ARCHETYPAL LITERATURE

In this unit, students will read and analyze a selection of archetypal texts from around the world and examine how these archetypes connect to the human condition.

 

Intro to Mythology

Encountering "Strangeness": "The Body Ritual of the Nacirema" - http://www.ohio.edu/people/thompsoc/body.html

The human mind and the need to define our universe - http://joshworth.com/dev/pixelspace/pixelspace_solarsystem.html

 

The Questing Mythic Hero

• Intro, from The Power of Myth, with Joseph Campbell and Bill Moyer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSWcIcOcDvU

• The Hero Abridged, with Joseph Campbell, from The Power of Myth: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJwPIiUPfK4&list=PLR6rytGOJn7mjaDchlzMSCyslMc2hdIxm&index=1

• The Hero''s Journey/Monomyth: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SB_Q1gFsvIw&list=PLR6rytGOJn7mjaDchlzMSCyslMc2hdIxm&index=2

• Additional Notes: 

 

 

 

Unit Selections 

• Selected creation myths

• “From Homeless to Harvard,” Albert Siebert, and “Million-Dollar Murray,” Malcolm Gladwell (essay)

• Clips from The Power of Myth, Joseph Campbell (film)

• “The Negro Speaks of Rivers,” Langston Hughes (poem)

• “Ego Tripping,” Nikki Giovanni (poem)

• “Musee des Beaux Arts” and “Landscape with the Fall of Icarus” (painting and poem)

• “Bluebeard”  (myth)

• “Vasalissa the Wise” ” (myth)

• “La Loba,” “Spiderwoman,” three fates – connection  (myth)

• “The Lay of the Werewolf” – discuss shifting wolf myths and connect to human nature and societal expectations (myth)

• “My Life as a Bat,” Atwood (poem)

• “The Lady of Shalott,” Alfred Lord Tennyson (poem); “The Lady of Shalott,” John Waterhouse (painting)

 

Unit Vocabulary

Genres: Folk tale, epic, narrative

"Four Functions," Campbell: metaphysical, cosmological, sociological, pedagogical

 

Allegory                   Allusion                   Anaphora                  Archetype                 Chivalry              Courtly love

Diction                    End rhyme               Enjambment             Free verse                  Hyperbole           Irony

Metaphor                Myth                         Personification          Rites of passage      Satire                   Simile

Symbol                    Symbol                     Syntax                         Theme                      Tone                    Understatement       

 

Unit Works