Lately, I've been seeing in all of the literature I've been reading for my 3 lit classes some very interesting Pagan symbols in a predominately Christian world. I want to look deeper into this new finding, so I've been doing some thinking. In Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, there are obvious and definitely magical things happening, and that whole story is interesting in that it was a very religious time, and Christianity was at the forefront as well as Catholicism, I believe. Here is where my problem is, I suppose; I don't know enough about the history of religion to tie into the literature, but I do know that Merlin was married to Sir Arthur's sister, Morgan (I think LaFaye) who was behind all of the magic of tricking Sir Gawain into his tests.
Even as far back as Beowulf, there is the battle and triumph of Christianity, which is usually characterized by the known, or the civilized, and Paganism, or the wild and scary. If you think about it, Grendel came from the depths of a cave, lived with his mother underwater in that cave, and underwater would be the utmost unknown--especially in that time. The Green Knight came riding on his glowing green horse out of the woods, and nobody knew exactly from wherehe came.
Really, the comparisons are eerily endless, but never looked at in depth. Shakespeare was also very much into the occult, especially when King James came to the throne after Elizabeth died because James had quite the fascination with ghosts and magic.
In early American fiction--since this IS an American Lit class, I'm finding a lot of crosses between the two as well. Irving refers to some Pagan views in Rip Van Winkle, where there are "fairy mountains" and the mythical creatures who live in the woods and who also gave Rip the liquor that made him sleep for such a long time. Rip Van Winkle occurs obviously around the time of the Revolutionary war which was very much underlined by the strong religious values of our fore-fathers.
So anyways, this is my journey. Before I graduate I am going to become a professional in the realm of hidden Paganism throughout literature. Maybe it had to be for fear of religious persecution, or maybe not, because some Pagan values and ideals are not subtle at all. But I got on this roll here lately just because I'm noticing interesting ties between different things. And I'll stop this rant only to tell you of a poem I read for this class in the 5th edition of our book, in the sheafs of poetry section because it falls very well into this whole theme. It's called The Pagan and the Christian and I stinkin' LOVE it! I'm going to push to read this one in class, because it is definitely worth reading, and I wonder if the author, Elaine Goodale Eastman was an Indian woman...in fact...
So mid-sentence, I decided to google her and she was actually from a Puritanical New England family and moved to South Dakota to live among the Sioux, and actually opened a school there. Hmm. Read it and let's chat about it!
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