Authors
- Kaminska-Maciag Sylwia
Annotation
Elena Petrovna Blavatsky is a world-famous occultist, medium, founder of theosophy. Doubtlessly she is a prominent and popular research object. Many researchers have given prominence to her eccentric personality. With all the unclear facts about her life, she is best known as the founder of the Theosophical society which still brings together fervent followers of the Theosophical theory.
This paper aims to support the idea that her works are relevant for both theosophy followers and researchers in the field of literature history. The study presented in this paper focuses on «Nightmare Tales» published in 1892. This is a collection of short stories including «Karmic Visions», «A Bewitched Life», «Can the Double Murder?», «Unsolved Mystery», «The Luminous Shield», «The Cave of the Echoes», «A Strange but True Story», «From the Polar Lands», «The Ensouled Violin», «The Silent Brother and The Legend of the Blue Lotus». Before being published as a part of one book in 1892 (a year after the novelist’s death), these short stories appeared at intervals in popular theosophical journals in the English and Russian languages including “The Theosophist” and “The Sun” in English and “The Rebus” in Russian.
The research is based on the psychoanalysis method. Relying on Karl Jung’s archetype theory we drafted psychological portraits of Nightmare Tales protagonists to reveal universal human values as well as a novel vision of popular motives in the 20th century Russian literature. We believe that interpreting E.P. Blavatsky’s short stories through psychoanalysis, specifically those which are based on Jungian analytical psychology, will find appeal with historians of literature.
By establishing links between Jung psychology and E.P. Blavatsky’s theosophical theories, we identify Jungian archetypes in her fantastic tales. This approach is certain to offer a broader perspective on E.P. Blavatsky’s short stories and to establish links with eternal and universal values. Nightmare Tales has never been popular with fantasy lovers of the 19th century mainly because they were viewed as campaigning for the Theosophical society. Yet they can carry a deeper message relating to symbolic elements embedded in human psyche.
How to link insert
Kaminska-Maciag, S. . (). FANTASY TALES BY E.P. BLAVATSKY IN VIEW OF PSYCHOANALYSIS Bulletin of the Moscow City Pedagogical University. Series "Pedagogy and Psychology", ,
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