Dysfunctional Responsiveness in 'A Glastonbury Romance' : John Cowper Powys, Nihilism, and Christianity

• The essay argues that the phenomenon of responsiveness accentuated in John Cowper Powys's novel 'A Glastonbury Romance' is empty, being a form of Nietzschean nihilism. As in Nietzsche, response is a hollow construct, since all emphasis falls on the act of responding, quite in disregard of the nature or even existence of any object hypothetically soliciting a response. The paper demonstrates that there is no response to Chrisitanity in the novel, its various Christian emblems and sacraments being essentially empty. Additionally, the essay proposes that the novel takes the text beyond Nietzsche and nihilism by means of presentations of the 'homeless pure object.' Such an entity belongs to what Meinong called 'Aussersein'--a sphere of actualizations where phenomena belong to a semantic slum of possibles.

Subject headings

HUMANIORA  -- Språk och litteratur -- Litteraturvetenskap (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- Languages and Literature -- General Literary Studies (hsv//eng)

Keyword

phenomenology

receptivity

John Cowper Powys

A Glastonbury Romance

Christianity

Aussersein

Meinong

grail

nihilism

grace

Literature

Litteraturvetenskap

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

art (subject category)