doomed to oblivion” (in Fowles, 1998:xviii). The de-centred self is split in two: self
and other, subject and object, the seeing and the seen; the self becomes a
multiplicity, fractured, a chaotic, disorganised disunity of many, sometimes
reluctantly, co-existing parts. The writing of mythopoeic literature, the creating of
another world, is an isolating and profound experience; one of the haunting
presence of the other, the decentred-self that inhabits the lost domain, the
elsewhere-place and as may be seen in the research questionnaires, bears a striking
similarity to that experienced by the shaman.
The Jungian analyst Edward Edinger believed that history and anthropology
taught that human society could not survive unless it psychologically contained a
central living myth and that such a myth provides the individual with a reason for
living and answers to the questions of human existence (Edinger, 1984:9). He
suggested that if the creative, intellectual minority is in harmony with the prevailing
myth that the other layers of society would follow its lead and may be spared a
direct encounter with the fateful question of the meaning of life (Edinger, 1984:9).
Similarly, James Cowan suggested that there must always be a cultural exemplar, or
shamanic type, that reflects a condition of primordiality, that acts as a link between
the natural and supernatural worlds (Cowan, 1989:15). Mythopoeic writers fulfil the
requirements of that role.
As in all genres of fictive writing, Mythopoeic Literature contains certain
essential, conventional elements. First there is the manifest and conventional
content of plot, setting, characterisation and theme. Behind this, however, is the
personal unconscious with its latent and associative content of which the manifest
content is actually only a remnant or a distortion. There is also the influence of
archetypal and other psychic elements such as individual and collective memory,
and the attribution of cultural content and symbols. Acting to synthesise these is
setting or place.
Mythopoeic literature may be understood as that literature which is neither a
history or biography nor a fantasy but something in between, a place where the
mythopoeic writer and reader seem to experience a strange altered state of
consciousness, where they hover between the illusion of the narrative and the
knowledge of reality. The writer of mythopoeic narratives, like the shaman,
manipulates consciousness, their own and that of their accomplice, the reader.
That, after all, is the end of all art, literary or magical, of making the reader, the
ron
(Ron)
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