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Prologue: The Monomyth

#95: Mar. - May 2011 (Non-Fiction)
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Re: Prologue: The Monomyth

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DWill wrote:I believe tat when he says that "Hero" is Campbell's least accessible book. It's a dense package of meaning that I have to go slowly through and often read twice. But it's worth the effort. I was getting an understanding of what JC is saying in the section "Tragedy and Comedy." I was misled at first by the phrase "tragedy of democracy," but I think what JC means is that whereas the ancient Greek tragedies were about nobles coming to their violent ends while attaining understanding of the final horror of life, in our democracy everyone can live a life affording them such an "opportunity." Modern literature is about how the tragic plot plays itself out in ordinary lives. Anna Karenina is his example. JC also says that we moderns have no true antidote to tragic reality, nothing that can lift us to some higher plane of reality, because we don't have recourse to myth as people once did. It is myth that provides the comedy that enables us to see how our accidental individuality is transcended by a process so much larger than we are, one that we can identify with nevertheless. JC is using "comedy" not in the usual sense, but in the sense that Dante used in the title of his poem, as a story of redemption and thus with a happy ending. Humor plays no large part in such comedy, but there is a happy ending. JC therefore places comedy above tragedy, and he believes that myth gets us back the redemptive wholeness that we lost through tragedy. I'm not saying this with a tenth of the skill of JC, and maybe not even accurately.

The question might occur: why then is the Christian solution of individual life after death not such a triumph of comedy over tragedy? Well, Christians would probably say it is, and perhaps Dante would have said so, too. JC doesn't say directly here, but I think that he believes that the tragedy must really be experienced and faced, not papered over with a paradisical ending for us all. He seems to say we can't have it both ways, achieve tragic understanding that represents the height of our humanity yet keep our temporary states after death. A big part of the tragedy is, after all, that we have to give up our consciousness.
I appreciate your synopsis, DWill. I read that particular chapter two or three times and still did not get what Campbell was saying about comedy. Part of the problem is that I'm not nearly as well-read as Campbell. (The Divine Comedy is on my list of books to read.) What I hear Campbell saying, and I'm paraphrasing, is that through various disciplines and through the power of myth, we can eventually come to a place where we cast off our ego-centric (and infantile) ways. I think he's saying that we have to accept death as a part of life, but he frequently veers off in mystical tangents that are really hard for me to follow. I saw the first episode of the PBS show last night and, at times, Campbell seems just as obscure.
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Re: Prologue: The Monomyth

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Oh, and also the bit about Campbell's preaching tone in the book is better understood when one knows that the Hero was basically put together from a lecture to his college students (around 43:00). Everyone should see this video on the life of Campbell which explains what led into the writing of the Hero and also what came of it all after it was published:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid ... 4089642558#

Very interesting life he led...
Last edited by tat tvam asi on Thu Mar 24, 2011 12:47 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Prologue: The Monomyth

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I just joined BookTalk, in part because I never seem to finish a book and I thought the "group" effect
would help keep me on task in this regard. My copy of "Hero" was bought in the 1980's, I can't remember
how far I reached in it the first time. Anyway, the Jungian/Freudian ideas tend to make my eyes cross,
but these sentences really caught my attention:
"The happy ending of the fairy tale, the myth, and the divine comedy of the soul, is to be read, not as a
contradiction, but as a transcendence of the universal tragedy of man. The objective world remains what
it was, but, because of a shift of emphasis within the subject, is beheld as though transformed." Now, I should
give the disclaimer that I am a self-proclaimed old fuddy-duddy with a proclivity for clinging to "The Old Wooden
Cross", but this section seemed to shed some light on my own faith, and give me an appreciation for how this
is mirrored across the great religions and in our own personal journeys.
Looking forward to reading more.
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Re: Prologue: The Monomyth

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Robert Tulip wrote:There is often a strong androgynity in heroism. Jesus, John and Hermes have some feminine qualities. This can be part of their heroism, that they defy a patriarchal world.

I can't think of many female heroes other than Joan of Arc, and in her case her reputation rests on her acting like a man. Mary Magdalene tends to get written out of the story and ignored. Modern women like Eleanor Roosevelt are sometimes seen as heroes, but this slightly jars against the strong association between heroism and the male gender. Symbolically, a sperm has to actively struggle and compete to reproduce, while an egg just waits passively.
Prosaicly speaking women act heroically when they single-handedly take care of multiple children.

In traditional sense hero is a male archetype, and it evolved on demand from the female sex.
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