Rebekah Berger wrote:
>Erik, as I am not an academician, and it's been a long time since I've been
>into psych, could you explain what the hero monomyth is?
The hero monomyth, as defined by Otto Rank, is, conceptually speaking, the
basic formula for quest narratives. It proceeds in the following manner:
1. The miraculous conception and birth of the hero
2. The initiation of the child-hero
3. His withdrawal from the larger family or community for a period of
meditation and preparation
4. The trial and quest of the hero
5. The death of the hero
6. The hero's descent into the underworld
7. The hero's resurrection or rebirth
8. The hero's ascension, apotheosis, and atonement.
(The source for this is a book on Orson Scott Card. Since it was a student
who gave me the article, I don't have the exact title of the book. It's
chapter five of the book, titled, "The Child-God with Life and Death in His
Hands: Characterization, Heroism, and the Hero Monomyth.")
One thing to note is that in both Elizabeth Moon's trilogy, _The Deed of
Paksenarrion_ and Joan Vinge's _Snow Queen_, stages 5-8 become part of the
4th stage. The heroines don't go through death, descent, ascension, etc.
literally. They go through these experiences in a figurative sense.
_Deed_ is very much a *bildungsroman*, a novel of the education of the
heroine. Comments on this?
Erik
P. S. One of the reasons I joined this list was because my research
project for the dissertation is to connect, theoretically and historically,
recent speculative fiction (from the 70's through the present) with the
radical fiction of the first 3 or 4 decades of this century. So I
apologize if my vocabulary sometimes goes beyond everyday lingo. ET
Erik Tsao
Graduate Student
Department of English
Wayne State University
Detroit, MI
"The naked Senses sometimes see too little -- but then _always_ they see
too much."
--Edgar Allan Poe
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