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.
The Female Hero
This blog collects many years of materials I have developed for teaching archetypal approaches with a feminist slant for classes in literary criticism, science fiction, and science fiction film, as well as some art work I have created on the female hero.
The Female Hero
Monday, November 7, 2016
Illustrated Charts of Male and Female Journeys (Old)
These two charts were made in the olden days, on a DOS-based computer system and so are scans of xeroxes, but they still provide pretty clear maps of the contrasting journies
Comparative Chart of Male and Female Hero
Campbell's Hero Female Hero Aristotle & Frye
SEPARATION
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|
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SEPARATION
Innocent World |
EXIT FROM THE GARDEN
grey world;
imprisonment in domestic
enclosures
|
Fall/ Peripetia
|
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Call to Adventure
--Refusal of Call
--Preemptory Answer
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Call to the quest
--Refusal of Call
-- recognize guides as captors take on role of
spiritual orphan
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Complication
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Supernatural Aide
--Weapon
--Talisman
--Map
--Mentor
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Supernatural Aide
--No Weapon
--Talisman;Map
--No
Mentor or flawed
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Gathering of
Companions
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Maybe one-- not a
group
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Crossing the Threshold
--Threshold Guardians
-- Inn
on the Borderlands
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slay dragon of
virginity myth
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Belly of the Whale
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Green World
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|
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INITIATION
Road of Trials
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THE EMPEROR’S NEW
CLOTHES
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Agon
(struggle)
Pathos
(suffering)
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Brother Battle
--Failed Hero
--Enemy's
Skin
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Green World Lover
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Meeting With the Goddess
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Light Man Vs.
Dark Man
Seducer
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Temptation
Away from Quest
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Re-entrapment in
domestic enclosures
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|
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Abduction/ Night
Sea Journey
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Dragon
Battle (Rutual Death/ Dismemberment)
|
slay dragon of romantic love; discover qualities
she needs are within her
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Sparagmos (ritual death/dismemberment)
|
|
Atonement /
Recognition by the Father
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Failure of False
Father
|
Anagnorisis (recognition of identity)
|
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Apotheosis
(becoming a God)
|
A Woman is Her
Own Mother
|
|
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Ultimate
Boon Granted
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Discovers that she has qualities she needs inside herself
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RETURN
Refusal of Return
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A WOMAN IS HER OWN MOTHER
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Denoument (resolution)
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Magic Flight
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Rescue from
Without
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Rescue by heroic
mother
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Crossing the
Return Threshold
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|
|
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Master of Two
Worlds
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The New Family ,
Or
A Community of One
|
Marriage/ party/
dance -- acceptance into new community
|
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Freedom to Live
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Rebirth of
Creativity
The World Transformed
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SOURCES
- Aristotle, Poetics
- Campbell, Joseph, The Hero with a Thousand Faces
- Frye, Northrop. The Anatomy of Criticism.
- Pearson, Carol and Katherine Pope. The Female Hero in American and British Literature. New York: R.R. Bowler Co., 1981.
Female Hero Print and Explanation
"The Female Hero" Silkscreen on Blind Embossment, 2003 |
The Female Hero – the Print
E. K. Sparks
·
Diagram at the center of the print is from Joseph
Campbell’s Hero with a Thousand Faces,
the section called “The Keyes,” pp. 245.
·
The quest begins in the upper left (about
11:00) The figure here is from The Book of Thel by William Blake,
a poem about a young woman who refuses the call to adulthood and chooses to
stay instead in a haven of stultified innocence (which eventually will turn
into Ulhro, Blake’s hell of solipsism) (Here's a link to an illustrated summary of the poem: http://www.pathguy.com/thel.htm)
·
The next phase is Alice crossing the threshold
into Wonderland, through the mirror
· After
the threshold has been crossed in the lower rt hand corner is a detail from
Remedios Varo’s painting “Exploration of the
Sources of the Orinoco River,” which
depicts a woman journeying through a swamp in a boat made out of her own
overcoat.
·
At the bottom of the circle, or the nadir of the
quest is an image of a young girl asleep in the jaws of a dragon by a Swedish
(?) illustrator whose name I can no longer remember. This is a reference to a passage from Rilke
in Letters to a Young Poet, where he asks:
How should we be able to
forget those ancient myths about dragons that at the last moment turn into
princesses; perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only
waiting to see us once beautiful and brave. Perhaps everything terrible is in
its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us. "
It is also a
reference to the lyrics of a song “Hills of Morning” by Bruce Cockburn on the
album “Dancing in the Dragon’s Jaws,”
which for complicated reasons I believe references both Charles Williams and
T.S. Eliot:
And just beyond the range of normal
sight
This glittering joker was dancing in the dragon's jaws
This glittering joker was dancing in the dragon's jaws
·
At about 5:00 on the
circle is an image from The Wizard of Oz of Dorothy confronting the “False
Father” figure of the Wizard (one of the notable differences btw the male and
female quest is that typically the male hero receives recognition and atonement
from the father --“Luke, you have saved me”—while the female hero finds out
that the father figure is a fraud and imposter and she must either seek out her
mother or become her own parent)
·
The image above that at the crossing of the return threshold
is another I cannot recover. Think it
is Persephone or Psyche, returning from her quest, with arms full of fruit. Ah, found it—Botticelli, from the Life of
Moses in the Sistine Chapel – clearly not what I had thought, but still
pastoral and fruitful.
·
The last image is off a greeting card, and again, I don’t
know the artist—but it returns to the image of the dragon at the nadir, and for
me is an image of wholeness, the woman now nurturing the dragon that once
threatened her.
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