My thoughts, as developed below, rather than attempting to answer some of the most persistent questions mentioned above, are meant to invite further discussions that will eventually bring more ...clarity to the underlying (mythical) structures that we continue to perceive even in the material that would initially seem far from any transcendental concerns. Some of the main issues I wish to deal with in this introductory essay relate, in the first place, to what I identify as the inevitable presence of a narrative, of a story, in the (audio)visual material. The story that underlies the visual domain thus appears to be the very condition for a possible presence of myths in a given cultural product—and, hence, for their identification. As I will show, referring to some of the leading specialists in the field, our culture continues to be text-based, which means that the images remain attached to a narrative and do not exist on their own, outside of a story. This deeply engrained perception of images has a huge impact on the way we study the mythical elements in the realm of the (audio)visual: as we know, the word “myth” comes from the Greek “mythos”—a story, a narrative. The other major point I address below relates to our conscious or unintentional integration of images, and especially our ability to also register their mythical or more largely symbolic elements, particularly in films or in any other productions that include moving images.
Mitokritika seje kot ena izmed smeri v sodobni literarni teoriji oblikovala v Franciji predvsem po zaslugi antropologa Gilberta Duranda in njegovega ključnega dela Les structures anthropologiques de ...l'imaginaire (1969). Pojavila se je kot sinteza med pretežno racionalistično usmerjenim strukturalizmom in religiološkimi obravnavami mitološke tradicije v literarnih delih. Osnovna dilema, ki jo je poglobljeno načela mitokritika, zadeva jedro literarnih ali širših humanističnih ved, se pravi spraševanje o ciljih in ?primernih? metodah za obdelavo gradiva, ki je v svoji zasnovi pretežno ?neracionalno?, povezano z globljimi sferami človeške biti, bivanja in ustvarjalnosti, in se torej udejanja s pomočjo legend, arhetipov in simbolov. Današnja, ?nova? mitokritika, ki jo srečujemo predvsem v Španiji pa tudi v Belgiji in Franciji, se zaveda nujnega odpiranja k interdisciplinarnosti in novim oblikam umetniškega izražanja, ki jih pogojujejo sodobni tehnološki dosežki. Odprto pa ostaja vprašanje znanstvene (bolj ali manj racionalistično usmerjene) metode, s katero je mogoče najustrezneje analizirati mite v sodobni umetnosti in še posebej v literaturi.
European literature of the late twentieth century usually appears as belonging to an atheistic, agnostic, materialistic worldview. In post-World War II France, major literary trends created new ways ...of thinking and writing that seemingly precluded all metaphysical concerns. The present study focuses on a particular French literary movement called Le Nouveau Roman ("The New Novel"). A posterioricritical approach nevertheless shows that novels generated by these authors cannot escape the principles of the eternal return and remain deeply rooted in mythology, particularly in mythological ways of thinking. Directly or indirectly, they reactivate the Orphic myth, and more particularly Orphism as a literary tradition in which language becomes the ultimate, the absolute. With other writers from Le Nouveau Roman, Claude Simon (1913-2005), the 1985 Nobel Prize winner, is a typical example of this type of writing and of the aesthetic evolution of a novelist. Simon's fiction had an enormous impact on contemporary intelligentsia, although it is still considered to be rather hermetic, quite extreme in its deconstruction of the traditional novel. Such a reading of mythical dimensions in Le Nouveau Roman is indebted to Mircea Eliade and Gilbert Durand's studies of myths and the "imaginary,"as well as the analysis of the Orphic myth by Elizabeth Sewell.
In a variety of her writings, Indian-born Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni who currently resides in Houston, Texas, provides new perspectives to contemporary women’s literature in the United States. ...Positioned at the interface of various cultures, Divakaruni draws from her Bengali heritage to combine history, myth and magic, together with the respect for diversity that underscores ethics as the foundation of human interactions. Among Divakaruni’s novels, The Mistress of Spices, The Palace of Illusions, The Brotherhood of the Conch trilogy and One Amazing Thing all propose new paradigms of wisdom and compassion that may bring about a better understanding among all.
Beyond power seeking individuals, beyond meanness, cruelty, intolerance, smothering, violence, irreverence for material and spiritual matters, beyond killing, torturing, harming in a manner we can ...hardly imagine, all human interactions stem from the relationships between men and women, of how men have treated women, throughout history. This is exhaustively described by one of the major contemporary Slovenian writers, Berta Bojetu-Boeta (1946–1997). Her two novels (1990; 1995), set in the past, may be read as announcements of some major traumatic events in the Balkans, in the last years of the past millennium. Her imaginary dystopias tackle some of the major patterns of how people have lived together along the Adriatic coast, or generally in the area between East and West. With fear at the core of many situations, the beauty of this prose comes from the inner strength of female characters, preparing fertile ground for the emergence of improved human relationships.
Proposant des perspectives innovantes et interdisciplinaires, treize études analysent ici les transformations artistiques et historiques dont ont bénéficié quelques figures mythiques, d'origine ...grecque, biblique ou africaine, dont le corps devient visible grâce à la subversion de l'imaginaire patriarcal. Innovative and interdisciplinary in their scope, thirteen essays deal with artistic and historical transformations that affected a number of mythical characters - Greek, Biblical and African, whose bodies are made visible thanks to the subversion of the patriarchal imaginary.
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