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Jim Morrison: The Articulation of the Shaman-Poet in the Poetic Tradition
This dissertation aims at the articulation of the shaman-poet in the poetic tradition. It presents American poet Jim Morrison as the shaman artist whose life and poetry are analyzed as belonging to the tradition of poets Plato called possessed by furor poeiicus. This tradition, which is to find its prime in the writings of the Romantic poets, states that poetry is a secret language, based on feeling and imagination, that speaks to the heart of men about the sacred and universal, i. e., natural, quality of the human soul. The shaman-poet, thus, belongs to a tradition that goes back thousands of years to a time when the primitive man used to be in touch with a magical understanding of his environment on a regular basis, in contrast to the extremely rational perception of the world by modem man. The poetry of Jim Morrison is presented here as a representative of this sacred language that tells of this magical perception, long-forgotten, though never completely erased from the human mind. Hence, it is to be seen not only as a bridge to the spiritual realm of feeling and imagination, but also as a technique for ecological survival in this current rational and secular era.
