Rhonda Does Research: Myth

Showing posts with label Myth. Show all posts

Friday, February 8, 2013

Elrond's Council and the Heroes

The eponymous Fellowship from left to right: (Top row) Aragorn, Gandalf, Legolas, Boromir, (bottom row) Sam, Frodo, Merry, Pippin, Gimli. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

This week, I'm supposed to be answering the question, "What have you found in a scene (using the model)?" The scene that made me choose The Fellowship of the Ring for my research project is the council scene at Rivendell where representatives of the various groups of Middle Earthers (there has to be a better way of putting that!) are trying to decide what to do about the ring. What I thought from the beginning is that all of the men arriving for the meeting look like heroes. The way that they each have their own moment onscreen seems to be saying, "pay attention! This guy is important." And the rest of the scene bears that out. Each of them is on his own quest, with his own priorities and agenda, which leads me to what I think is the biggest discovery I made: they all volunteer for those reasons, not because of the reason Elrond and Gandalf see as overwhelming, that the ring must be destroyed.

And just now, writing this, it occurs to me that their individual reasons (I'm just guessing at this point) determine the outcomes each of them will experience. Does that make sense? We'll see.

Sunday, January 27, 2013

A Whole Bunch o' Heroes

Cover of Jason and the Argonauts

When I was reading the first page in the assignment packet about our research options, I got an idea from the very short explanation of myth criticism: "Films and other works of art draw on patterns established in cultural myths." I read down to the list of films we can use, and the one I was thinking of (The Fellowship of the Ring) was there. My idea was that one of the myth patterns in this film is (and this is really hard to state clearly, so bear with me) a group of heroes goes on a quest together. This came to me because when I read the statement about myth crit, I immediately thought of a few myths, one of which was the story of Jason and the Argonauts (I saw a movie of that when I was little, and it stuck with me because the army of skeletons gave me nightmares for a long time). I also remember an episode of Hercules (the tv show), where he went to see Jason and the rest of the Argonauts.

I want to talk to the prof about this some, just in case I'm totally on the wrong track, so I guess I'm getting up early tomorrow to make it to her office hours.

Myth Crit-- I Think I Get It

Hero's Journey (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I just read the handout on myth criticism (it's on our Blackboard page now, guys), and so I thought this would be a good time to do my next posting, which is supposed to be me explaining my critical model. Here goes nothing.

Myth criticism is centered around patterns of elements in stories (or poetry, or any kind of art) that are also found in myths. After reading through the quest structure, it seems pretty obvious to me that this model makes a lot of sense, in that you really can see the quest turning up everywhere. And, the quest is the hero's journey, right? So, it's also easy to see how the hero archetype works. And right there I'm thinking that I now have enough to go on to another posting, because it looks like my first thoughts about LOTR might work okay for this approach.