Literature
Metempsychosis is the title of a work by the metaphysical poet John Donne, written in 1601. The poem, also known as the Infinitati Sacrum, consists of two parts, the "Epistle" and "The Progress of the Soule". In the first line of the latter part, Donne writes that he "sing of the progresse of a deathlesse soule".
During the classical period of German literature metempsychosis attracted much attention: Goethe played with the idea, and it was taken up more seriously by Lessing, who borrowed it from Charles Bonnet, and by Herder.
Reincarnation is a key plot device in Edgar Allan Poe's 1832 short story Metzengerstein, in his "Morella" (1835) and "The Oval Portrait" (1842). Mark Twain mentions this concept in "A Word of Explanation" at the beginning of his "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court." He comes across a "curious stranger" at Warwick Castle in England who shows him ancient armor that supposedly once belonged to the knights of the Round Table. He interrupts his musings by saying: "You know about transmigration of souls; do you know about transposition of epochs -- and bodies?" He later claims to have killed one of the knights himself ... with a bullet!
Metempsychosis recurs as a theme in James Joyce's modernist novel, Ulysses (1920). In Joycean fashion, the word famously appears, mispronounced by Molly Bloom, as "met him pike hoses."
J.D. Salinger's short story "Teddy" (Nine Stories 1953) concerns reincarnation. An examination of transmigration in the arts is Philip K. Dick's novel The Transmigration of Timothy Archer.
The bestselling suspense reincarnation series of M. J. Rose inspired the FOX TV series Past Life Chuck Palahniuk's book Diary centers around an artist whose reincarnated soul is repeatedly used in order to keep the residents of an island rich. American author Suzanne Weyn's 2008 romance novel, Reincarnation, follows two lovers who keep searching for one another as they progress through the centuries. The Power of Five series by Anthony Horowitz involves children from 8000 B.C. returning as ordinary 21st century children.
In the fiction novel "Donations to Clarity" by Noah Baird, the town sheriff is Elvis Presley incarnate.
Read more about this topic: Reincarnation In Popular Culture
Famous quotes containing the word literature:
“Life’s so ordinary that literature has to deal with the exceptional. Exceptional talent, power, social position, wealth.... Drama begins where there’s freedom of choice. And freedom of choice begins when social or psychological conditions are exceptional. That’s why the inhabitants of imaginative literature have always been recruited from the pages of Who’s Who.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)
“The literature of the poor, the feelings of the child, the philosophy of the street, the meaning of household life, are the topics of the time. It is a great stride. It is a sign,—is it not? of new vigor, when the extremities are made active, when currents of warm life run into the hands and the feet.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Views of women, on one side, as inwardly directed toward home and family and notions of men, on the other, as outwardly striving toward fame and fortune have resounded throughout literature and in the texts of history, biology, and psychology until they seem uncontestable. Such dichotomous views defy the complexities of individuals and stifle the potential for people to reveal different dimensions of themselves in various settings.”
—Sara Lawrence Lightfoot (20th century)