Date of Award
1-1-2016
Document Type
Masters Thesis
Degree Name
M.A.
Organizational Unit
College of Arts Humanities and Social Sciences, English and Literary Arts
First Advisor
Bin Ramke, Ph.D.
Second Advisor
Walter Howard
Third Advisor
Sarah Pessin
Keywords
Literary pastoralism, Psychedelic plants, William Blake, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Charles Baudelaire, Aldous Huxley
Abstract
My Masters thesis offers literary pastoralism as a viable entry into the conversation on psychedelic plants and their use in mind-alteration by the industrialized West. I will, first, establish that the ancient pastoral tradition can be related to the existence of psychedelic plants, and that the use of such plants has inspired a deeper communion with various levels of the natural world. Next, my analysis focuses on parallels between pastoral literature and accounts of psychedelic hallucinations, which are often comprised of ultra-pastoral visions of landscapes, arabesques, and even cosmic space. These similarities suggest that psychedelic plants initiate a peculiar and remarkable pastoral encounter with what becomes a non-natural, industrial reality. The question of obtaining a more cerebral relationship to an abandoned natural world is examined in literary figures including William Blake, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Charles Baudelaire, and Aldous Huxley. A review of the ties between the cerebral and the natural throughout these authors' psychedelic and pastoral works will open our own 21st century doors of perception to a new literary mode uniting the two disciplines.
Publication Statement
Copyright is held by the author. User is responsible for all copyright compliance.
Rights Holder
Amy Nicole Buck
Provenance
Received from ProQuest
File Format
application/pdf
Language
en
File Size
91 p.
Recommended Citation
Buck, Amy Nicole, "An Introduction to the Psychedelic Pastoral: Tracing Mind-Altering Plant Life into the Modern Industrialized West" (2016). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 1154.
https://digitalcommons.du.edu/etd/1154
Copyright date
2016
Discipline
Literature