Document Type
Forum Theme 1
Abstract
Whilst researching for manifestations of the Arthurian “legend” in popular culture, I discovered threads of connection with my interest in art and interdisciplinary study, leading me, somewhat circuitously, through alchemy to the field of psychology, and in particular, “New Age” self-help psychology. Arthurian legend has been referenced, adapted and utilized fairly extensively in this field, with titles ranging from Crossing to Avalon: A Woman’s Midlife Pilgrimage1 to The Return of King Arthur: Completing the Wholeness, Inner Strength, and Self-Knowledge. 2 However, based on my research to date, I have found these works have received little acknowledgement by serious scholars of Arthurian studies and, for this reason, I want to investigate why this is so. I have chosen to focus on the work of Deepak Chopra, whose work has sparked as much criticism as it has success. After researching for this paper I felt an overwhelming desire to justify Chopra’s place in Arthurian scholarship. His ideas seem to be quite radical on the surface, so radical that as a scholar it would be easy to dismiss Chopra’s work as naïve and unworthy of serious attention. Perhaps his work warrants closer inspection, perhaps there is something important at work here, something that is easy to overlook. As scholars we bring professional expectations to the work we investigate. When these expectations are not fulfilled, we are quick to pass judgement. According to Chopra, these attitudes exist at the root of our “mortal wound.”3 In my opinion, we perhaps need to accommodate another way of “seeing” and it is my intention in this paper to find out what Chopra wants us to see, and how he utilizes the Arthur legends to attain that goal.
Publication Date
Spring 2008
Journal Title
UNIversitas
Volume
4
Issue
1
First Page
1
Last Page
9
Copyright
©2008 Nicola Wilson Clasby
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Language
en
File Format
application/pdf
Recommended Citation
Wilson Clasby, Nicola
(2008)
"Disarming the shout of doom: Chopra’s Alkahest,"
UNIversitas: Journal of Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activity: Vol. 4:
No.
1, Article 5.
Available at:
https://scholarworks.uni.edu/universitas/vol4/iss1/5
