Memes and Meaning

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

• Acknowledgements; Introduction: The Myth of Meaning; 1. Phaedrus: Hermeneutical Circles in the Sand; 2. The Gospel of Luke: This Text Ain’t Big Enough for the Both of Us; 3. The Wanderer: On the Brink of Honesty; 4. Gawain and the Green Knight: The Ideological Defeat of Camelot; 5. Hamlet: Mental Health During Societal Meltdown; 6. North Woods: Getting Over Yourself; Conclusion. A Sparrow’s Flight; Index