Abstract
Myths occur in the history of all societies and communities and are a basic constituent of culture. Myths performed a vital role in being the only available model of instruction for the ancient man’s moral, social, and religious life. Writers have consciously attempted to revive myth as a literary device as an indirect way of expressing the complexity of modern life and the latent truths about human behavior. The modern writers have used myths to reveal the unconscious and subconscious levels of human mind. Iris Murdoch, a well-established and distinguished philosopher and a well-read, prolific writer, has found the use of myths and symbols important and enigmatic. She has paid attention to myth making as a constant human activity and its reflection in literature. This paper explores the various ways myths have been used in literature through the ages to the modern times, with particular focus on Murdoch’s A Severed Head.
Myth in Literature: A Historical Overview
Myth is defined in The Encyclopedia Britannica as a “collective term for one kind of symbolic communication and specifically indicates one basic form of religious symbolism, as distinguished from symbolic behavior (cult, ritual) and symbolic places or objects (such as temples and icons).” The original Greek term for myth is “mythos” which signifies any story or plot, whether true or false. M.H. Abrams in A Glossary of Literary Terms explains that in its central modern significance, a myth is one story in a mythology — a system of hereditary stories which were once believed to be true by a particular cultural group, and which served to explain why the world is as it is and things happen as they do (102).
In ancient periods, myths represented certain sacred truths in the form of religious narratives. In later periods, myths begin to function differently. Mythical and legendary stories have served as allegory, allusion and metaphor, sometimes as intrinsic expression and at other times as elaborate and pretentious decoration.
Myth and Psychology: Freud and Jung
The strongest influence on the modern writer’s approach to myth has been of Sigmund Freud. Freud’s analysis of myths which appears in his The Interpretation of Dreams (1900) and The Psychopathology of Everyday Life (1901), has given a profound insight into the use and interpretation of myths, as an expression of deep human emotions which do not find easy, conscious expression. Freud employed the mythical material dramatized by Sophocles in Oedipus Rex to substantiate the existence of what he named the Oedipus complex.
Carl Jung’s conception and interpretation of myth also opened up new approaches to myth for literary writers. Myth is an essential element in Jung’s conception of the “collective unconscious”, the contents of which are not personal but general, resulting from inherited brain structure. Along with Freud and Jung, J.G. Frazer’s The Golden Bough (1911) also influenced writers in their use of myth by suggesting the possibility of transforming ancient and primitive rites into a poetic language that could express contemporary feelings and attitudes.
Myth in Twentieth-Century Literature
T.S. Eliot in “The Waste Land” (1922), James Joyce in Ulysses (1922), D.H. Lawrence in The Plumed Serpent (1928), and Eugene O’Neill in Mourning Becomes Electra (1931) have deliberately woven their materials on the pattern of ancient myths. For T.S. Eliot the use of myths in modern literature is of great significance as he considers the “mythical method” a way of “controlling, of ordering, of giving a shape and a significance to the immense panorama of futility and anarchy which is contemporary history” (“Ulysses, Order, and Myth” 426).
Iris Murdoch and the Use of Myths
Iris Murdoch is one of the “most brilliant and one of the most compellingly intelligent of our present-day English novelists” (Bradbury 231). She has paid attention to myth making as a constant human activity and its reflection in literature, for she considers literature to be a reflection of the psychology and ontology of its age. In many of her interviews and philosophical essays, she has discouraged the use of myths and symbols in literature, arguing that myths and symbols prevent the portrayal of character as a “free and separate” individual (“Against Dryness” 18).
However, Murdoch’s views regarding the use of myths and symbols in literature are strikingly counter to her practice as a novelist. Her novels are highly symbolical and she is unable to keep myths and symbols out of her fiction. As she remarked about the relation of life and myths in a review of Elias Canetti’s Crowds and Power: “Canetti has shown… in ways which seem to me entirely fresh, the interaction of the ‘mythical’ with the ordinary stuff of human life. The mythical is not something ‘extra’; we live in myth and symbol all the time” (337-338).
Myths in A Severed Head
In A Severed Head, several myths are used which are intricately woven in the novel and are significant in depicting the complexity of character as well as to give a mythical narrative to the theme and plot. As Elizabeth Dipple points out, “Freud on Medusa is bantered about to elevate the action; the psyche myth is evoked; Martin on discovering the incest of Palmer and Honor Klein takes to reading The Golden Bough; Dionysus, alchemy and primitive tribes are called on; the tale of Ares, Aphrodite and Hephaistos is brought into play; Dante’s Love is pressed into service; and the book ends with Herodotus’s story of Gyges and Candaules” (Iris Murdoch: Work for the Spirit 149).
Murdoch’s use of the Oedipus myth and the myth of Medusa and their psychoanalytical interpretations has drawn the attention of critics. Martin’s “quasi-filial” relation with Antonia, and Palmer Anderson, his wife’s lover, makes them to be parental figures for Martin. He seems to suffer from severe oedipal and castration anxiety and is unable to relate to women in an open and whole-hearted manner.
However, the oedipal myth evoked to present this aspect of Martin’s personality does not become a constricting feature. Once Martin’s problem is identified, he is motivated by Honor to break out from the clutches of this myth. Honor, in the image of Medusa, uses her powers to awaken Martin into a life of reality. Towards the end of the novel Martin emerges as an independent and mature being, free of the oedipal fixation. The myths do not confine the characters forever.
Conclusion
The use of myths in the novel seems to work at several levels. They are evoked by certain characters, and suggest psychological and emotional undercurrents. The interplay of these myths provides a rich texture to the novel and the recurrent images of severed head, sculpted, dreamed, analyzed, work symbolically and give insight into the deeper meaning of the novel.
Works Cited
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