus is also the initiator of Orphism, which leads mankind to the world of salvation. Just as the Orpheus myth was sublimated up to the religious sphere like Orphism, it did not only remained as a simple myth of love so Nerval sublimes his own personal experience to the religious sphere of human redemption together with the conviction of the immortality and metempsychosis of the soul, by raising up the initiation dimension of ‘a descent to the world beyond’. If we see the Orpheus myth, it tells the story of love beyond the loss of his beloved one and the death, by his attempts but failed to go down into the world of the dead to bring his dead wife back. The Orpheus religion was created by the Goddess Isis, through the courses of discipline and failure for the initiation of Orpheus who entered Pyramid to initiate the mystery, propagates the belief of the immortality and metempsychosis of the soul. ‘The Goddess of Isis’- the object of worship, was required to pass from the Orpheus myth to Orphism. The story about love of the heroine, Aurélia, in Aurélia and her death as well as his attempts and failure of the reunion, and spiritual union in the soul world elevates up to the religious level. This elevation is part of forgiveness and salvation following after the trial of initiation by revelation of the Goddess Isis. The world that Nerval wished to restore in the long run, through the faith toward the Goddess Isis, is the world of original life in which the human beings live a simple happy life and realizing the mysterious love and harmony of all things in the universe, in a complete unit with nature.

서정주 시의 윤회연기와 영원주의

장영우 동국대학교 한국문학연구소 2016 한국문학연구 Vol.0 No.50

Seo, Jung-Joo is accepted as communicating with the spirit of the Silla using as a ‘psychomancy’ or ‘soul communication’ and he figures out of Korean's instinct spirit world based on the universal infinity and the eternity of the time. He has a unique imagining that a person will experience the reverse of their previous social status in the life to come. The ‘Psychomancy’ or ‘soul communication’ means that understand each other transcends the time and the space and this corresponds approximately to the Samsara and the Metempsychosis of the Buddhism. The Samsara and the Metempsychosis in the Midang's poem has a feature that seeks to eternal existence communicated through the spirit of the present with the past. To say that Midang's poem is based on the Buddhistic imagination would be an irrational statement in the light of the western literary theory and the scientific rationalism, but Koreans are quite familiar with the symbol and the image of transcending time. In that context, Midang's poem deals with the Samsara․Nidana and we may say it is a work of ‘sagacity or supreme stage’. 「자화상」에서 미당은 자신이 ‘죄인’이나 ‘천치’로 비난받을 것이라는 사실을 예감하면서도 스스로 선택한 길을 뉘우치지 않겠다고 다짐한다. 그는 『삼국유사』등의 재해석을 통해 신라정신을 ‘영통주의’․‘혼교’라는 이름으로 받아들이면서 우주적 무한과 시간적 영원을 근거로 한 우리 고유의 정신세계로 이해한다. 미당이 생각하는 신라인은 사랑을 국법보다 소중하게 여기고, 현세의 삶에 좌절하지 않으며 인간과 자연이 소통하는 우주적 인간이다. 그들이 신앙하는 영원사상은 모두가 평등한 유기적 존재로서의 우주관이다. 그는 자기동일성을 지닌 주체가 전제되는 윤회론을 수용하는 한편, 내생에서는 전생에서의 신분이나 관계가 역전될 수 있다는 독특한 상상력을 보여준다. 시간과 공간을 초월하여 마음이 통하는 상태를 가리키는 미당의 ‘영통’․‘혼교’는 불교의 윤회연기사상과 거의 일치하는 것으로 보인다. 미당 시의 윤회연기사상은 과거와 현재의 정신적 교감을 통한 존재의 영원성을 추구하는 특징을 갖는다. 이같은 불교적 상상력에 바탕한 시는 서구 문학이론이나 과학적 이성주의로는 비합리적 진술로 보일지 모르나, 한국인에게는 매우 친숙한 이미지나 상징들로 구성되어 있다. 그런 점에서 윤회연기를 주제로 한 미당의 시는 “예지 혹은 묘법의 경지”에 이른 작품이라 할 수 있다.

꽃 설화 연구

박용희 개신어문학회 2008 개신어문연구 Vol.0 No.27

초기불교 윤회설의 한 단면

김준호 ( Jun Ho Kim ) 동아시아불교문화학회 2010 동아시아불교문화 Vol.5 No.-