ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts covered in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book proposes a relationship between psychology and literature in the work of two psychologists devoted to the visionary power of the imagination, C. G. Jung and his revisionary successor, James Hillman. The book explores a connection between the vegetation god, Dionysus, and visions of an Earth Mother. The figure of the transgressive god, Dionysus, proves indigenous to the psychology-literature conundrum. Psychology and literature as academic disciplines emerged from social, educational and cultural revolutions in the nineteenth century. In espousing 'intense value for life', Jung is talking the language of New Criticism's moulding of a distinct category of Literature in order to secure values that, for them, would be lost in such psychological connectivity. The book shows that Jungian psychology can contribute to a revised close reading that offers more life than its legacy in literary studies currently suggests.
