Before Post-Truth: Counter-Epistemologies in the Selected Works of Blake, Yeats, and Tolkien

Post-truth describes a contemporary crisis in which epistemology has collapsed and truth has become subject ideology. During such periods of epistemological uncertainty, authors tend to construct alternative realities that demonstrate how empirical data is not the only means to access truth. This paper aims to show that occultism constitutes an earlier version of the same crisis, one in which William Blake, W. B. Yeats, and J. R. R. Tolkien opposed, respectively, the rationalism of the Enlightenment, Victorian positivism, and industrial materialism. Methodologically, the study employs a comparative close-reading approach informed by theories of post-truth and literary escapism, focusing on three representative texts: “The Tyger,” “Byzantium,” and “The Fall of Arthur.” The analysis concludes that each author’s engagement with occultism and enchantment functioned as a means of accessing truths that empirically grounded realities refused to recognise, and that their visionary strategies prefigure contemporary literary responses to post-truth culture. What we call post-truth today, these authors confronted under the name of occultism.