A Midsummer Night's Dream: Shakespeare's Syzygy of Meaning

A Midsummer Nights Dream and its symbolic variantsfiction, fancy, fantasy, or imaginationhave no practical value and pragmatic meaning unless and until placed in a Jungian context. In this regard, the mainstream criticism focuses on dream-literature as escapistic. This study explores Jungian themes in Shakespeares A Midsummer Nights Dream in such a way as to make it an experience for soul-making. The whole study revolves around the key idea of syzygy, which Jung uses to conceptualize the contra-sexual archetypes/psychic energies as anima in man and animus in woman respectively.

Born in a hamlet on the right of the Yarkhoon River, Chitral, Pakistan, the author spends his academic years in Karachi, Swat, and Peshawar and has a B.A., M.A., Mphil, and Ph.D. in English. He began his teaching career in 1986. He has taught English at undergraduate and postgraduate levels in public institutions. Presently, he is posted at the Institute of Management Sciences, Peshawar, to design and develop courses for Business English and Business Communication.

Besides English, his fields of interest also include comparative metaphysics and mysticism. His greatest ambition has been to study and introduce mysticism as spiritual aesthetics, complemented by imaginative writings as communication aesthetics. The research work on Shakespeare is part of the above mission.