Companion to Medieval English Literature and Culture c.1350 - c.1500 Book

I've been reading and reviewing books from Sylvia Plath's library, and decided to explore From Ritual to Romance, by Jessie L. Weston (thanks to St. Louis poet Matthew Freeman for gifting this to me years ago). Notes on LibraryThing say Plath read this book 1954-55, wrote "Sylvia Plath 1958" inside of it, and that there is "much underlining" by Plath. I have yet to go to Emory University, where Plath's copy is held, to see exactly what was underlined, but I'm excited to make that trip sometime soon.

The author of From Ritual to Romance, Jessie Weston, died in 1928 before Plath was born. Weston was a contemporary of the Cambridge Ritualists, a group of classical scholars influenced by myth and ritual. This movement carried on into Plath's generation and greatly impressed her. In her first year at Cambridge, Plath wrote, "here all are mystics in various ways" (Unabridged Journals, 221). As a woman in the man's world of late 19th century Cambridge, Weston was judged by many to be a Theosophist, writing about mystical and occult philosophies. And of course, these philosophies were not taken seriously by Academia at large. The public charge of Theosophy (as a crime!) against Weston came after T.S. Eliot listed From Ritual to Romance as crucial to understanding The Waste Land.

A main point in From Ritual to Romance is that the Holy Grail is not a Christian symbol, but probably pre-Celtic/Pagan, and that the Grail is symbol of self-actualization (the alchemical journey, according to Jung, Campbell, and others). Weston's academic reputation suffered because she didn't espouse the traditional views of Arthurian legend. This was a fun book for me to read because, Lord, do I know the feeling of breaking from tradition with my work on Sylvia Plath (my books are Fixed Stars Govern a Life: Decoding Sylvia Plath, 2014, Stephen F. Austin State University Press, and the Decoding Sylvia Plath series on Magi Press). Nevertheless, Weston is considered a primary Arthurian scholar, and Plath loved this book, From Ritual to Romance. [Plath also read another book by Weston in her Medieval Literature class, 1952-53].

Like many of the books from Plath's library which I'm reviewing, From Ritual to Romance captures attention from the first unnumbered page before the Preface. On the first page is a quote (from Cornford, Origins of Attic Comedy), which I'll paraphrase, with my own Plath angle in brackets: We can demand more evidence to prove mysticism, or, we can see how mysticism does not conflict with known truths [about Plath], and how mysticism correlates and explains so much [of Plath's work].

Ah, but today is an age of willful ignorance. There's a delicious section beginning on page 67 where the author blasts scholars for their specifications, missing the bigger picture.

On the next page, Weston goes on to say about most scholarship: "The result obtained is always quite satisfactory to the writer, often plausible, sometimes in a measure sound, but it would defy the skill of the most synthetic genius to co-ordinate the results obtained, and combine them in one harmonious whole. They are like pieces of a puzzle, each of which has been symmetrically cut and trimmed, till they lie side by side, un-fitting and un-related." (68) I envision Sylvia reading this chapter, thinking of that whole, working her words always in ritual and in context to the larger picture of everything around her.

In the Preface, the author writes of owing a great debt to Sir James Frazer, who wrote The Golden Bough, also beloved to Plath. In From Ritual to Romance, Weston says she had the goal of writing about the "border-land between Christianity and Paganism." She wrote:

"I found, not only the final link that completed the chain of evolution from Pagan Mystery to Christian Ceremonial, but also proof of that wider significance I was beginning to apprehend. The problem involved was not Folk-lore, not even one of Literature, but of Comparative Religion in the widest sense."

We Plathians know how much religion interested Plath. She studied, practiced and used its philosophies, tools and rites without fully embracing any one.

From Ritual to Romance is not a long book, but its intimidating list of foreign topics in scholarly language is not light reading. This is, however, exciting, heady stuff for the introspective, mystically-inclined literary buff, such as Plath. Here are just a few of the subjects in From Ritual to Romance which I first found in Fixed Stars Govern A Life: Decoding Sylvia Plath: the Hindu Rig-Veda, the importance of Waste-Land motif from Arthurian legend, The Holy Grail as Aryan tradition (think of Plath's poetic Nazism here), the festival of Soma, the symbol of the root, nature cults, creation stories, Greek mythology, Nature cults, Babylonians, Celts, modern parallels with myth, African tribes and culture, The Medicine Man, the elements, The Fisher King, Fish as a Life symbol across Asian religions, the Leviathan, Jewish and Christian symbolism, Irish Finn mythology, fish as the goddess Venus, the danger of speaking of mystical secrets, exoteric and esoteric elements, Neo-Platonism, Mithraism, Life Principle and the Logos, Vegetation cults as vehicles of high spiritual teaching, Christian legend, folk-tales, women not admitted to initiation, and The Templars (Freemasons).

I especially found the whole Aryan aspect fascinating. When Weston wrote of early Aryan literature and drama paving the way for western literature, she actually referred to a primitive Indo-Iranian culture, although this is never really explained in the book. In fact, the source of the word Aryan is probably a reference to Iran. Yet after some 19th century misinterpretations of the Hindu Rig Veda, and then the Nazis adopting the word as the name for a superior race, Plath (and millions of others) likely had the impression that Aryan referenced Germanic culture. No matter the origin, Pagan, Celtic, Norse, Ancient Greek or Babylonian, what Weston and other mythologists point out is that the legends and rituals are essentially the equivalent. Plath knew that much.

One chapter of From Ritual to Romance is entirely about Symbolism, including symbols of the Fertility cult (which happen to coincide with those of the tarot: Cup, Lance, Sword, Stone or Dish), the cauldron, the Four Suits of the Tarot, origin of the Tarot, and use of symbols in Magic. The Decoding work goes on to build the case that these symbols were purposefully embedded in Plath's work, to activate upon the reader's subconscious. It seems to have worked.

Weston suggests that strictly secret ritual was recorded and repackaged (my modern words) as myth. Her work was a complement to Frazer's focus on magic, religion and science and how magic and science are used to control nature. The book's Foreword, written by Robert A. Segal, says that religion, falling between magic and science, provides both myth and rituals. Magic, however, "involves no gods, it also involves no myths. There is ritual…" (xxiii). Plath, with her sort of atheistic spirituality, would have been tempted by that perspective.

Segal goes on to say that Weston contends that "literature comes from myth, not that it is myth. […] the keenest difference between literature and myth is that literature stands severed from ritual." I think this is the problem with the masses' perception of Plath. Plath's work is literature. It comes from myth, and occultism, but it is not these things itself. Occultism and myth may even be used to construct a literary work, but a Plath poem is not going to be able to be used as an occult tool by anyone other than Plath. It was written by her to work on her audience. All magic stops there.