Memes and Meaning Presence and Transcendence in Literature

Acknowledgements

Introduction: The Myth of Meaning

The Hunger for Meaning

Instant Reality versus Contextual Cause

The Rise of the Meme

The Suppression of Meaning

1. Phaedrus: Hermeneutical Circles in the Sand

Introduction: Hermes and Hermeneutics

Substance and Content

Psychic Horseplay

Literal Lovemaking

Conclusion: Writing in Stone

2. The Gospel of Luke: This Text Ain’t Big Enough for the Both of Us

Introduction: The Death of the Author as the Death of Conversation

Empty Words – Why Meaning Is Found Elsewhere

Empty Temple – Why Presence Resides Elsewhere

Empty Tomb – Why the Reader Goes Elsewhere

Conclusion: Living Flame

3.  The Wanderer: On the Brink of Honesty

Introduction: The Haunted Ruins of Memory

Kairophobia – Fear of Carpe Deum

Heterophobia – Fear of Otherness

Metaphobia – Fear of Moving Beyond the Present

Conclusion: Ghostbusting the Ruins

4. Gawain and the Green Knight:  The Ideological Defeat of Camelot

Introduction: Weaponised Courtesy

Advent – The Coming of the Other

Adventure – The Hunt

Misadventure – The Collapse of Camelot

Conclusion: Courting Controversy

5. Hamlet: Mental Health During Societal Meltdown

Introduction: Societal Egocentrism

Post-human – The Ghost and the Graveyard

Meta-human – The Reality of Fiction

Sub-human – The Role of the Beast

Conclusion: Rooted in Death, Reaching for Life

6. North Woods: Getting Over Yourself

Introduction: Eco-literary Theory

Part 1: Osgood’s Wonder

Part 2: The Crystal Ball

Part 3: Ephemerals and Ghosts

Conclusion: A Post-Human Selfhood

Conclusion. A Sparrow’s Flight

Attention, Metanoia, and Madness

Meme and Meaning

A Sparrow's Flight: Chronos and Kairos

Index

Biography

Patrycja Austin is Assistant Professor of English at The Institute of Neophilology, University of Rzeszów, Poland. Her work focuses on medieval and early modern literature, Shakespeare, and critical theory, with particular attention to the dialogue between literature and philosophy.

Simon Perry is Chaplain, Tutor, and Fellow at Robinson College, University of Cambridge, UK. His research explores the intersections of hermeneutics, political theology, and cultural critique. His publications include Black’s New Testament Commentary on the Gospel of Saint Luke (2025) and Resurrecting Interpretation (2012).

"This fresh and entirely original work is an important contribution to the current renaissance in the study of literature and theology. It offers an insightful exploration of classic texts ranging from the Phaedrus and Luke’s Gospel, to Gawain and the Green Knight, bringing out insights made available to us by more recent philosophy and critical theory. It is both a celebration of classic wisdom and a searching critique of the our own over-reductive world-view.”

Malcolm Guite, Poet and Life-Fellow of Girton College Cambridge

"Simon Perry and Patrycja Austin deliver a meaningful look at meaning itself, taking the reader on a literary tour through myth and meme, examining Hamlet, the Gospel, Camelot, and back to the present to our current text-filled universe, where each day brings with it a struggle to communicate and make sense of the world around us."

Helene Stapinski, New York Times

"In this wide-ranging and spirited study which considers the retreat of ‘meaning’ under late capitalism, Perry and Austin offer a much-needed defence of the hard work that is necessary to live a life beyond the superficies.  Their six chapters, which travel from Plato to Daniel Mason’s North Woods by way of the Gospel of Luke, The Wanderer, Gawain and the Green Knight, and Hamlet, set out in compelling detail how meaning might take shape as a form of tension between reader, world and word.  For Perry and Austin, meaning is a type of transcendence—but a variety that’s neither straightforwardly religious nor blandly secular: instead, is an attuning to anything that might contextualise the present moment, which is thereby jeopardised by the insistent immediacy of modernity and its dullifying rejection of complexity.  Perry and Austin’s scrupulous close readings bring together biblical exegesis and literary criticism to offer delightfully new assessments of a series of (mainly) well-known texts.  While much of the pleasure of reading Memes and Meaning lies in the beautifully articulated arguments that arise from the close study of language, the ambition of the overarching argument is what makes the study an essential read.  In mapping out an alternative vision to the stagnancy of meme culture, Perry and Austin have written an illuminating, relevant, and exciting critical dissection of the contemporary.  Their study is a tremendous excavation of what it means to be devoid of meaning, and what it might take to understand and re-embed the self in the type of relational networks that neoliberal modernity thrives on dismantling."

Claire Wilkinson, Assistant Professor of English, Robinson College, Cambridge