Myths and Literature (and Women)

More and more writers today craft myth-like narratives that feature female heroes and world affirming mythic stories. For instance, Native American poet and novelist Louise Erdrich has twin heroes in her myth/novel The Antelope Wife, Chinese American writer Maxine Hong Kingston revives the myth of Fa Mulan in The Woman Warrior, and Toni Morrison has mythic tendencies in some of her work, like Paradise. Such works often involves feminist dimensions. Echoing Lévi-Strauss’ image of the bricoleur, feminist myth scholar Marta Weigle agrees that perhaps the most important function of myth is its world-creating, world-affirming aspects. She distinguishes male-centered myths that often serve as charters for male dominance in society, from female-centered myths that typically affirm and create the world itself (Weigle 1982). Weigle employs images of spinning and weaving in her analysis of the world creating, life affirming functions of myth.

Marta Weigle explains that myths are needed in times of identity crisis: “Significant psychic transformation – whether an important decision, critical insight, creative task, schizophrenic break, or change in consciousness – is heralded and expressed by cosmogonic myths and motifs in dreams and various verbal and visual creations” (1989, 10). Only apparent incompatibility needs myth to resolve or make sense of social dilemmas.

Weigle also notes the paucity of female creators, deities and heroines in many of our traditional stories: “Quite simply: such female creator deities are rare” (1983, 45). She also laments the rarity of female heros, as evident in the awkwardness of terms for them: “‘Creatoress,’ ‘creatrix’ and ‘culture heroine’ are awkward and almost meaningless designations, reflecting the relatively weaker roles women play in creation, transformation and origin myths – when they appear at all in such narratives about ordering the world” (1983, 53). As Weigle notes: “Culture heroes, whether human or animal, female or male, bring or bring about valuable objects, teachings and natural changes which make possible human society and survival” (1983, 53).

It is thus very exciting to find so many strong women hero figures and re-visioned myths in the work of contemporary women writers, particularly in women writers of color. Erdich's novel offers one such hopeful example. Though the ancient, real and mythical worlds of the Ojibwe may have been “shattered,” or “cracked apart” as Louise Erdrich puts it in The Antelope Wife, by European and American invasions and assimilation, contemporary Ojibwe people build new worlds from those fragments, as Erdrich builds her myth / novel representing this process. Her novel includes obvious fragments from the mythic traditions of her culture, while offering images for how to successfully mediate such impulses, build or incorporate a comprehensive and meaningful worldview, and thrive as Native Americans in today’s world. Clear mythic tendencies within the novel direct the reader to consider it in terms of scholarship on myth. Mythology theories are typically applied to oral forms. Erdrich’s novel encourages us to notice that such fluidity of form as has been noticed in oral genres also applies to written genres. Her novel works as a myth: it offers images and symbols of the re-birth of culture that maintain traditions while suggesting how to live and think about being Native today.

The Antelope Wife symbolizes the revitalization of Ojibwe culture. Erdrich’s innovative myth is a resource for and a representation of her community, which serves a contemporary audience well by offering characters and symbols appropriate to the times, drawn from her own experiences, inspiration and creative resources, and maintaining traditional images and messages. She thus realizes a folkloristic principle of dynamic convergence between individual willed creativity and communal resources. Erdrich’s work may be considered a traditional story, or myth, given a dynamic and fluid, folkloristic view of tradition. (See my other work, including my PhD dissertation—Coming to Life (2000)—for further discussion of all of these issues.)

Lévi-Strauss, Radin, Boas, Weigle, and others stress that mythic thought, as highly symbolic, offers rich resources for making sense of the world, affirming worldview, and confirming human nature.   

Taken: http://www.faculty.de.gcsu.edu~mmagouli/defmyth.htm

K	W	L
El Mito tiene un elemento real y otro ficcional o imaginario.	¿Cuál es el verdadero origen de los Mitos?	Algunos ejemplos de escritores que se basan en mitos para sus obras: Louise Erdrich, Maxine Hong Kingston, ect.
El Mito es base de muchos textos literarios.	Actualmente, ¿es posible originar nuevos mitos?	Los mitos surgen en épocas de crisis de identidad del ser humano.
Hace referencia a un tiempo primigenio.		Presentan escasez de mujeres creadoras, deidades y heroínas.
No pierden vigencia a lo largo del tiempo.		En la escritura contemporánea encontramos más mujeres escritoras que en la antigüedad.
Se transmiten generalmente de forma oral.		Un ejemplo de esta literatura femenina es “The Antelope Wife” (Louise Erdrich)

Read the text and make a graphic organizer:

DEFINING MYTH
From the Greek mythos, myth means story or word. Mythology is the study of myth. As stories (or narratives), myths articulate how characters undergo or enact  an ordered sequence of events. The term myth has come to refer to a certain genre (or category) of stories that share characteristics that make this genre distinctly different from other genres of oral narratives, such as legends and folktales. Many definitions of myth repeat similar general aspects of the genre and may be summarized thus: Myths are symbolic tales of the distant past (often primordial times) that concern cosmogony and cosmology (the origin and nature of the universe), may be connected to belief systems or rituals, and may serve to direct social action and values.

The classic definition of myth from folklore studies finds clearest delineation in William Bascom’s article “The Forms of Folklore: Prose Narratives” where myths are defined as tales believed as true, usually sacred, set in the distant past or other worlds or parts of the world, and with extra-human, inhuman, or heroic characters. Such myths, often described as “cosmogonic,” or “origin” myths, function to provide order or cosmology, based on “cosmic” from the Greek kosmos meaning order (Leeming 1990, 3, 13; Bascom, 1965). Cosmology’s concern with the order of the universe finds narrative, symbolic expression in myths, which thus often help establish important values or aspects of a culture’s worldview.  For many people, myths remain value-laden discourse that explain much about human nature.

There are a number of general conceptual frameworks involved in definitions of myth, including these:

1. Myths are Cosmogonic Narratives, connected with the Foundation or Origin of the Universe (and key beings within that universe), though often specifically in terms of a particular culture or region. Given the connection to origins, the setting is typically primordial (the beginning of time) and characters are proto-human or deific. Myths also often have cosmogonic overtones even when not fully cosmogonic, for instance dealing with origins of important elements of the culture (food, medicine, ceremonies, etc.).
2. Myths are Narratives of a Sacred Nature, often connected with some Ritual. Myths are often foundational or key narratives associated with religions. These narratives are believed to be true from within the associated faith system (though sometimes that truth is understood to be metaphorical rather than literal). Within any given culture there may be sacred and secular myths coexisting.
3. Myths are Narratives Formative or Reflective of Social Order or Values within a Culture (e.g. functionalism).
4. Myths are Narratives Representative of a Particular Epistemology or  Way of Understanding Nature and Organizing Thought. For example, structuralism recognizes paired bundles of opposites (or dualities -- like light and dark) as central to myths.
5. Mythic Narratives often Involve Heroic Characters (possibly proto-humans, super humans, or gods) who mediate inherent, troubling dualities, reconcile us to our realities, or establish the patterns for life as we know it.
6. Myths are Narratives that are "Counter-Factual in featuring actors and actions that confound the conventions of routine experience" (McDowell, 80).

Taken: http://www.faculty.de.gcsu.edu/~mmagouli/defmyth.htm

¡¡¡GOOD LUCK!!!