Posts tagged as:

mythology

Nothing New Under the Cinematic Sun?

March 19, 2010

I finally saw Avatar. I realize it’s been out for months and earned an obscene amount of money at the box office, but I have a thing about crowds and prefer to wait until the hype has died down before I see a blockbuster like this in a movie theatre. I must say that James [...]

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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, [...]

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“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, [...]

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“Come, trusty sword…” (A Midsummer Night’s Dream, V.i.335)

December 30, 2008

by Scott
 

I’ve written before about using archetypes to help my students make connections between various stories and films.  One of the most common archetypal devices storytellers use is the notion of linking a particular object to a hero.  This association often occurs early in a story, and it is a process Christopher Vogler refers to [...]

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