Oracle-texts : the Western tradition

Abstract

Oracle-texts: the Western Tradition draws into the domain of literary studies the text-type known to anthropologists as the ‘divination-text,’ ‘oracle-book,’ or ‘oracle-text.’ The first part of the thesis defines the territory with reference to cultural artefacts, such as the I Ching and Ise Ifa, from which a provisional set of generic features can be identified. In the second part, examples of three sign-systems employed as oracle-texts within the Western branch of the genre - Runes, Ogam and Tarot -are chosen as exemplars for detailed analysis in three quasi-autonomous books. The central sections of each book are indices that list and analyse the signs (sigils, ciphers and icons, respectively) concerned. Each ‘index’ is presaged and followed by literary-historical and socio-literary exegetical sections that contextualise the use of these signs in past and more recent cultural history. Fields of literature implicated in the project include narratology, poetics and hermeneutics, while the organisation of the thesis itself recalls pertinent contemporary notions such as hypertextuality and cybertextuality.