The Story of Apolonia Tochman or the Rise of the American Myth of a New Joan of Arc

We have far more cultural instincts than biological ones. The human body is full of possibilities that require cultural augmentation for these to become manifest and concrete. War – like every other human activity – is fueled by a range of cultural mechanisms – the ability to spin tales of heroic actions; the creation of myths and mythical heroes; the appeal of historical accounts of battles won and lost in an afternoon. It exploits the ability of artists to ‘spiritualize away the cruelty’ of war (Nietzsche), to create an aesthetic that is most powerful in cinematic representations of it. Most recently military video – gaming has helped to distort reality by making war virtual, providing the ultimate thrill of violence as entertainment

The Arabian Nights is a literary masterpiece that has captivated readers for centuries with its magical elements, mythical creatures and traditional patterns of archetypes. This study delves into the underlying similarities and differences among the types of archetypal characters depicted in two tales, “Three Apples” and “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves”. The focus is on the notion of mythic hero, exploring the use of archetypal symbols, images, characters and protagonists’ quests to identify the principles of heroism central to their characterisation. The study draws upon Joseph Campbell’s theory of Monomyth, which entails a pattern for the hero’s journey that includes three rites of passage: separation, initiation and return. By examining the journeys of Ja’far and Ali Baba through this lens, we find that both possess essential qualities of a hero in accordance with the tenets of monomyth. Despite their idiosyncratic differences, they are portrayed as ordinary men without any supernatural heroic powers who are urged to reclaim their social status by embarking on an adventure where they go through rebirth, face death and triumph over evil. The findings highlight how the use of mythical elements such as magic and traditional patterns contribute to the perennial appeal of the collection

‘Myth and psychology’ explains how, in psychology, the theories of Sigmund Freud and of Carl Jung have almost monopolized the study of myth. They both parallel myths to dreams. Freud analyzes myths throughout his writings, but his main discussion is of Oedipus. For Freud, myth functions through its meaning: myth vents Oedipal desires by presenting a story in which, symbolically, they are enacted. Like Freudians, Jungians at once analyze all kinds of myths, not just hero myths, and interpret other kinds heroically. Creation myths, for example, symbolize the creation of consciousness out of the unconscious. For Freud, heroism involves relations with parents and instincts. For Jung, heroism involves, in addition, relations with the unconscious.

The relationship between myth and literature has taken varying forms, the most obvious being the use of myth in works of literature. ‘Myth and literature’ explores mythic themes in literature and the mythic origin of literature. Common plots have been proposed for specific kinds of myths, most often for hero myths. It discusses the Viennese psychoanalyst Otto Rank (1884–1939), the American mythographer Joseph Campbell (1904–87), and the English folklorist Lord Raglan (1885–1964) who have theorized about the patterns that they have delineated in hero myths. Other categories of myths, such as creation myths, flood myths, myths of paradise, and myths of the future, have proved too disparate for all but the broadest commonalities.

Reviewed by: The Quest for Epic in Contemporary American Fiction: John Updike, Philip Roth and Don DeLillo Jeffrey Severs Morley, Catherine . The Quest for Epic in Contemporary American Fiction: John Updike, Philip Roth and Don DeLillo. New York: Routledge, 2009. 218 pp. $39.95. For important writers of the past fifty years, the quest to write the so-called great American novel, Catherine Morley argues in this engaging and ambitious book, has beneath it the effort to make that novel a modern epic. Such narratives tap into the ancient Virgilian impulse to provide the nation with an origin story and a sweeping view of its history, but truly heroic acts nowadays are in short supply and returns to a homeland often do not succeed. The writers under scrutiny enter literary history so belatedly and laden with irony that they use the gestures of epic instead to "express [End Page 126] some of the sense of disorientation which has accompanied the loss of [the] stable... bedrock of nationhood" (7). In fact, Morley's book, dealing with novelists often acidly critical of US confidence and hegemony, alternates between use of a "national frame" (4) and a more theoretically current embrace of transnational methods (more later on the success of this alternation). Two series—John Updike's Rabbit books and Philip Roth's American Pastoral, I Married a Communist, and The Human Stain—sit alongside Don DeLillo's encyclopedic Underworld in Morley's close analyses. In two introductory chapters—one devoted to theoretical and generic questions, the other to American and Joycean foundations—Morley considers the heterogeneous roots of epics of the late twentieth century. She begins with thorough surveys of theoretical terrain, including Northrop Frye's account of the co-existence of mythic and ironic modes in modern epics like Ulysses and the challenges by New Americanists like Donald Pease and Amy Kaplan to the idea of a unified national narrative. These overviews are some of the strongest components of this book; they handle distinctions between poetry and prose epics, demonstrate the dominant role of Emerson in American individualist and expansionist ideology (and Melville's role in refuting it), and document the tendencies of the "myth and symbol" school of American Studies toward disembodiment and removal from history. Harold Bloom's theory of influence also figures at various points, but especially in the reading of Roth, who "fears the usurpation of his text by his intertextual forebears" (108). In her examinations of the American texts, Morley repeatedly shows the lofty ambitions of epic reined in by the everyday domesticity and unglamorous history of postwar realism. She reads Underworld, for instance, as "a vast exploration of the small, unofficial pockets of individual American histories through the past half-century" (126). Each of these three authors finds himself attracted to the imaginative properties of myths for giving their wandering heroes structure; but, as Morley writes of Updike, each feels the need to diverge from these myths "when they fail to 'fit' his protagonist or indeed the nation of which he is supposedly representative" (59). Morley's discoveries of epic tropes and their "ironic analogies" can be delightful: for example, she shows Roth slyly using American presidents, Kennedy, Lincoln, and Clinton, in the places Virgil and Milton used biblical and mythical heroes (110); elsewhere she finds him transforming the Iliad, "the original epic of wrath" (113), to connect it to the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal. With DeLillo, Morley acknowledges postmodern-theory-driven interpreters of his work while aptly suggesting that its mythic and literary underpinnings speak more readily to his unfolding writerly project. (One factual slip in the DeLillo reading, though: Underworld's prologue takes place at the Polo Grounds, not Shea Stadium, as Morley has it [120].) Whereas the focus of the Updike and DeLillo chapters is exclusively on the Rabbit books and Underworld, respectively, with Roth, Morley takes in much more of his career, leading to some insight but also a sense of unevenness (though this is a common problem in isolating for close-reading one part of Roth's densely intertextual body of work). Morley is quite persuasive in identifying the common features of these texts' epic ambitions and their often tense relationships...

FC Bayern Munich has described its history during the Nazi era as that of a victim under the dictatorship that was systematically disadvantaged. Numerous institutions and the media have supported the football club until 2016 in presenting this self-portrayal as historical truth. Since then, doubts have been raised about this view of history due to the discovery of numerous, previously unknown sources. This article analyses the central elements of the ‘heroic history’ which FC Bayern is said to have written in the Third Reich. In particular, the core statements of the club museum in the Allianz Arena (Munich) are critically examined. As a result of this examination, it becomes clear that the self-image that the football club has of its role in the Nazi era is, demonstrably, a historical myth. In FC Bayern’s marketing, this myth aims to enhance its reputation in the national and international media and to claim moral superiority in competition with other football clubs.

Fidel Castro is one of the few surviving Cold War enemies of the United States. He has witnessed as adversaries ten US Presidents: Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush the Elder, Clinton, and Bush the Younger. Castro is certainly the longest running dictator in the Western hemisphere, and arguably in modern times. He certainly has an acute sense of history, or at least Cuban–American relations, as the ultimate measuring rod of the success of his regime. To be sure, this relationship remains his testing rod from start to finish. Exactly 1 year prior to the anniversary of his movement’s 1959 seizure of power, he announced to a television audience that “In the morning, 49 years of the revolution will be behind us and the 50th year will symbolize half a century of heroic resistance. We proclaim our pride in this record to the world.” His autobiographical potpourri, Fidel Castro: My Life is intended to both share the pride and give his version of events for the historical record. Longevity is indeed the acid test of legitimacy—as it is for all political structures. There is a sense in which Castro’s premature celebration of a half century of rule is quite accurate. For the year 1958 was one in which his guerrilla movement held increased ground in the sparsely populated regions of Cuba, and even more significant, a time in which the decay of the Fulgencio Batista regime became apparent. The entrenched political apparatus had been paralyzed and the Cuban military forces had become incapable of hard fighting. So the claim of the text of this work that it represents a half century review is justified, and should not excite historical purists who date the regime from the entrance of the guerrilla forces on the streets of Havana on January 8th, 1959. Indeed the failed attack at the Moncada Barracks in 1953 is frequently used as the benchmark for the new era. But whatever the dates used by both friend and foe of the regime, this guerrilla group’s seizure of political power must be surely recognized as a major event of the twentieth century—a movement with a rise that, as of this writing, is still awaiting its fall, a fall that Fidel Castro has sworn to prevent from happening. It is assuredly an accident that the autobiographies of both Bill Clinton and Fidel Castro are entitled My Life. Even so and in both instances, the government changes they initiated have had a profound impact on the course of events. One must also note that Castro, like Clinton, has been clever enough to realize that makers of history operate in a climate of public acquiescence if not complete active support. That allows for the first and perhaps most significant observation about Castro’s autobiography: his increasing awareness of the need to reshape the record of his half century into a response to populist aims and nationalist ambitions. Castro’s thundering earlier rubbish that “history will absolve me” has been replaced by endless repetition in which Fidel assures his readers that in past and present, his only concern has been to satisfy the needs and desires of the Cuban people. Behind the absolute dictatorship of Castro family hierarchy lurks a mythic “public opinion” democracy of the people. This perhaps explains Castro’s extraordinary claims that Cuba has never been a nation that harbored political prisoners or ever resorted to illegal measures to extract confessions, even as thousands languish in its places of incarceration. Then again, it was none other than Joseph Stalin in his own autobiography who announced as his primary achievements as absolute Soc (2008) 45:300–304 DOI 10.1007/s12115-008-9092-6

In 1971, US President Richard Nixon declared an official War on Drugs at the international level. This complex campaign sought to shift blame for the proliferation of drug abuse in the US onto coca-leaf producing Latin American countries, like Peru. This paper analyses the way in which the US government applied intense economic pressure to Peru through threatening to retract vital aid, to interfere with the country’s internal politics. It emphasizes the anti-communist Cold War climate which resulted in the aggressive targeting of Peruvian campesinos due to the perception that they were part of the leftists, guerilla group, Sendero Luminoso. The article analyzes the detrimental outcomes of this financial coercion, seen through the uprooting of livelihoods in the eradication of coca crops, mass human rights abuses inflicted onto citizens, and the subsequent sense of distrust in modern Peruvian political institutions.

The turn from ‘factual truth’ to ‘meaning’, which continues to engage much of social science, has stimulated interest in the production of meaning in institutional life. It arises in an interplay between rationality and desire, as an activity which is at once cognitive and emotional, dependent on both conscious and unconscious processes. The systems of interpersonal care that comprise the welfare state have a fundamental bearing on human vulnerability and well-being and bridge the divide between public and private lives. They are implicated in the construction of political and social identities while reaching at times into the most intimate areas of human experience. It follows that any adequate account of relationships in this arena should at least pose the problem of the connections and disjunctions between inner and outer worlds. After all, politics is formed in their interplay, as is ever more vividly illustrated in the rise and demise of its protagonists. Attempts at tracing the links are more likely to be found in the press than in academic discourse. We are fascinated by the private vulnerability of the powerful, the way it affects their public conduct and its wider ramifications. We are mesmerised by Thatcher’s tears, the sexual adventurism of American presidents, the childhoods of terrorists. However, there has been very little exploration of the kind proposed in this book: the mindset generated by the institutions that are charged with managing vulnerability and dependency on behalf of society. The social relations reflected and reproduced within welfare arrangements will be considered in four dimensions: states of mind, interpersonal relations, institutions and the socio-economic environment.

traditionally drawn their materials from fund of metaphors which grow out of our shared experiences, assumptions and beliefs-the American The main difference between American autobiographers and writers of fiction is that autobiographers have employed these metaphors in self-scrutiny and self-portrayal rather than in presentation of fictional characters, but resulting creation lends itself to cultural analysis as readily as purely fictional characters do. The created character in both cases represents values that are recognized by reading audience at large. A consideration of several American autobiographers as cultural types may provide some new ways of viewing this special genre in our literature and suggest that in general is, in Georg Misch's words, only a special kind of literature but also an instrument of knowledge. I By regarding creation of autobiographical character in America as a cultural act, we may suggest some of ways in which Americans shape their views of themselves by attending closely to dominant patterns of our culture. In addition, by noting similarities between fictional and autobiographical processes, we may offer an explanation of striking coalition which these two genres have formed in our own time. Before going on to examine specific cases, we should understand what we mean by autobiography and by the American myth. We must recognize, first of all, that term autobiography implies only that author is writing specifically about himself; it has nothing to do with factual truth. Autobiography does not communicate raw experience, for

The Global Evolution of Travel Visa Regimes.

У статті розглядаються деякі соціально-філософські аспекти сучасної політичної міфології, які впливають на формування ціннісних і смислових орієнтацій буденної політичної свідомості в українському соціумі. Аналізуються спільні й відмінні риси політичного й архаїчного міфів; завдання й функції політичного міфу; процеси сучасної міфотворчості як маніпулятивної техніки штучного утворення міфів; психологічні причини впливу неоміфологічних наративів на буденну політичну свідомість у контексті загальної теорії міфогенезису. Розглянуто деякі особливості проявів неоміфологічних конструктів в Україні в процесі пошуку національної ідеї. Більш детально проаналізовано конкретні вияви українського «героїчного» міфу. The article deals with some sociological-philosophical aspects of modern political mythology which influence on the formation of axiological and notional orientation of everyday political consciousness in Ukrainian society. The article analysis common and distinctive features of political and archaic myths; problems and functions of political myth; modern mythogenesis processes as the way of manipulative techniques of artificial creation of myths; psychological reasons of neo-mythological narrative’s influence on the everyday political consciousness in the context of general theory of mythogenesis. In the search for consolidated national idea, certain peculiarities of neo-mythological constructs’ manifestation in Ukraine are considered in the article. Concrete manifestations of Ukrainian “heroic myth” are analyzed in more details.

Narratives of success and national culture dimensions: Serbia and the USA

This introductory chapter defines terms used in the book. It sets up the format in which five primary mythic themes are treated in the chapters that follow. The subject of Chapter 1 is the concept of deity. Chapter 2 will treat the creation myth, Chapter 3 flood myths, Chapter 4 trickster myths, and Chapter 5 hero myths.

The legislation to establish Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday as a federal holiday provided official recognition of King's greatness, but it remains the responsibility of those of us who study and carry on King's work to define his historical significance. Rather than engaging in officially approved nostalgia, our rememberance of King should reflect the reality of his complex and multifaceted life. Biographers, theologians, political scientists, sociologists, social psychologists, and historians have given us a sizable literature of King's place in the Afro-American protest tradition, his role in the modern black freedom struggle, and his eclectic ideas regarding nonviolent activism. Although King scholars may benefit from and may stimulate the popular interest in King generated by the national holiday, many will find themselves uneasy participants in annual observances to honor an innocuous, carefully cultivated image of King as a black heroic figure. The King depicted in serious scholarly works is far too interesting to be encased in such a didactic legend. King was a controversial leader who challenged authority and who once applauded what he called creative maladjusted nonconformity.1 He should not be transformed into a simplistic image designed to offend no one a black counterpart to the static, heroic myths that have embalmed George Washington as the Father of His Country and Abraham Lincoln as the Great Emancipator. One aspect of the emerging King myth has been the depiction of him in the mass media, not only as the preeminent leader of the civil rights movement, but also as the initiator and sole indispensible element in the southern black struggles of the 1950s and 1960s. As in other historical myths, a Great Man is seen as the decisive factor in the process of social change, and the unique qualities of a leader are used to explain major historical events. The King myth departs from historical reality because it attributes too much to King's exceptional qualities as a leader and too little to the impersonal, large-scale social factors that made it possible for King to display