Abstract
The intention of this paper is to sketch possible ways of understanding George MacDonald and Emily Brontë as thinkers and artists in the Neoplatonic tradition. Neoplatonism sees the soul as an intermediary in the whole of being, but in its task of mediation the soul has been marked by a fall, by suffering and resurrection (that is, the Passio and Resurrectio of the Kore as described in the Eleusinian Mysteries). The Neoplatonic tradition provides both authors with conceptual and imaginative material which help them express their experiences and their understanding of being. MacDonald often points explicitly to the origin of intellectual and imaginative structures, whereas in Brontë’s works they are shown implicitly in the growing intellectual precision of her poetry and prose.
‘… And, for about half an hour, there was silence in heaven’.
Apocalypse of St John, 8, 1
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© 1991 Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
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Kegler, A. (1991). Silent House: MacDonald, Brontë and Silence Within the Soul. In: Filmer, K. (eds) The Victorian Fantasists. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-21277-4_9
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