Essay On Influence Of Myth And History In Fiction
Essay On Influence Of Myth And History In Fiction
It is often said that a great work of art is like a dream, full of colours, greatness and splendour . The playful authors of Kiss of the Spider woman and Double Hook don’t escape that definition, providing theirs readers with a writing that perpetually dance on the boundaries of fantasy, oscillating between realism, fairy- tale and dream. The resort to history and particularly to myth is a prerequisite for the entrance in this imaginary realm. In the two fictions, the mythical element w more used than the historical referent , introduces a balance between clarity and ambiguity in the sense that it breaks up with the coherent causality of the traditional plot. Why both Puig and Watson have decided to ornament their fictions with fragments of myth and history while they could have been following a well- made linear plot? The first part will analyse the use of myth in the respective fictions of Watson and Puig the second part will examine the effects of including myth and history into their stories.
Watson’s extensive use of mythical referents informs almost every element of the narrative plot from the depiction of the physical landscape to the characters shaped after archetypal figures and united by the pattern of the quest, a reoccurring scheme omnipresent in several myths.
The first telling argument for believing this assumption to be true is that , in Watson, the landscape displays traces of mythical roots emphasising the quintessential purity of earth and light. The setting presents itself as the closest reflection of the Shakespearean tale “midsummer dream.”
According to Jung, when an artist uses his personal unconscious, he creates art with a strictly personal vision . But Watson chooses to use her racial unconscious which is more apt to capture meaningful archetypes, myths and symbols. Through the process of writing, the author reaches the collective roots of the memory of human race .
Similarly to a faithful director staging a theatrical play, the writer Watson transfers her own vision of a mythical world into the fictional realm of the novel. The landscape in The Double Hook offers to its readers the bareness of a setting on the borders of...