relation: http://acta.bibl.u-szeged.hu/86784/
title: (Neo-)platonism revived: literary imagery of daemons in Philip Pullman's His dark materials trilogy
creator:  Tóth Zsuzsanna
subject: 06. Bölcsészettudományok
subject: 06.02. Nyelvek és irodalom
description: Philip Pullman’s (1946- ) fantasy trilogy, His Dark Materials (1995-2000), retells the Judeo-Christian myth of the Fall of Man with God(-figures), Adam, Eve, and the Serpent. The two twelve-year-old protagonists named Lyra Belacqua and William Parry wander through several parallel universes to restore the formerly distorted cosmic balance because of the harmful effects of the gradually dehumanizing churches and sciences. While this act is generally identified with the second Fall, it is in practice the Ascension of Man known from both orthodoxy and heterodoxy, for which each of them, as well as all human beings have helpers, intermediaries, or kind of spiritual guides called daemons who, as distinctive pieces of a human being’s spiritual part, are manifested in animal-shaped material body – visible, audible and tangible –, but only in Lyra’s world. Philip Pullman’s enthralling idea of daemons is not entirely his own, but it is rather his adaptation of traditional fantastic elements to the essence of his story. My first aim is to argue that Pullman’s daemons are the late twentiethcentury literary embodiments of (Neo) Platonic love concept, or Eros himself. The ancient, archetypal desire, even ambition of man to regain Paradise, the Golden Age, or simply the perfect homogeneity with the Creator that was once lost at the beginning of human history has been an integral part of Western religious traditions. I also wish to prove that on Platonist and Neo-Platonist philosophical basis, Pullman’s daemons play a central role in the author’s peculiar literary adaptation of the myths of losing, seeking and hopefully regaining Paradise in the future.
publisher: SZTE IEAS
date: 2024
type: Könyv része
type: NonPeerReviewed
format: part
language: hu
identifier: http://acta.bibl.u-szeged.hu/86784/1/papers_028_036-047.pdf
identifier:    Tóth Zsuzsanna:   (Neo-)platonism revived: literary imagery of daemons in Philip Pullman's His dark materials trilogy.  In: Papers in English and American studies : Tomus XXVIII. - New Horizons in English and American Studies: Papers from the Doctoral Program, (28).  pp. 36-47. (2024)   
language: eng