Grounded Visionary
The Mystic Fictions of Gerald Murnane
Summary
Taking its cue from Murnane’s self-description as a "technical writer," this book examines each of the author’s works in detail to reveal how structures and themes are seamlessly woven together to create artworks that shimmer with mystery while at the same time remaining thoroughly grounded in the actual.
Grounded Visionary is the first full-length study of Gerald Murnane’s work to tackle head-on his underlying mystical sensibility and is also the first to deal comprehensively with the author’s complete fictional output from Tamarisk Row to Border Districts. This book will be of interest to all lovers of modern literature and will be of special interest to students of Australian literature and those concerned with the interface between art and spirituality.
Excerpt
Table Of Contents
- Cover
- Title
- Copyright
- About the author
- About the book
- This eBook can be cited
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- Chapter 1: The Infinite Sentence: Tamarisk Row
- Chapter 2: Necessary Angels: A Season on Earth
- Chapter 3: Hiding in Plain Sight: The Plains
- Chapter 4: Six Authors in Search of a Character: Landscape with Landscape
- Chapter 5: Find the Lady: Inland
- Chapter 6: First, Love: Stream System
- Chapter 7: “Where the Painted Places Ended”: Barley Patch
- Chapter 8: To Literature, With Love: A History of Books
- Chapter 9: Through a Glass, Darkly: A Million Windows
- Chapter 10: Radiant Stains: Border Districts
- Conclusion
- Index
Brendan McNamee
Grounded Visionar
The Mystic Fictions of Gerald Murnane
PETER LANG
New York • Bern • Berlin
Brussels • Vienna • Oxford • Warsaw
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: McNamee, Brendan,, author.
Title: Grounded visionary: the mystic fictions of Gerald Murnane / Brendan McNamee.
Description: New York: Peter Lang, 2019.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019000120 | ISBN 978-1-4331-6471-2 (hardback: alk. paper)
ISBN 978-1-4331-6472-9 (ebook pdf) | ISBN 978-1-4331-6473-6 (epub)
ISBN 978-1-4331-6474-3 (mobi)
Subjects: LCSH: Murnane, Gerald, 1939– —Criticism and interpretation.
Murnane, Gerald, 1939– —Themes, motives.
Australian fiction—20th century—History and criticism.
Australian fiction—21st century—History and criticism. | Mysticism in literature.
Spirituality in literature. | Consciousness in literature.
Classification: LCC PR9619.3.M76 Z77 2019 | DDC 823/.914—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019000120
DOI 10.3726/b14991
Bibliographic information published by Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek.
Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the “Deutsche
Nationalbibliografie”; detailed bibliographic data are available
on the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de/.
© 2019 Peter Lang Publishing, Inc., New York
29 Broadway, 18th floor, New York, NY 10006
All rights reserved.
Reprint or reproduction, even partially, in all forms such as microfilm,
xerography, microfiche, microcard, and offset strictly prohibited.
Brendan McNamee is an independent scholar with a PhD on the novels of John Banville from the University of Ulster. His previous publications include essays in academic journals, along with a short study entitled Mysticism in Robert Musil’s ‘The Man Without Qualities’.
About the book
Grounded Visionary: The Mystic Fictions of Gerald Murnane is a reading of Australian writer Gerald Murnane’s fiction in the light of what is known as the Perennial Philosophy, a philosophical tradition that positions itself as the mystical foundation of all the world’s religions and spiritual systems. The essential tenet of that philosophy is that at a fundamental level all of life is a unity—consciousness and world are the same thing—and that it is possible, if extremely difficult, for the discriminating individual mind to experience this wholeness. Murnane’s work can be seen not to take its lead from writings in this philosophical tradition but rather to resonate with many of them through Murnane’s unique artistic expression of his experience of the world. The crux of the argument is that beneath their yearnings for landscapes and love, Murnane’s narrators and chief characters are all in search of the essential unity that the Perennial Philosophy postulates.
Taking its cue from Murnane’s self-description as a “technical writer,” this book examines each of the author’s works in detail to reveal how structures and themes are seamlessly woven together to create artworks that shimmer with mystery while at the same time remaining thoroughly grounded in the actual.
Grounded Visionary is the first full-length study of Gerald Murnane’s work to tackle head-on his underlying mystical sensibility and is also the first to deal comprehensively with the author’s complete fictional output from Tamarisk Row to Border Districts. This book will be of interest to all lovers of modern literature and will be of special interest to students of Australian literature and those concerned with the interface between art and spirituality.
This eBook can be cited
This edition of the eBook can be cited. To enable this we have marked the start and end of a page. In cases where a word straddles a page break, the marker is placed inside the word at exactly the same position as in the physical book. This means that occasionally a word might be bifurcated by this marker.
Contents
Chapter 00:Acknowledgments
Chapter 00:Abbreviations
Chapter 00:Introduction
Chapter 1: The Infinite Sentence: Tamarisk Row
Chapter 2: Necessary Angels: A Season on Earth
Chapter 3: Hiding in Plain Sight: The Plains
Chapter 4: Six Authors in Search of a Character: Landscape with Landscape
Chapter 5: Find the Lady: Inland
Chapter 6: First, Love: Stream System
Chapter 7: “Where the Painted Places Ended”: Barley Patch
Chapter 8: To Literature, With Love: A History of Books
Chapter 9: Through a Glass, Darkly: A Million Windows
Chapter 10: Radiant Stains: Border Districts
Chapter 00:Conclusion
Chapter 00:Index←vii | viii→ ←viii | ix→
The lines from Rilke in Chapter 10 are taken from William H. Gass’s Reading Rilke: Reflections on the Problems of Translation (Alfred A. Knopf, 1999), and are used with permission of Penguin/Random House.
The epigraph to Chapter 9 is from Kevin Hart’s The Dark Gaze: Maurice Blanchot and the Sacred and is used with permission of University of Chicago Press. Copyright 2004 by Kevin Hart.
The epigraph to the Conclusion is from Ernst Cassirer’s Kant’s Life and Thought and is used with permission of Yale University Press.
The cover photograph is used with kind permission of Lucy Oliver. (www.meaningbydesign.co.uk)←ix | x→ ←x | xi→
TR Tamarisk Row
ASoE A Season on Earth
TP The Plains
LwL Landscape with Landscape
I Inland
SS Stream System
BP Barley Patch
AHoB A History of Books
AMW A Million Windows
BD Border Districts
Gods and mortals: dying each other’s life, living each other’s death.
—Heraclitus
This book is a reading of Gerald Murnane’s work in the light of what is known as the Perennial Philosophy, the mystical foundation of all the world’s religions and spiritual systems. The essential tenet of that philosophy is that at a fundamental level all of life is a unity, consciousness and world are the same thing, and that it is possible, if extremely difficult, for the discriminating individual mind to experience this wholeness. The crux of my argument in this book is that beneath all their yearnings for landscapes and love, Murnane’s narrators and chief characters are all in search of this unity. Like the protagonist of Tamarisk Row, Clement Killeaton, their deepest desire is “to be inside a place that all other people see only from the outside” (153). This congruence of transcendence and immanence is known in mystical philosophy as the coincidentia oppositorum, the coincidence of opposites, an impossible-to-imagine state where the principle of non-contradiction is both overcome and yet left intact. It is, this philosophy says, possible to be both inside a place and outside it at the same time.
Details
- Pages
- XII, 254
- Publication Year
- 2019
- ISBN (PDF)
- 9781433164729
- ISBN (ePUB)
- 9781433164736
- ISBN (MOBI)
- 9781433164743
- ISBN (Hardcover)
- 9781433164712
- DOI
- 10.3726/b14991
- Language
- English
- Publication date
- 2019 (September)
- Published
- New York, Bern, Berlin, Bruxelles, Oxford, Wien, 2019. XII, 254 pp.
- Product Safety
- Peter Lang Group AG