August 31, 2006
America is a mere 200 plus years old. Okay it seems like a long time, but it is not. We are new to this world, and new is good. However, we cannot forget what has happened to our nation in this short time period. That is why we study American Literature, and because we do not have much of an identity, we rely on our past, or mythologies.
According to Love and Death in the American Novel by Leslie A. Fieldler, there is a lot more to a text that just the words. We often forget that there a certain history and myth involved. The word myth is a mystery to me. So much of our past comes from myths and who we are today comes from these origins. Which means that no matter what we do today will always resport back to the original myth, story, word, ect. Something that confuses me is that according to Frye, is that all literature is displaced myth, and realism is only that.....a displaced myth. Is a displaced myth something that was said to be in our past but was not? Maybe I should not go there.
I want to talk a little more about American Gothic, and I know it is getting a little redundant, however I fell in love with the picture. Not because it is so happy and I have fun looking at it, but because it is so fascinating how this nation is fascinated by it! Guy Davenport inserted an exerpt in his book The Geography of Imagination on the painting "American Gothic". There is not many paintings in this world that are parodied as much as this one. I find The Simpsons parody to be rather humerous. But just the fact that there is so much information and meaning in one picture is fascinating. Who would have thought that this sister and dentist would become so famous, and so idoled? In this unhappy painting, we see many American features like the screen door and the house. We also find that this house was a domestic building built in the new world. Hence, NEW is still in the equation! What a cool painting and an informative one at that!
One more thing, Edgar Allan Poe shows up again!
Have a great weekend!
posted by Kim at 8:04 PM
1 Comments:
My idea of myth is not in the sense of an "untrue story" but more like a foundational abstract idea(s).
Usually when we think of myth, we think "Oh, Greek myths with Zeus and Athena and Apollo and the like, right?" But I would say myth is more like the underlying structure that make up those "myths" of Greek culture.
In every individual "myth" there is some underlying design which is the greater myth, and the greater thing is what makes you able to read a "myth" story and understand its ideas, etc....and the same with every story in America we have an underlying design, an underlying myth, that makes those stories comprehensible.
That myth is so abstract and ingrained into our everyday psyche that it is a difficult thing to define and explain. But it's there. It is the world view you hold, the understanding of other humans or lack thereof, and it is the things you learned in Kindergarten and the things you learned yesterday.
Guy Davenport picked apart "American Gothic" because he was showing the tiny bits of the underlying myth. Those things that have melded together over ages into one single idea of "American Gothic" that we all can recognize and relate to. Why can we? Because we are also part of and inheritors of that myth.
Kinda cool, though hard to grasp and explain:)
***Cheryl
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