Divine Representations: The Rise of the Mystical Novel in Twentieth-Century England (SUNY series in Western Esoteric Traditions)

Explores how Edwardian era writers used the mystical novel as a way to represent transcendent experiences within the tradition of the English realist novel. Divine Representations examines the development of a unique form of "mystical novel" in the early twentieth century by a loose fellowship of like-minded British writers with a passion for mysticism.Although the Victorian era's growing fascination with all things esoteric and occult had led to sundry examples of "mystical" fiction, the Edwardian era saw the emergence of several mystics-cum-novelists-A.E. Waite, R. H. Benson, Evelyn Underhill, and Arthur Machen-who were largely skeptical of Victorian spiritualist and occult practices.They sought, instead, to disentangle mysticism from occultism and align it, explicitly or implicitly, with a Christian sacramental theology.Through close readings of their most exemplary mystical novels, the book identifies the distinctive features of this school of Edwardian mystical novelists, all of w