Posts tagged as:

archetypes

Suicide Girls: Archetypal Females Choosing the Final Slumber

February 5, 2010

As I think about some of the most famous female characters in literature and drama, I am struck by how many of them wind up taking their own lives: Antigone, Jocasta (Antigone’s mother), Eurydice (Antigone’s aunt)—and that’s just one ancient Greek storyline. If you throw Shakespeare into the mix, the list gets even longer: Juliet, [...]

Read the full article →

I Am Woman, Hear Me Roar (Archetypal Women “Fighting the Man”)

January 22, 2010

Image via Wikipedia

They are the women we admire: strong, intelligent, determined, resourceful. To their opponents, they are gadflies. To the oppressed, they are cherished protectors. They stand alone against the world—and often pay the price for it. These feminine crusaders spend their days fighting the powers that be in order to bring about change, and [...]

Read the full article →

Superheroes: The Character of the Gods

January 15, 2010

I’ve been a fan of comics and superheroes most of my life, but it wasn’t until I was an adult (or ‘adultish’) that I began to appreciate their roots are much deeper than just fueling the imaginings of geek kids. In some ways, the superhero is the reincarnation of the classical Gods – powerful yet [...]

Read the full article →

“What a piece of work is a man!” (Hamlet II.ii.314)

September 2, 2009

At a Key West cocktail party in the winter of 1936, Ernest Hemingway got into a fistfight with the poet Wallace Stevens.  Moments before, Stevens had told Hemingway’s sister that her brother was little more than an effeminate sap.  When Hemingway confronted him about this, Stevens—who weighed 225 pounds and was at one time an [...]

Read the full article →

“She’s A Lady…” (Female Archetypes in the Western Tradition)

January 11, 2009

In examining heroic archetypes, I am struck by how few examples there are of heroic female characters in ancient narratives. Heroic male protagonists abound in the pre-Shakespearean canon, and they usually fall into distinct categories (warriors, teachers, fools, tricksters, etc.). By contrast, the heroines of the ancient world are not so easy to categorize, [...]

Read the full article →

← Previous Entries