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Modernist Writings and Religio-scientific DiscourseSeeking “a sort of clairvoyant material plane”: Spirituality and the Moving Body

Modernist Writings and Religio-scientific Discourse: Seeking “a sort of clairvoyant material... [In Kay Boyle’s 1934 novel, My Next Bride, her young, penniless American protagonist, Victoria, goes to work for a Paris commune led by a shady but charismatic dancer, Sorrel. As Victoria enters the “colony,” she finds a mad performance in progress—”an endless weave of movement, a turning and leaping of many bodies”—led by the Christlike Sorrel, dressed in a robe and sandals and sporting long white tresses (39, 36). This is not simply a dance class, not merely a portrayal of a “back-to-nature” leftist commune, for Boyle saturates her descriptions of the man and the scene with religious language. Sorrel wears an exaltation which gave him the look of a divine. He might have been a preacher exhorting his people… and so might this place have been the temple to which he drew them, wilfully [sic] blind to their shortcomings, wilfully [sic] deaf to what they spoke in sin…. [T]hey cast about behind in chaos for the grace and fervour to subdue their unexpected limbs. (40–41)] http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png

Modernist Writings and Religio-scientific DiscourseSeeking “a sort of clairvoyant material plane”: Spirituality and the Moving Body

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Publisher
Palgrave Macmillan US
Copyright
© Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Nature America Inc. 2010
ISBN
978-1-349-38325-2
Pages
67 –109
DOI
10.1057/9780230106451_3
Publisher site
See Chapter on Publisher Site

Abstract

[In Kay Boyle’s 1934 novel, My Next Bride, her young, penniless American protagonist, Victoria, goes to work for a Paris commune led by a shady but charismatic dancer, Sorrel. As Victoria enters the “colony,” she finds a mad performance in progress—”an endless weave of movement, a turning and leaping of many bodies”—led by the Christlike Sorrel, dressed in a robe and sandals and sporting long white tresses (39, 36). This is not simply a dance class, not merely a portrayal of a “back-to-nature” leftist commune, for Boyle saturates her descriptions of the man and the scene with religious language. Sorrel wears an exaltation which gave him the look of a divine. He might have been a preacher exhorting his people… and so might this place have been the temple to which he drew them, wilfully [sic] blind to their shortcomings, wilfully [sic] deaf to what they spoke in sin…. [T]hey cast about behind in chaos for the grace and fervour to subdue their unexpected limbs. (40–41)]

Published: Nov 24, 2015

Keywords: Physical Body; Spiritual Experience; Previous Chapter; Religious Language; Physical Culture

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