English-speaking Cultures
Within the European and American literary traditions, oracular speech that links the individual creative artist with forces larger than the individual ego have been part of several movements. The Pre-Raphaelites objected to the humanism that was a feature of the Renaissance and sought for an earlier, presumably more holistic, art. The English Romantics found in nature a source of inspiration and a model for human societies. American Transcendentalists found inspiration in an oversoul, which Ralph Waldo Emerson also called an "oracular soul." Surrealists sought to move past the logic of the waking mind and to draw from more universal material in the unconscious. Imagism based art on deep connection with an object outside the self, thus allowing some of its practitioners to develop an art with oracular content.
Important writers whose work has been defined as oracular include Arthur Rimbaud, Ralph Waldo Emerson, William Butler Yeats, and H.D.
Read more about this topic: Oracular Literature
Famous quotes containing the word cultures:
“Both cultures encourage innovation and experimentation, but are likely to reject the innovator if his innovation is not accepted by audiences. High culture experiments that are rejected by audiences in the creator’s lifetime may, however, become classics in another era, whereas popular culture experiments are forgotten if not immediately successful. Even so, in both cultures innovation is rare, although in high culture it is celebrated and in popular culture it is taken for granted.”
—Herbert J. Gans (b. 1927)