Elizabeth Pandolfo <pandolfo@MACBSD.COM> replied:
>On 25 July, 1997, Ildney Cavalcanti wrote:
>
>>I agree that the concept of the hero monomyth *is* simplistic and maybe too
>>formalist. On the other hand, it appears to be very useful in order to
>>stress one of the gender differences in quest narratives. Collective
>>protagonists (as opposed to *one* female hero - or heroine - I still have
>>not chosen which term to use...) abound in feminist sf.
>
>That's one of the patterns that has struck me about feminist fantasy and SF
>too, the idea of more than one protagonist, all equal, working together and
>pooling strengths so that all reach the end of the quest, rather than
>having one protagonist with an obvious support group.
It's somewhat off-list, but many of the teaching stories of Idries Shah
emphasize that it takes a group to achieve. Many of these stories are folk
tales or very close to "fairy tales".
Neil Rest
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu May 25 2000 - 19:06:31 PDT