A LIST OF PUBLICATIONS BY JOHN O’MEARA
Articles and Chapters
“Hamlet and the Tragedy of Sexuality” in Hamlet Studies (1988), reprinted in Postmodern Essays on Love, Sex, and Marriage in Shakespeare, ed. Bhim S. Dahiya, Viva Books, New Delhi, 2008.
“Hamlet and the Fortunes of Sorrowful Imagination” in Cahiers Elisabethains (1989).
“ ‘And I will kill thee and love thee after’: Othello’s Sacrifice as Dialectic of Faith” in English Language Notes (1990).
“Outbraving Luther: Shakespeare’s Final Evolution through the Tragedies into the Last Plays,” in Shakespeare the Man: New Decipherings, ed. R.W. Desai, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2014.
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Monographs
Otherworldly Hamlet (1991)
Othello’s Sacrifice: Essays on Shakespeare and Romantic Tradition (1996)
Prospero’s Powers (2006)
Shakespeare’s Muse (2007)
The Thinking Spirit: Rudolf Steiner and Romantic Theory, A Collection of His Texts with Notes (2007)
The New School of the Imagination: Rudolf Steiner's Mystery Plays in Literary Tradition (2007)
The Modern Debacle and Our Hope in the Goddess (2007)
Myth, Depravity, Impasse: Graves, Shakespeare, Keats (2008; rpt. 2011)
Shakespeare’s ‘Richard II’ , God, and Language (2009)
Visionary Miraculism in Shakespeare and Contemporaries (2009)
On Luther, ‘Measure for Measure’, Good and Evil in Shakespeare, Comedy, and the Evolution of Consciousness (2009)
This Life, This Death: Wordsworth’s Poetic Destiny (2011)
BOOK Collections
On Nature and the Goddess in Romantic and post-Romantic Literature (2012) (*Collects: The Modern Debacle / Myth, Depravity, Impasse / This Life, This Death) (i.e., John O’Meara’s Second Trilogy)
Shakespeare, the Goddess, and Modernity (2012) (*Collects: virtually all of John O’Meara’s Shakespeare work, except for Otherworldly Hamlet, and large parts of Othello’s Sacrifice. Incorporates much of the middle section of On Nature and the Goddess, as well as a modifed form of O’Meara’s monograph on the modern anthroposophist Rudolf Steiner’s Mystery Plays: The New School of the Imagination.)
The Way of Novalis (2014)
(A close account of Novalis’s ill-fated love and tragic life and the elaborate process of self-training by which, through his experience of tragedy, he made himself at last worthy of the vision of “a New History, a New Humanity.”)
Remembering Shakespeare (2016) (*Collects: Shakespeare’s Muse / Otherworldly Hamlet / Othello’s Sacrifice / Prospero’s Powers ) (in the case of the last three titles, O’Meara’s First Trilogy; see also, as theoretical background in the case of the last two titles, The Thinking Spirit: Rudolf Steiner and Romantic Theory: A Collection of Texts with Notes. See additionally, by way of introduction, “The Thinking Spirit and Othello’s Sacrifice as Parallel Texts Intended for Joint Reading” —https://www.academia.edu/119294025/Re_viewing_Shakespeares_Initiation_Drama_in_the_Light_of_the_Romantic_Evolutionary_Thought_of_Rudolf_Steiner
‘The Riddle of the Sophia’ and Other Essays (2020) (*Includes essays on Novalis, Steiner, Jung, Solovyov, Dostoevski, Florensky, Bulgakov, Peter Deunov, Valentin Tomberg, and Robert Powell.)
Rilke in the Making: A Comprehensive Study of His Life and Work from 1897-1926 (2023) (*Presents Rilke as harking back to the inspiration of Novalis, in a relation of creative misprision that was forced upon him by the main problematic situation in his life.)
Memoirs
Defending Her Son (1999)
The Bereaved Writer (2017)
Orpheus Redux (2024)
A Summary by the Author, 2022:“My life and work, as the reader will observe, will have been in two distinct spheres, one the Sophianic-anthroposophical sphere, the other what I might call the tragic-romantic sphere, and there is a fundamental existential tension between these two spheres that I am unable to resolve to this day, in my work as in my life.
The last 16 essays that I wrote (which you will find on the “More on Shakespeare” and “Underground” pages of this website) belong to the tragic-romantic sphere. All of my studies of Shakespeare, Graves, Hughes, Wordsworth, Novalis, Keats, and Rilke, are also in the tragic-romantic sphere, except for Shakespeare and Novalis who at some point transition further from the tragic-romantic into the Sophianic-anthroposophical sphere. [*For a few guiding lines on this transition, see the “Self-Portrait” page of this website.]
My book The Riddle of the Sophia brings the Sophianic-anthroposophical side of my work and my life to what is at least a form of completeness as for my formulations of it, but it is all to the point that in the last essay of this book, the essay on “Valentin Tomberg and Dostoevski,” I dovetail back from the Sophianic-anthroposophical to the tragic-romantic.
The question remains how one can accomplish the transition that Shakespeare and Novalis do, and what other authors can be said to do so, because I cannot find any others from the mainstream literary tradition who do. Which brings me to the dilemma in which I continue to this day. Whereto from Shakespeare and Novalis? And what of the overwhelming evidence of tragic-romantic impasse in the rest of our civilization—as my most recent book, TRAGICAL HISTORICAL, again bears witness? How will this be finally resolved?
N.B. The reader will note that the historical antecedents of the anthroposophical culture of today go back to at least the early fifteenth century. As for the Sophianic stream, its longer history is somewhat better known. For more details on this subject, as well as on Novalis’s Successor, see my “Riddle of the Sophia” page.”
JOM
From the Author, 2023:“In the end, what catapulted me through the whole of my work was the theme of the Death of the Beloved, i.e., the Tragic Romantic theme, which one traces in a major form in Shakespeare, Novalis, and Rilke. It is also implicit in other authors I write about: in Keats, Ted Hughes, Coleridge, even Robert Graves after his separation from Laura Riding. It is also the main (Orphic) theme of my memoir, Defending her Son (1999) as well as the theme of the sequel to my memoir, The Bereaved Writer (2017).
There is, then, the main theme of the Death of the Beloved, and also the associated theme of Depravity in human nature, dispossessing one of the Beloved (a major theme in Shakespeare, and one that absorbs me also in my commentary on Graves and Hughes in Depravity, and in New School…)
How Shakespeare and Novalis finally relate to each other would be hard to say, but they are linked in the sphere of the issues raised by Tragic Romance, and their respective struggles in this regard are resolved through eventual communion with Sophia, though at different ends of the scale, as I formulate this in the commentary on the next page of this website: http://johnomeara.squarespace.com/an-invitation
Also, not to forget Rilke, the type of the modern Orphic poet who is compelled to give over the struggle that absorbs Novalis and is in a relation of creative misprision to him, who resists renunciation and can only embrace the dead Beloved (the Lou Salomé of his early Florentine days.) …
All is a whole through the many disparate parts.”
JOM
