Doesn't this notion of analogy insulate us from some of the grotesque aspects of pre-Christian myth? E.g. sacrifice as symbolic death and rebirth.
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Northrop Frye author of Anatomy of Criticism & A Fearful Symetry
Erich Auerbach author of Mimesis
Renee Girard author of Desire, Deceit & the Novel
Denis de Rougmont, author of Love in the Western World
Allan Bloom, author of Love & Friendship
3 comments:
I'm not sure it insulates us. If there is this correlation, why is there? Is there a third thing that both the myth and psychological structure refer to? Or, is myth just some sort of reification of psychological phenomenon? If the former, then it would seem that the psychological phenomenon is mirroring the same reality as the myth. I don't see much room for insulation there. This, I suppose, would be the view of the 'believer' (and probably not Jung's view?). If the psychological phenomena are 'just' symbols (and, if they're 'just' symbols, they would be 'broken' in Tillich's sense--ie, we are sophisticated enough to know they are 'just' symbolic)I suppose we are insulated in the way all ironists are insulated. I'm not sure if this is Jung's view (seems kind of like Campbell's though). It seems sort of thin.....
First, let's stay on the surface of things. Is it not undeniable that a good civilized Christian can read, say, the unbelievably horrid story of the Minotaur and derive a personal meaning from it?
Second, is not the process as old, at least, as Christianity? I mean isn't the New Testament based on a process of reading the Old Testament wherein physical events are given internal meanings?
For that matter, wasn't that what Plato was alredy doing with Homer? Do you think Plato threw Homer out or analogized him?
In other words, this general process of reading might take very different forms.
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