You mean polemecists. I don't think Kafka or Orwell fall into that category in their fiction. What's the relationship between myth and polemic? Is there one? The strictly contemporary does seem to be the domain of myth.
Oh, the chances... I had a three-day storytelling course this week and the "Hero's Journey" ate up almost the entire first day alone. Task until the next (and final) day of the course in december is to analyze a movie of choice with this model. Looking forward to that Need to watch the series, I've been meaning to for a while now.
At the risk of seeming to patronize (fairly pointless) check out these kids who tackle how what myths are (and are not) and how they continue to inform and influence our consciousness. Worth a once over.
Great stuff here! I have some catching up to do. It's probably been 40 years or so since I last read or watched Campbell, but he was huge for us in the 60s and 70s, led us into Jung and Hillman, and stayed with us. I was always struck by how people from all backgrounds and interests could immediately plug into what he was saying, classical Platonists, garage band rockers, farmers . . . And -- just to dip a toe into one of the conversations I caught zipping through the thread -- mythmaking goes on all the time today, in kitchens and on televisions all over the world. Here's a bit of Hillman -- much of my group who traveled through Campbell also learned from him: "By soul I mean, first of all, a perspective rather than a substance, a viewpoint toward things rather than a thing itself. This perspective is reflective; it mediates events and makes differences between ourselves and everything that happens. Between us and events, between the doer and the deed, there is a reflective moment -- and soul-making means differentiating this middle ground. It is as if consciousness rests upon a self-sustaining and imagining substrate -- an inner place or deeper person or ongoing presence -- that is simply there even when all our subjectivity, ego, and consciousness go into eclipse. Soul appears as a factor independent of the events in which we are immersed. Though I cannot identify soul with anything else, I also can never grasp it apart from other things, perhaps because it is like a reflection in a flowing mirror, or like the moon which mediates only borrowed light. But just this peculiar and paradoxical intervening variable gives one the sense of having or being soul. However intangible and indefinable it is, soul carries highest importance in hierarchies of human values, frequently being identified with the principle of life and even of divinity. In another attempt upon the idea of soul I suggest that the word refers to that unknown component which makes meaning possible, turns events into experiences, is communicated in love, and has a religious concern. These four qualifications I had already put forth some years ago. I had begun to use the term freely, usually interchangeably with psyche (from Greek) and anima (from Latin). Now I am adding three necessary modifications. First, soul refers to the deepening of events into experiences; second, the significance soul makes possible, whether in love or in religious concern, derives from its special relation with death. And third, by soul I mean the imaginative possibility in our natures, the experiencing through reflective speculation, dream, image, fantasy -- that mode which recognizes all realities as primarily symbolic or metaphorical." James Hillman -- Re-Visioning Psychology Looking forward to enjoying some of the clips here! Thanks!!
It's "Green Knight Day' here in the U.S. with the July 31st release of the David Lowery film. I've always liked Joseph Cambell's retelling of the old myth (in the post above). Strange, but not surprising, that Lowery chose to omit "Gawain" in the title, people seemingly obsessed with comic book monsters and superheroes these days. The release also piqued my interest in the 1973 Stephen Weeks film version of the tale. Then, of course, there's the 1991 John Michael Phillips tv version which someone kindly uploaded on YouTube. The '73 version is apparently a send up of the story while the '91 version is more straightforward.
Finding Joe (2011, Patrick Takaya Solomon) An exploration of the studies of famed mythologist Joseph Campbell.
I probably enjoyed Thor comic books a lot more after reading Campbell, or else I'm just weird for goat-drawn chariots.
This is the kind of show you pause, rewind, scribble down quotes from, and look up transcripts of on the web so you can cut and paste parts if it into your journal. A treasure.
Someone uploaded Joseph Campbell's final 13 lectures which are a kind of companion series to the PBS/Moyers series. It involves the same essential material but the lectures allow Campbell to proceed at a different clip than the dialogues and go a bit deeper into the mythic associations between various human societies. The episode above is #8 in the series, Kundalini Yoga Part 1. He breaks down the basics of yoga - not necessarily its practice but its psychology - in terms the average "Westerner" can understand and appreciate. Full series playlist
Loved the PBS series. Recently found a copy of his Myths To Live By book, need to put it on my nightstand. In 1966 my father was in D.C. getting orientation for a job that was to take our family to Thailand; as part of that, he attended a day-long seminar with Joseph Campbell about Southeast Asian culture. Dad was extremely impressed; and when the series with Moyers came on PBS, we watched every episode.
Other than Youtube clips that seem to come and go, does anyone know where this can be found for streaming or download?
Not so sure the parsing is that neat or, sorry, politically lazy? Without diving in too deep, I do think Campbell believed in Myth as a component of the "Spiritus Mundi"?
