Callan, Richard J.

Dr.Richard J. Callan, Professor Emeritus at the University of New Hampshire,taught Latin American literature for thirty-seven years on the university level, the last twenty-seven in Spanish and Humanities at the University of New Hampshire, retiring in 1996. Author of six books and numerous articles on Latin American Literature, Dr. Callan's writings principally concern the psychology of Carl G. Jung, together with mythology, which often underlie the works of twentieth-century writers.

India’s Mythology in the Novel El Alhajadito (the Bejeweled Boy) by Miguel Angel Asturias

2003 0-7734-6673-8
This monograph documents for the first time in publication the Guatemalan Nobel recipient’s intentional substratum of Hindu mythology. El Alhajadito is the dream of the god Vishnu creating our illusory world. The Asian identity of characters and incidents lies veiled in metaphorical language, but with knowledge of Hinduism the design emerges and the reader can perceive the Indian connection necessary for a cohesive understanding of this unusual work. Asian deities and beliefs then come to life in Asturias’s colorful metaphors, reflecting his conviction that mythology is the ancient literary means for expressing the doubts, desires, and conflicts of human experience. This monograph joins the few studies extant about this novel, and broadens the field that has only focused so far on the language. Indologists and others attracted to the religion of India will find their field unexpectedly serving as the basis of a novel epitomizing literary creativity.

Jung, Alchemy and JosÉ Donoso’s Novel El Obsceno PÁjaro De La Noche

2000 0-7734-7687-3
This is the first comprehensive study of the novel El obsceno pájaro de la noche from the perspective of Jung’s analytical psychology. Callan explores how Donoso utilized Jung’s material to create his own literary version of that psychology. The novel is a structure of carefully connected multi-level images which originate in the disturbed psyche of the protagonist and are shown to depict the Jungian concept of Individuation. Callan demonstrates that the imagery derives from alchemy’s prima materia, Mercurius, solutio. Sulphur/quicksilver, retort, Sol/Luna, and more, together with alchemical references to mythology – all is original criticism on the novel. The documentation also includes substantive material from the Hebrew Cabala and the Hindu Upanishads, parallel fields referred to by Jung and incorporated by Donoso.

Philosophy of Yoga in Octavio Paz’s Poem

2005 0-7734-6200-7
This study is the first complete verse analysis of the Mexican Nobel laureate's poem, a work designed in highly figurative language to present the philosophy of India's equally metaphoric Yoga. The analysis explains essentials illustrated in the poem for achieving nirvana and avoiding repeated reincarnation. For example, sakti is the feminine energy which creates mind, the body, and the world, three illusions of the feminine force who is in essence silent nirvana but sound and turmoil when, as maya, she creates the world (samsara). Sakti, personified in woman, appears to be the link in Paz's well-known triad of sexual love, the alien but fascinating "other," and language, subjects in numerous poems, essays, and in "Blanco." This yogic poem stresses that sakti's creation of mind as manifested in language (sound) must be withdrawn from phenomena, spiritualized, and directed to its nirvanic origin of silence. This book should appeal to those interested in Latin American literature, Asian thought, and the Eastern content in much of Paz's writings.