Abstracts

The next assignment was to choose three scholarly sources to be used later in a literature review and write abstracts of them. Not much introduction is needed here, so without further ado, this is what I came up with...

Abstracts

Joseph Campbell defines mythology as the stories and legends told by human beings through the ages to explain the Universe and their place in it (page 4). According to Campbell, the hero questions his existence and purpose. In his book, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, he discusses Freudian and Jungian concepts related to the transition of the human from adolescence to adulthood to establish a formula for the journey of the hero. He refers to this pattern as the monomyth, a term he borrows from novelist James Joyce. The central thesis of the book is that every hero follows the monomyth, and that monomyth is mapped into three parts: departure, initiation, and return. It is a cycle that involves a death and a rebirth. A child dies and returns as a self-responsible adult.

Before the hero embarks on his journey, he is introduced in a mundane, ordinary world and presented with a problem. The hero recognizes this problem as one that affects not just him, but humanity as a whole. In some cases, the hero initially refuses his call to solve this problem before a mentor convinces him to do so. The hero then crosses his first threshold and enters a new world. In this new world, he faces many obstacles. The hero will struggle with these challenges and hit rock bottom, doubting both himself and the ideals in which he is fighting for, before seizing the courage to overcome his ultimate challenge. After doing so, he will return to his home world, bringing an elixir with him. This elixir can be a physical item representing the lessons he has learned, or it can simply be the knowledge he has gained that allowed him to have a positive influence on both worlds.

Campbell’s strategy for helping the reader understand the three stages of the hero’s path involved the retelling of classic mythologies and applying his archetype to the story. As part of his explanation of departure, Campbell tells the story of Buddha, who had previously been protected from all knowledge of age and death, meeting an old dying man for the first time (page 56) and shows that in this way, he was called to adventure. In order to show the trials involved with initiation, he tells the Greek story of King Midas, who earned the ability to turn objects into gold, only to accidentally see his daughter be transformed into gold (page 190). To illustrate the return portion of the hero’s journey, Campbell applies the Transfiguration of Jesus Christ (page 229). Campbell could have made up a new hero to establish an example of the hero’s journey, but instead he chose to utilize the thousands of stories already in existence to exemplify the monomyth.

Campbell’s work is based on the assumption that a storyteller will only tell a story worth telling. For Campbell’s purposes, a story worth being told necessarily involves a main character that learns something about the world over the course of his experiences, and in turn learns something about his role within that world. If the main character of a story is the same person at the end of the story that he was at the beginning, then the story was not worth telling at all. Campbell assumes that a storyteller understands this necessity and incorporates it in his decision-making of what story to tell.

But many storytellers don’t. Rather, they decide which story they want to tell based on a funny idea for a situation, an elaborate vision for a fight scene, or another revelation that has nothing to do with character growth (major studios are especially guilty of this crime). In such cases, the storyteller is attempting to build a house without a foundation. Since Campbell is so convincing in his explanation that all stories are really the same, some storytellers may assume that they can start with their creative idea and find the foundation for it later. The limitation of Campbell’s work is that if the monomyth is followed, certain stories simply needn’t be told. And it can be hard for a writer to let go of an idea if he thinks it’s good.

Stories that should be told, however, are easier to complete and make psychologically compelling with the aid of The Hero with a Thousand Faces. In perhaps the most famous of examples, George Lucas wrote Star Wars with Campbell’s monomyth in mind. It is the contribution of The Hero with a Thousand Faces to do just that – take a character like Luke Skywalker and provide an outline for the journey he must travel to become a hero.

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The function of Lauriat Lane’s article, The Literary Archetype: Some Reconsiderations, is to redefine and reevaluate usage of the term archetype. Lane explains, “as a literary term becomes more significant and valuable for a given generation, its meaning may become progressively less so” (page 226). She assumes that communication problems will arise between two thinkers who are using the same word to represent a different meaning. In the case of the literary archetype, she assumes that these problems in communication will create misinterpretations of the literature that will have disastrous effects on the analysis of the material. As such, the problem she is addressing is the failure of literary critics to agree upon a shared meaning with employing the term archetype in their discussions.

Lane’s strategy for tackling this problem involves giving a history of the usage of the term, considering if there is such thing as an “archetypal author,” and listing five points of emphasis related to her own definition of the term. She appeals to psychologist Carl Jung to state the formal psychological position of the archetype, and she explains that the literary archetype is similar to the psychological archetype in that it affects the reader on a subconscious level. Jung recognized a distinction between introversive writers (who remain aware that their writing serves the purpose of the author) and extravertive writers (who allow their work of writing to take a mind of its own). According to Lane, this distinction is central to the problem of defining the archetype because of the unconscious origination of the story in extravertive writing.

Lane’s work is somewhat limited in its application of the archetype to introvertive writers. She suggests that in order to properly utilize the literary archetype, the writer must let the story write itself rather than shaping a story to fit the author’s purpose (as extraverts do). However, a study of Joseph Campbell’s monomyth allows for both types of writers to shape a compelling story. Of course, his work was a much more ambitious piece of writing. Lane’s contribution to the field did involve a deep understanding of the necessity for literary critics to come to an agreement on how to define the archetype and the means by which to reach that agreement. Her failure came in having too strict qualifications for the literary critic that needs to be involved in that agreement.

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Kenneth Burke’s Freud – And the Analysis of Poetry examines the relationship between the poet and the neurotic as symbolics. Burke offers a two-fold correction to Freud’s analysis. First, Burke states that the poem should be discussed as a synthesis of multiple motives rather than as a result of one main motive. Second, he suggests that Freud fails to recognize the matriarchal factors involved in a literary work that are related to a change in identity for either the characters in the poem, the reader of the poetry, the poet himself, or all of the above. Burke’s thesis is that the recognition of these two points allows for a better understanding of the function of poetry.

Burke, like Freud, assumes a correlation between the unconscious desires of the poet and the reasons by which he is writing the poem. Two of the key terms related to this relationship are communication and wish fulfillment. Wish fulfillment is a Freudian term referencing unconscious desires (that are generally linked in some way to sexuality). Burke denounces wish fulfillment in favor of communication, which he says is a less misleading word for analyzing poetry since poems are usually written with the intent to be read by others.

Burke’s strategy for supporting his thesis is to analyze Freud’s poetic analysis in terms of other poets and thinkers, including Coleridge, Henry James, and Von Hartmann. Von Hartmann’s idea that art is the externalizing of a unique character’s special inwardness is particularly crucial to Burke’s adjustments to a Freudian analysis of poetry (page 408).

One weakness of Burke’s work is that by putting focus on the matriarchal factors involved with the literary work, he undermines the patriarchal element that Freud is so careful to point out. Burke would have you believe that the Oedipus complex stems from the relationship of child and mother, but Freud’s bigger point is that the mother serves as a token of the rivalry between the father and son (a rivalry with which the father dominates, and continues to dominate until the son has his own son). However, Burke’s other point of thesis, that the poem should be analyzed in terms of multiple motives, has proven to be a significant idea for understanding the complex nature of poetry and the mind of the poet. Burke points out that Freud oversimplifies the motives of the poet and in doing so is misleading for prospective poets in answering the question of why to create poetry. In this way, showing the complexity of the function of art and therefore inspiring reasons for one to be an artist is Burke’s main contribution to the field.

Works Cited

Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces (Princeton University Press, 149).

Lauriat Lane, “The Literary Archetype: Some Reconsiderations,” The Journal of Aesthetics and

Art Criticism, Vol. 13, No. 2 (Dec., 1954), pp. 226-232. Stable URL:

http://www.jstor.org/stable/425915

Kenneth Burke, “Freud-And the Analysis of Poetry,” The American Journal of Sociology, Vol.

45, No. 3 (Nov., 1939), pp. 391-417. Published by: The University of Chicago Press

Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2769854