The Female Hero

The Female Hero

Monday, November 7, 2016

The Monomyth: Key to all Mythologies

Because I teach literary criticism as well as science fiction and science fiction films, I noticed there were many literary analogues to Campbell's schema.  The diagrams below compare the three main phases of the hero's quest with Aristotle's description of the structure of tragedy in The Poetics as interpreted by Northrup Frye in his Anatomy of Criticism, with the process of individuation described by Jung, with the topography of Blake's poetic universe (as derived from Frye and Harold Bloom), and with the outline of the female hero's quest as described by Pearson and Pope in their The Female Hero in American and British Literature.  There are many other versions available; for instance, Jungian analyses of the greater arcana of the tarot deck outline a similar spiritual journey.

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