An Archetypal Reading of the Mythic Representations in Seamus Heaney's Selected Poems

Archetypes reveal the shared roles among universal societies. This archetype may create a shared imaginary which is defined by many stereotypes that have not separated themselves from the traditional, biological, religious and mythical framework. In the same way, archetypal criticism represents that body of many stereotypes including plot structure, symbols, character type, themes that occur in mythology, religion, and stories across cultures and time periods. Heaney poetry has rested on a wide range of mythic patterns and archetypal images, particularly the image of the scapegoat/sacrificial victim and earth goddess. His archetypal images have been identified with the contemporary issues in his country. Therefore, this paper explores the underlying archetypal pattern that Heaney implies in some selected poems. These poems target the mythological heritage of his homeland which he either celebrates or criticized. His poems exhibit the poet's unconscious attachment to the universal archetypes which set social phenomena.

COMMEDIA DELL'ARTE AND ITS IMPACT ON SHAKESPEARE’S PASTORAL COMEDY AS YOU LIKE IT

The paper explores the origins, development and basic genre features of сommedia dell'arte. The first part of the paper deals with the archetypal comic elements of сommedia dell'arte. The historical significance of this type of comedy, as Pandolfi (1957) stresses, lies in the fact that it unequivocally confirms the autonomy of theatrical art by imposing the neverending quest for the freedom to critically examine all the aspects of social life without any dose of censorship or limitations. Its comic pattern has the roots in the grotesque and absurdity of real life, which allows for the actors to fully affirm their artistic aspirations. Shakespeare’s romantic and pastoral comedy focuses on the final reconciliation or conversion of the blocking characters rather than their punishment: the rival brothers Oliver and Orlando are reconciled; Duke Frederick is miraculously converted. This was also a theme present in the medieval tradition of the seasonal ritual play, as Frye notices and claims that “we may call it the drama of the green world, its plot being assimilated to the ritual theme of the triumph of life and love over the waste land...Thus the action of the comedy begins in a world represented as a normal world, moves into the green world, goes into metamorphosis there in which the comic resolution is achieved, and returns to the normal world” (Frye 1957, 182). The Forest of Arden in As You Like It represents an emanation of Frye’s “green world”, which is analogous to the dream world, the world of our desires. In this symbolical victory of summer over winter, we have an illustration of “the archetypal function of literature in visualizing the world of desire, not as an escape from ’reality’, but as the genuine form of the world that human life tries to imitate” (Frye 1957, 184). In addition, the marriage between Orlando and Rosalind takes place in the Forest of Arden not by a coincidence. This is Shakespeare’s vision of the final unity and healing only to be accomplished in the ‘Mother’ Forest, as Hughes terms it (1992, 110), which ultimately represents a symbol of totality of nature and men’s psychic completeness. In Frye’s reading of Shakespeare’s green world, an identical idea of the heroine as the lost soul is expressed: “In the rituals and myths the earth that produces the rebirth is generally a female figure, and the death and revival, or disappearance and withdrawal of human figures in romantic comedy generally involves the heroine” (Frye 1957, 183). Thus, Rosalind represents the epitome of the matriarchal earth goddess that revives the hero and at the same time brings about the comic resolution by disguising herself as a boy (for those members of the audience and/or readers who regard the play as an instance of Hughes’ passive ritual drama and thus primarily enjoy the process of the young lovers’ overcoming various impediments on the way to a desirable end of the play).

New Roles for Indigenous Women in an Indian Eco-Religious Movement

This article aims to study how a movement aimed at the assertion of indigenous religiosity in India has resulted in the empowerment of the women who participate in it. As part of the movement, devotees of the indigenous Earth Goddess, who are mostly indigenous women, experience possession trances in sacred natural sites which they have started visiting regularly. The movement aims to assert indigenous religiosity in India and to emphasize how it is different from Hinduism—as a result the ecological articulations of indigenous religiosity have intensified. The movement has a strong political character and it explicitly demands that indigenous Indian religiosity should be officially recognized by the inclusion of a new category for it in the Indian census. By way of their participation in this movement, indigenous Indian women are becoming figures of religious authority, overturning cultural taboos pertaining to their societal and religious roles, and are also becoming empowered to initiate ecological conservation and restoration efforts.

The Symbolic Relation of the Bull and Plants in the Pahlavi Bundahishn

In the Pahlavi Bundahishn, Ahriman (the supreme deity of evil) has sacrificed the primeval bull beside primordial man Gayomard. Most of the mythical evidence of Indo-European culture illustrates the image or Imagination of the creation of a human or animal sacrifice for the creation of the whole world of its parts and organs. An example of these sacrifices is Gayomard and the primeval bull in Bundashen. In Zoroastrianism, there are more mythical narratives of human beings and less about other phenomena, including animals. However, in the narrative of the creation myth in Iranian culture, besides the creation of parts of the body of the gods or primitive human beings, the archetype of the primeval bull is present. The idea of adaptation of the Macro and Micro worlds in the Iranian narrative refers the distinction between the creation of animals and plants from the body of bull and the manner in which the first pair of creation, Mashya and Mashyana of the body of Gayomard. This is not evident in other narratives of Indo-European culture. This study aims to explain the image of plant creation of organs in primeval bull conjunction with other examples of the creation of the deity or androgynous goddesses and to answer the question of whether the two patterns are essentially interrelated. Therefore, after citing evidence from both instances, it is attempted to analyze this relationship in the above narratives and to show that the role of cattle in the myths of Indo-European creation with the role of goddess in the creation of the world, man, earth, and plant can be co-existent. After bull's death, his body created the plants and animals. This article makes an attempt to explain origin of the animals and vegetable species from the bull-sacrifice based on the sources of myths and archaeological evidences. The bull is the symbol of the fertility goddess, the Earth Goddess, the androgynous being and the origin of life. Therefore, the plants are created from his body.

Towards an Ecological Catholicism: Marian Pilgrimage in the Anthropocene

This article analyzes how the author and environmental activist Carl Amery draws together the topics of Catholicism and ecological criticism in the pilgrimage novel Die Wallfahrer, or The Pilgrims (1986). The novel depicts the journeys of four pilgrims to the Marian shrine at Tuntenhausen in Bavaria. In their journeys towards the surprising and unorthodox Virgin Mary of Tuntenhausen, the pilgrims anticipate their ultimate journey towards Gaia, the earth goddess in Greek mythology, and the inspiration for the Gaia Hypothesis, which proposes that the Earth evolves as a system in which organisms are an active, fundamental component. This article explores how the novel recasts the pilgrim journey as a journey towards an ecological consciousness of humans’ creatureliness and increasingly detrimental impact on the web of life. Particular focus is placed on the way Amery dramatizes the connection between salvation history and the Gaia theory that has lately received renewed interest in the context of the Anthropocene debate.

Embedded Ecologies and the Earth Goddess

This chapter explores the relationship between the kōlam art ritual and the earth goddess Bhūdevi. One of the main reasons the kōlam is performed is to ask for forgiveness to the earth goddess for trampling on her throughout the day. This chapter analyzes the multiple subtexts in which Hinduism relates to the natural world as sacred. Two new concepts, “embedded ecologies” and “intermittent sacralities,” are introduced to help analyze some of the paradoxes between the deferential attitude toward natural forms and the demanding practicality of everyday life in India. Bhūdevi is examined more closely through the concepts of waste, sin, and pollution in order to understand the dynamic between the Hindu worshipper, the belief in the earth goddess, and the subsequent ecological consequences.