51社区

Abstract

This study compares contemporary comic books to historical examples of esoteric and religious texts in order to evaluate how comic books might operate as mystico- visionary texts. Mystico-visionary texts are texts that seek to catalyze the author鈥檚 own experience of mystical revelation within subsequent readers of that text. By finding similarities between contemporary comic books and examples of religious and esoteric texts from medieval times through the 19th century, this study focuses on how the engagement of imagination and image plays a role in religious experience such that religious experience can be understood as a 鈥渃o-created鈥� event. This dissertation鈥檚 textual analysis relies on Jeffrey J. Kripal鈥檚 notion of 鈥渃omparative mystics,鈥� whereby a tensive mystical-critical approach is used to consider and compare texts. This approach entails a two-part analysis that first employs a critical- historical lens before engaging a second, 鈥済nostic鈥� lens which provides ways to think about comic books as mystico-visionary texts from a place outside the limits of either science or religion. Three such 鈥済nostic鈥� lenses or theories are employed in this study鈥檚 comparative analysis: Jeffrey Kripal鈥檚 鈥淪uper-Story鈥� and 鈥渕ystical hermeneutics,鈥� and Arthur Versluis鈥� 鈥渉ieroeidetic knowledge.鈥� By applying these gnostic theories to a comparison of comic books and historical mystical texts this study utilizes a gnostic approach to support the idea that comic books can function as mystico-visionary texts.