The Hero Journey in Literature

by Smith, Evans Lansing

• ISBN13: 9780761805090
• ISBN10: 0761805095
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1996-12-30
• Publisher: UPA

Summary

This book provides an overview of the hero journey theme in literature, from antiquity to the present, with a focus on the imagery of the rites of passage in human life (initiation at adolescence, mid-life, and death). This is the only book to focus on the major works of the literary tradition, detailing discussions of the hero journey in major literary texts. Included are chapters on the literature of Antiquity (Sumerian, Egyptian, Biblical, Greek, and Roman), the Middle Ages (with emphasis on the Arthurian Romance), the Renaissance to the Enlightenment (Shakespeare, Milton, Marvell, Pope, Fielding, the Arabian Nights, and Alchemical Illustration), Romanticism and Naturalism (Coleridge, Selected Grimm's Tales, Bront%, Bierce, Whitman, Twain, Hawthorne, E.T.A. Hoffman, Rabindranath Tagore), and Modernism to Contemporary (Joyce, Gilman, Alifa Rifaat, Bellow, Lessing, Pynchon, Eudora Welty).

Table of Contents

Preface
Introduction
The Ancient World	p. 1
The Descent of Inanna	p. 2
Gilgamesh and Enkidu	p. 12
The Egyptian Books of the Dead	p. 21
Odysseus	p. 26
Demeter and Persephone	p. 45
The Biblical Hero Journey	p. 51
Aeneas	p. 60
The Golden Ass: Lucius and Psyche	p. 63
The Arthurian Romances and the Middle Ages	p. 81
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight	p. 82
Sir Orfeo	p. 93
Chretien's Lancelot	p. 100
Chretien's Yvain	p. 108
Chretien and Wolfram's Parzival	p. 119
The Quest for the Holy Grail	p. 137
Conference of the Birds	p. 155
The Renaissance to the Age of Reason	p. 167
Spenser's Faerie Queene	p. 168
Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream	p. 171
Folk Ballads	p. 175
Paintings and Engravings	p. 178
Milton and Marvell	p. 183
Racine and Pope	p. 191
Fielding's Tom Jones	p. 194
The Arabian Nights	p. 210
Japanese Journeys and Slave Narratives	p. 232
Popol Vuh	p. 238
Romanticism to Naturalism	p. 245
Folktales	p. 246
E.T.A. Hoffman	p. 256
Rabindranath Tagore	p. 258
Nathaniel Hawthorne	p. 262
Coleridge	p. 287
Herman Melville	p. 290
Walt Whitman	p. 308
Mark Twain	p. 311
Charlotte Bronte	p. 314
Ambrose Bierce	p. 333
Modernism	p. 341
Thomas Mann	p. 342
Joseph Conrad	p. 351
James Joyce	p. 360
D. H. Lawrence	p. 368
Charlotte Perkins Gilman	p. 371
Jorge Luis Borges	p. 374
Charles Williams	p. 384
T. H. White	p. 393
Saul Bellow	p. 404
F. W. Murnau	p. 409
Jean Cocteau	p. 413
Ingmar Bergman	p. 426
Alifa Rifaat	p. 433
Black Elk	p. 436
Eudora Welty	p. 446
Conclusion: Into the Labyrinth	p. 453
Works Cited	p. 463
Index	p. 479
Table of Contents provided by Blackwell. All Rights Reserved.