The Journal of Mythic Arts: Articles

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>>>

Ted Hughes and Crow by Ann Skea

"Mythic poets," Hughes wrote in Shakespeare and the Goddess of Complete Being, ". . .seem to be a distinct biological type." In their work, beneath the "surface glitter of the plot," there lies a deep "mythic plane" where, as for the Occult Neoplatonists of Shakespeare's time, "all archaic mythological figures and events are available as a thesaurus of glyphs or token symbols." For such poets, myth is part of the essence of their poetry rather than something on which they draw from time–to–time. Hughes, himself, was just such a mythic poet.... More>>>

The Secret Alchemy of Dr. Seuss by Heinz Insu Fenkl

...I have yet to meet a literate English speaker who doesn’t have some clear memory of a Dr. Seuss book. In fact, most of those who recall their initial engagement with Seuss will describe it as an especially memorable or even formative reading experience. In the same way that Charles Dickens has become an integral part of English language culture through our use of the name "Scrooge" from A Christmas Carol, Seuss has entered the cultural dictionary with "Grinch." These days (particularly after the film adaptation), one is actually more likely to be criticized for being a Grinch than for being a Scrooge.

Among Seuss’s forty-four books, many of them radical in their time, the one that has received the most attention in recent years is The Lorax, which was the center of some unexpected controversy in the American Northwest...  More>>>