INTERIOR IMAGES IN CHRISTIAN MYSTICS  (LITERARY-SEMANTIC CHARACTERISTICS) Cover Image

Vnútorné obrazy u kresťanských mystikov (Literárno-sémantická charakteristika)
INTERIOR IMAGES IN CHRISTIAN MYSTICS (LITERARY-SEMANTIC CHARACTERISTICS)

Author(s): Magda Kučerková, Miroslava Režná
Subject(s): Literary Texts
Published by: Ústav svetovej literatúry, Slovenská akadémia vied
Keywords: Mystical Experience; God; Soul; Contemplation; Interior Image; Symbolism of the Un/speakable; Desert

Summary/Abstract: The study offers a literary-semantic characteristic of the interior image in the writings of Christian or Roman Catholic mystics. The departure point are several poetics which, from the point of view of literary-historical and cultural development, hold a relevant position in their national literatures, but at the same time take part in the formation of a supra-national, universal, artistic mystical language (St. Francis of Assisi, Jacopone da Todi, St. Catherine of Siena, Julian of Norwich, St. Therese of Jesus and St. John of the Cross), demonstrating – as seen in religionist approaches (e.g., M. Eliade) – several parallel and interior relations with mystical experiences in other religions. We understand the interior image as an image created in the consciousness of the mystic during a contemplative state and which the author later seeks to express in his work through language in a way that would preserve the semanticvalue identity of the “seen”. It is the result of a so-called imaginative vision, and therefore has an analogic character: it is impossible to decode it literally, straightforwardly or without the knowledge of symbolic-connotative paradigm of Christianity and its imagination of the world.

  • Issue Year: VI/2014
  • Issue No: 1
  • Page Range: 3-20
  • Page Count: 18
  • Language: Slovak