Freud and Mythos

            In Literary Criticism, Bressler spends a lot of time on Freudian theory, but I do not want to.  I do not think that it is appropriate to assume that a literary work is merely an author’s dream full of repressed desires.  What if the text is full of the author’s repressed fears?  Will a literary critic using psychoanalysis be able to bring the author back to a state of normalcy?  Are all authors neurotic? Maybe?

            Northrop Frye’s mythic criticism is intriguing.  It is almost a pagan take on literary criticism by applying different story lines to the four-seasons of the year.  I agree with Frye that all stories could be placed on the monomyth diagram.  The monomyth provides readers with an interesting way of discerning what type of literature they are reading.  I also like how Frye went all the way back to the beginning of story-telling, the myth, to create his form of literary criticism.  I will have to consider if there are stories which comprise a whole monomyth.   I am left wondering why anyone might bother telling new stories if people already know them through the collective unconscious.

            I agree with Joseph Cambell that mythic tales are still relevant today, and that their themes persist throughout literature.  Myths provide a way for humanity to come to terms with life and mortality, and are inherent in literature.  However, I am not certain Freud’s logic is an appropriate method for proving that this is the case.