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Guest Blog: Marc Colavincenzo (excerpt)
Jan. 23rd, 2009 11:57 pmWhile I was working on my essay for Journey to the Sea, I did a quick search on the term "mythic impulse." This is a phrase that we use all the time in the myth courses that I've taken and have TA'ed, but despite a pretty clear understanding in my brain, I realized that the phrase might not be intuitive to other people. In my search, I came across an excerpt of a doctoral dissertation by Marc Colavincenzo on postmodern Canadian historical fiction. Titled Trading Magic for Fact, Fact for Magic, the book delves into the use of mythologizing in fiction and the implications of creating mythology (not in the paracosmic sense, or in the sense of sub-creation ala Tolkien, but in the nature of changing history into something mythic in order to comment on it). Colavincenzo draws quite a bit on Barthes's Mythologies, which I haven't read since college, and it was great to have the refresher.
I thought Colavincenzo did a nice job of summing up some of those ideas in his introduction, so that's where I'm excerpting from.
--
In Mythologies, behind all the social semiological theory, Barthes understands the core of myth no differently from such other theorists as Claude Levi-Strauss, Northrop Frye, Hans Blumenberg, Mircea Eliade and Joseph Campbell -- as widely disseminated and accepted stories which have the function of explaining to a certain community, large or small, why the world is the way it is and where their place is in it, and of granting significance to certain matters. Although their individual approaches are different, this core understanding of myth is to be found in the work of each of these thinkers. For Barthes, this is not only to be applied to large stories which try to explain the whole world or all of life. Even things as apparently unimportant as French wine and French cars or the brain of Einstein, for example, become significant myths which help the French nation (in this case) or the scientific community to somehow define and understand itself. My understanding of the function of myth is based on Barthes' theory of the ways in which communities develop these myths in order to explain and create meaning in their world.
While I use these other theorists, then, to support my understanding of myth, Barthes' theory remains central for one reason in particular: his two-sided view of myth corresponds to the two understandings of myth I work with. Barthes sees myth not just as something that is not true, but also as something that helps explain the world and ascribe significance to it. It may not be true that French wine is the best wine, but it is a part of how the French nation defines itself and explains the world. It is the mixture of these two understandings of myth that makes Barthes' theory so useful for my study of fiction. When, therefore, I speak of the myth of historical discourse or practice, I am using the term mainly in the first sense--as something which is not true. When I later refer to the mythologizing impulse of the fiction I will discuss and how it takes history and pushes it towards myth, I am using the term in the second sense--as something which explains the world and grants significance to certain parts of it.
I thought Colavincenzo did a nice job of summing up some of those ideas in his introduction, so that's where I'm excerpting from.
--
In Mythologies, behind all the social semiological theory, Barthes understands the core of myth no differently from such other theorists as Claude Levi-Strauss, Northrop Frye, Hans Blumenberg, Mircea Eliade and Joseph Campbell -- as widely disseminated and accepted stories which have the function of explaining to a certain community, large or small, why the world is the way it is and where their place is in it, and of granting significance to certain matters. Although their individual approaches are different, this core understanding of myth is to be found in the work of each of these thinkers. For Barthes, this is not only to be applied to large stories which try to explain the whole world or all of life. Even things as apparently unimportant as French wine and French cars or the brain of Einstein, for example, become significant myths which help the French nation (in this case) or the scientific community to somehow define and understand itself. My understanding of the function of myth is based on Barthes' theory of the ways in which communities develop these myths in order to explain and create meaning in their world.
While I use these other theorists, then, to support my understanding of myth, Barthes' theory remains central for one reason in particular: his two-sided view of myth corresponds to the two understandings of myth I work with. Barthes sees myth not just as something that is not true, but also as something that helps explain the world and ascribe significance to it. It may not be true that French wine is the best wine, but it is a part of how the French nation defines itself and explains the world. It is the mixture of these two understandings of myth that makes Barthes' theory so useful for my study of fiction. When, therefore, I speak of the myth of historical discourse or practice, I am using the term mainly in the first sense--as something which is not true. When I later refer to the mythologizing impulse of the fiction I will discuss and how it takes history and pushes it towards myth, I am using the term in the second sense--as something which explains the world and grants significance to certain parts of it.
