A literary search for meaning: how spiritual themes are reflected and represented in contemporary speculative fiction

This thesis is divided into two parts: a creative project—The Knowing, a speculative fiction novel—and a critical exegesis. Through the self-reflexive process of creative writing, supported by cultural discussion and textual analysis in the exegesis, I examine how and why a writer might incorporate spiritual themes in their work using the techniques and tropes of specific genres within the broad literary mode of speculative fiction. To place my novel in a cultural context, I discuss in my exegesis the “re-enchantment of the world”, a phrase used to describe the rise of Western spirituality in recent years. Re-enchantment has its roots in popular culture, and I explore how literary works that place an emphasis on wonder, myth and alternative realities might contribute to the vast field of background knowledge or occulture available to the modern spiritual seeker. I lay the theoretical foundations for this discussion with an examination of modern spirituality and the quest for mystical experiences, linking this to an exploration of the power of mythic imagery and the creation of new mythologies to demonstrate how mythopoeic fiction that incorporates spiritual themes might offer the reader an alternative, and perhaps more enchanted, view of the world. After considering how relevant authors, including Charles de Lint, Robert Holdstock, Margo Lanagan, Marge Piercy, Ursula K. Le Guin, Olaf Stapledon, Neal Stephenson and Ted Chiang, incorporate spiritual and mystical themes in their work, I complete my examination with a close analysis of three useful narrative techniques: unusual perspectives, alien dialects and the manipulation of time. During the creative writing process, I implement these techniques, together with the other tools and tropes of the genres discussed in my exegesis, to both explore their effect and produce a work of fiction that I hope might one day have a place in the Western occulture.