Date: 2021-01-14 12:33 pm (UTC)
cmcmck: (Default)
From: [personal profile] cmcmck
Oh lord! Could I ever add to the list of godawful gender selectors!

Date: 2021-01-14 12:44 pm (UTC)
chess: (Default)
From: [personal profile] chess
Bother, buffalo worms are much nicer than mealworms and I guess they won't bother pursuing that authorisation now they've got the mealworm one...

Date: 2021-01-14 05:20 pm (UTC)
danieldwilliam: (Default)
From: [personal profile] danieldwilliam

I have long thought that one of the notable things about Greek mythology was how the stories could re-told from different view points, or with different good or bad qualities being emphasised. It's probably notable about lots of other culture's myths - I'm just not that familiar with them.

And lots of the Greek myths and legends involve teams or multiple view points. The Odyssey for sure is mostly focused on Odysseus, but also includes the stories of Telemachus, his son and Penelope, Queen of Ithaca as they struggle in their own ways to hold down Ithaca and also the story of Athena as she seeks justice or at least mercy for Odysseus in what is perhaps best thought of as a political thriller.


I've looked (very occasionally and not very deeply) at the classification and taxonomy of folklore and it's very, very detailed. Lots of cross-referencing and noting of variations and recurring tropes - and, again, the notion that you can retell the same story from a different point of view and get a different experience.

Did some improv pantomimes once, they share lots of similar structures amongst themselves but I'm not sure they are the same story.

Finally, I agree very much with the essay, in order to understand a hero's (or heroes' or heroines' etc) journey (or soujourn at home) you need to have an eye on their motivation. Those are likely to share common themes across cultures but there are going to cultural specifics which, unless you understand the cultural context are going to baffle you. For example, someone more familiar wiht the potlatch culture of the Pacific North-West might have a different understanding of the Telemachus' concern that the suitors are eating all the food.

One might cross reference the Hero's Journey with the Freman Myth.

Date: 2021-01-15 12:07 am (UTC)
heron61: (Default)
From: [personal profile] heron61
The "Hero's Journey" Is Nonsense

I remember attempting to read Campbell several decades ago and giving up through a mixture of boredom and being deeply unimpressed. I see his monomyth nonsense as merely one branch of the idea that there are "timeless classics" that are about "human universals" when there's actually no such thing - every story is highly culturally specific, and while some stories can translate between a few specific cultures, most don't. My views on this were further reinforced when I discovered that post WWII literary fiction in the US was supposed to be about these "universal truths", when in reality, they were just puerile crap promoted by the CIA in order to encourage literature that wasn't social criticism, but was instead largely about the empty lives of middle class English professors or godawfully boring tales of growing up.

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