Neo-paganism in Western literature: Examples from the Renaissance to the present (John Donne, John Clare, Herman Melville)

This study examines the phenomenon of neo-paganism in Western literature since the Renaissance when scientific breakthroughs demolished Christian pretensions to ownership of the only truth. Science led the way, but literature quickly made up ground by returning to classical Greece and beyond (Egypt, Etruscan Italy) in an effort to find new paradigms toward a reconstruction of reality. A critical and creative analysis of works written by John Donne, John Clare, and Herman Melville spearheads my investigation of Western culture along lines of historical revisionism regarding Christianity as the only spiritual phenomenon of worth in the past 2000 years of Western history. Cosmology, history, literature, and mythology converge to explicate a new/old way of understanding man's purpose on earth as revealed by poets, novelists, and philosophers who chose to bypass, if only momentarily, the Christian solution.