Cosmic Wisdom Within Literary Archetype

If one were to try and define true wisdom, they would not struggle to find potential answers offered by all forms of thought and philosophy from all corners of the globe. Here, I ponder the differences but also the overlaps between Western and Eastern answers for this most paramount of questions, and also the transcendental, unifying truths that underly all great works of literature, no matter which culture or race they spring from. Ultimately, I believe that such a search would take us to the very core of civilisation- that is, the root of human narrative.

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Eleanor’s Absolute Reality: The Enrapturing Sublimity of Hill House

The opening line of Shirley Jackson’s novel The Haunting of Hill House states that the eponymous structure exists ‘under conditions of absolute reality’,[1] which are incompatible with the existence of live organisms. The concept of an absolute reality, a state of being that transcends the limited reach of human cognition, has provoked much philosophical and psychoanalytical debate across the centuries; by applying some of this discussion to the novel, we can […]

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