The Journal of Mythic Arts: Articles

A Million Little Mermaids by Virgina Borges

I am a member of The Little Mermaid generation of girls. When the Disney movie premiered in 1989, I was smitten; it was the first movie I ever saw in a theater. I loved Ariel, the spunky red–headed heroine, and Sebastian, her singing–crab sidekick. When I went home, I made myself a mermaid's tail from a sheet of butcher paper spangled with sequins and glitter. I was five years old.

It wasn't until many months later that I learned the full story of The Little Mermaid. We had a tattered picture–book copy of the original translation of Hans Christian Andersen's 1837 tale. For some reason, my mother always insisted on reading it aloud to me, rather than encouraging me to read it out loud to her, as she so often would do with other stories. When she read the book to me, it always ended happily: the mermaid gives up her voice to follow her true love, and is rewarded for her persistence with marriage. My mother told me a fairy tale of a fairy tale. (Read more.)

Spells of Enchantment: The Fairy Tale Cycle by Helen Pilinovsky

Once upon a time. . .these words are an incantation, signaling the beginning of a spell of enchantment — a magical spell, or a spell in the sense of a timeless period, or often some combination of the two. They describe a then that could have occurred at any time, in any place, a then which hovers in a delicious void of possibility. However, the thing that we — the modern readers, lovers, enchanted connoisseurs of fairy tales — can sometimes forget is that the prospects of the then can be equally relevant in the now. Fairy tales, folk tales, legends, and myths — fantastic stories of all kinds — are as relevant to the modern world as they ever were. The inspirations for the magical aspects of these stories are as present in our surroundings as they were in any others, requiring only the impetus of the human imagination to be brought to life, and applied to the lives of the denizens of our modern cities. Perhaps more importantly, the underlying reasons that had prompted people to create these tales — explorations of human motivation — are still present within us. (Read more.)

Mythic Fiction for Young Adults by Julie Bartel

...The simplest and best definition of mythic fiction is fiction that draws essential substance from myth, folklore, fairy tale, and legend. The conscious use of mythic themes and tropes — that is elements and language that reflect either figurative or literal use of images, symbols, and metaphors from myth and folklore —is the key ingredient, allowing authors to explore realistic themes on a symbolic level. As in much of the best fantastic literature, the strength of mythic fiction lies in the metaphorical foundations of the story, and in the writer's use of timeless motifs to comment on or illuminate contemporary life.... More>>>

Geraldine McCaughrean's The White Heart of Darkness by Colleen Mondor

I have read a lot of young adult fiction while crafting my monthly column for Bookslut but Geraldine McCaughrean's The White Darkness completely surprised me. Mildly disturbing from the beginning, the story follows a teenaged Sym who ends up on a surprise trip to Antarctica with her polar obsessed Uncle Victor. The flaky uncle would raise red flags for anyone right away but it is Sym's self professed love for doomed Antarctic explorer Lawrence "Titus" Oates on page one that will give many readers pause. Plucky teenagers are practically required in YA novels but crushes on dead legendary explorers? That doesn't happen — ever. So even though the book travels into the territory of thriller classic it is the inclusion of Oates that elevates The White Darkness to a whole new level. McCaughrean isn't afraid to make her heroine a geek — a polar geek even — and for that I am mightily impressed. (Read more.)

Pamela Dean's The Secret Country and Authorial Creation by Eve Sweetser

   

When I first read Pamela Dean's Secret Country trilogy, I was struck by her creativity in using familiar themes in radically unfamiliar ways. I was amused and interested as her protagonists gradually figured out the complex relationship between their world and the Secret Country, a world they thought they had "made up" in a game (the actual Secret Country is also sometimes ritually called the Hidden Land). But then — after many a plot twist! — Dean came round and hit me a double whammy at the end, arranging for half of her protagonist families' members to emigrate permanently to the Secret Country, while the other half stay behind in our world. Ruth, Ted, and Laura Carroll, with Ted and Laura's parents, choose the Secret Country; Patrick and Ellen Carroll (along with the parents of Ruth, Patrick and Ellen) stay here. And everyone copes with this decision. There's a major surface anomaly here....  More>>>

Lost and Foud: The Orphaned Hero by Terri Windling

We find them everywhere in fantasy fiction: the "orphaned heroes," young men and women whose parents are dead, absent, or unknown, who turn out to be the heirs to the kingdom, the destined pullers of swords from stones, the keys to the riddles, the prophesies' answers, the bearers of powerful magic. Think of J.R.R. Tolkien's Frodo Baggins, J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter, Philip Pullman's Lyra Belacqua, Garth Nix's Lirael, and Jane Yolen's White Jenna. Think of the orphaned protagonists at the heart of Diana Wynne Jones's Chrestomanci books, Isobelle Carmody's Obernewtyn Chronicles, Lian Hearn's Tales of the Otori, and countless others. (Read more.)

The Dark of the Woods by Terri Windling

   

"In the mid–path of my life, I woke to find myself in a dark wood," writes Dante, in The Divine Comedy, beginning a quest that will lead to transformation and redemption. A journey through the dark of the woods is a motif common to fairy tales: young heroes set off through the perilous forest in order to reach their destiny, or they find themselves abandoned there, cast off and left for dead. The road is long and treacherous, prowled by wolves, ghosts, and wizards — but helpers also appear along the way, good fairies and animal guides, often cloaked in unlikely disguises. The hero's task is to tell friend from foe, and to keep walking steadily onward... More>>>

Storytelling & Healing by Heinz Insu Fenkl

    

...Telling a story causes you to become its audience, and when you listen to yourself, you learn something about yourself that you did not know before. (By "telling" and "listening," I also mean writing and reading.) To this basic truth about storytelling and writing, I would add another truth, this one gleaned from my childhood exposure to Shamanism: Serious storytelling not only has the potential to heal, it can and does heal. This is no surprise to those who practice psychoanalysis (either Jungian or Freudian), in which it is understood that storytelling is a way for the unconscious to hide meaning from the conscious (Freud), or for the subconscious to send a message to the conscious (Jung). But what I did not realize, perhaps because I had been academically preoccupied all these years, was that this sort of therapeutic storytelling happens all the time, not only in the context of therapy or meaningful conversation, not only in the language of dreams and disguised autobiographical writing, but in the way we go about living our everyday lives.... More>>>

Healing the Wounded Wild by Kim Antieau

I  think in stories. I may even feel in stories. I have done so as long as I can remember. When I became chronically ill, I looked for answers in stories. I wrote them, and I read them. The story I came back to again and again was the fairy tale "Silver Hands." For a long time I didn't understand why. Now, at least for me, "Silver Hands" seems like a primer on how to heal. A fairy tale is a gem, whole in and of itself; it can shatter if we pick at it too much, so I will try to handle this tale with care to keep it from flying to pieces as I talk about it in relation to healing.... More>>>

The Monkey Girl by Midori Snyder

When I was a girl reading fairy tales, I appreciated those courageous maidens tromping off in iron shoes or flying on the back of the west wind to find their future husbands where they, imprisoned by trolls or cannibal mothers, waited to be rescued. I admired those young women and their single–minded purpose. They were bold, resourceful, and spirited. And they were certainly a far cry from the “waiting–to–be–awakened” girls or the girls expecting to be fitted with a shoe, a Prince, and a future all at the same time.

Yet even in their plucky natures and heroic tales, there was still something about them that troubled me. Perhaps it was the assumption of happily–ever–after, or at least the seeming surrender of all that reckless adventure. Their rites of passage completed, the journey to find a husband over, there was an expectation that life for these young women would settle once again into neatly defined roles and an untroubled routine. This assumption didn't sit well with me at all.... More>>>