So, about the Hero's Journey...
It's been a while since I last posted here. PhD studies are more time-consuming than I thought.
Most of you have probably heard about the monomyth or the Hero's journey (if not, here's the Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hero%27s_journey). I learnt about it in relation to Star Wars and I always saw it mentioned in fantasy reviews and such, never in actual academic works about anthropology or mythologies (I'm not an expert in those fields by any means, but I did read some books, and Dumezil's trifunctional hypothesis turned up in them much more frequently than anything resembling the monomyth).
I was never really fond of the monomyth concept, but I only knew it second-hand, which is why I recently decided to read "The Hero with a Thousand Faces" by Joseph Campbell. Campbell didn't invent the monomyth, but I have an impression that his version of it is the most popular.
I've started reading it, but I probably won't finish. Why:
1. It's psychoanalysis, and I don't believe in psychoanalysis. The only version of it I can stand is Jung's archetypes.
2. It pretends to be academic, but in my opinion, it's a terrible mess, combining arguments based on Grimm's tales (taken as original folk tales, something that they were not), Freud's patients's dreams, and historians' conjectures. You can't mix the myth about Minotaur with the history of Cretan sailing.
3. It's full of unnecessary purple prose, which is a thing I've noticed in quite a few psychoanalytic works.
4. It's sexist, which is a thing I've noticed in quite a few psychoanalytic works. Quote: "When the child outgrows the popular idyl of the mother breast and turns to face the world of specialized adult actiion, it passes, spirityally, into the sphere of the father - who becomes, for his son, the sign of the future task, and for his daughter, of the future husband. [...] And just as, formerly, the mother represented the "good" and "evil", so now does he, but with this complication - that there is a new element of rivalry in the picture: the son against the father for the mastery of the universe, and the daughter against the mother to be the mastered world.
5. The examples Campbell gives to illustrate the stages of the Hero's journey don't always fit.
Add to that two other reasons I already had earlier for not liking the monomyth:
6. Vladimir Propp described the set narrative pattern of folktales well before Campbell, and to me, his "Morphology of the Folktale" is still much more interesting and useful than Campbell's monomyth (even though Propp's theory has been discussed, disputed, and improved by various researchers), maybe because Propp didn't insist on having discovered the key to ALL stories of mankind and didn't stray so much to the land of mystical-psychoanalytical garbage.
7. It is sometimes used as an excuse for unoriginality.
8. Reducing every tale to the monomyth pattern leads to ignoring the differences between stories and the unique things they have to tell us. Unless it's just the first stage of the analysis, it can actually impoverish our understanding of tales, I think.
That is my vicious attack on the monomyth. What do you think about the Hero's journey? Have you read Campbell's book? Do you find the monomyth interesting / useful? Have you used it or subverted it in your writing? (I won't criticise you if you have. I may not like the monomyth, but I believe that everything can be done well).
Most of you have probably heard about the monomyth or the Hero's journey (if not, here's the Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hero%27s_journey). I learnt about it in relation to Star Wars and I always saw it mentioned in fantasy reviews and such, never in actual academic works about anthropology or mythologies (I'm not an expert in those fields by any means, but I did read some books, and Dumezil's trifunctional hypothesis turned up in them much more frequently than anything resembling the monomyth).
I was never really fond of the monomyth concept, but I only knew it second-hand, which is why I recently decided to read "The Hero with a Thousand Faces" by Joseph Campbell. Campbell didn't invent the monomyth, but I have an impression that his version of it is the most popular.
I've started reading it, but I probably won't finish. Why:
1. It's psychoanalysis, and I don't believe in psychoanalysis. The only version of it I can stand is Jung's archetypes.
2. It pretends to be academic, but in my opinion, it's a terrible mess, combining arguments based on Grimm's tales (taken as original folk tales, something that they were not), Freud's patients's dreams, and historians' conjectures. You can't mix the myth about Minotaur with the history of Cretan sailing.
3. It's full of unnecessary purple prose, which is a thing I've noticed in quite a few psychoanalytic works.
4. It's sexist, which is a thing I've noticed in quite a few psychoanalytic works. Quote: "When the child outgrows the popular idyl of the mother breast and turns to face the world of specialized adult actiion, it passes, spirityally, into the sphere of the father - who becomes, for his son, the sign of the future task, and for his daughter, of the future husband. [...] And just as, formerly, the mother represented the "good" and "evil", so now does he, but with this complication - that there is a new element of rivalry in the picture: the son against the father for the mastery of the universe, and the daughter against the mother to be the mastered world.
5. The examples Campbell gives to illustrate the stages of the Hero's journey don't always fit.
Add to that two other reasons I already had earlier for not liking the monomyth:
6. Vladimir Propp described the set narrative pattern of folktales well before Campbell, and to me, his "Morphology of the Folktale" is still much more interesting and useful than Campbell's monomyth (even though Propp's theory has been discussed, disputed, and improved by various researchers), maybe because Propp didn't insist on having discovered the key to ALL stories of mankind and didn't stray so much to the land of mystical-psychoanalytical garbage.
7. It is sometimes used as an excuse for unoriginality.
8. Reducing every tale to the monomyth pattern leads to ignoring the differences between stories and the unique things they have to tell us. Unless it's just the first stage of the analysis, it can actually impoverish our understanding of tales, I think.
That is my vicious attack on the monomyth. What do you think about the Hero's journey? Have you read Campbell's book? Do you find the monomyth interesting / useful? Have you used it or subverted it in your writing? (I won't criticise you if you have. I may not like the monomyth, but I believe that everything can be done well).