Mythical Character Research Articles

THE REPRESENTATION OF «POOR PLACE» AS AN ARCHETYPE IN STEPEN KING’S WORKS: LEXICAL AND SEMANTIC PECULIARITIES

The article deals with the archetype «poor place». The present research is a study of horror literature owing to the fact that the genre of horror represents mystic locations. These locations are treated as negative because of tragic events and horrifying stories both real and fictional. Some peculiarities of the author’s style have been accentuated. Stephen King’s unique manner to create horror fiction, comprising the combination of horror, gothic tradition and myths, has been highlighted. The archetype «poor place» has been admitted to be a keynote in Stephen King’s works. The study of the archetype «poor place» has been conducted in accordance with existent researches in the sphere of psychology and emotional intelligence. Both archetypes and instincts have been analysed and contrasted. The notions of archetypes and archetypal images have been compared. The interdependence and interconnection between archetypal thoughts and images on the one hand and mythical characters on the other hand have been traced. Specific methods have been applied to investigate the characteristics of the archetype «poor place» as a complex phenomenon. It has been acknowledged that the archetype «poor place» can be presented differently in the context varying from an ancient cemetery of native Indians to an ordinary hotel located distantly. The concrete representations of the archetype «poor place» have been empowered to redeem or appall. The universal factors comprising death, misfortune and grief have been applied by the author in order to create negative emotional comprehension of the archetype in the novels under analysis. The etymology and definitions of the lexeme poor have been explored to understand main archetypal images adequately. The examples of myths and semantic techniques in Stephen King’s works have been specified. The archetype «poor place» has been proved to be both static and dynamic.

Демонологічні образи в романі Ю. Винничука «Аптекар»

The article analyzes the use of images of folk demonology, including witches, devils and others, by Yury Vynnychuk in the novel «Apothecary». The key factors of character formation of mythical characters have been revealed. The author's achievements are outlined in comparison with the folklore and fairy tale tradition. The writer moves away from the depiction of Ukrainian folklore characters. With the help of expanding the background, dialogues, building social connections, the fantastic characters in the novel are normalized, even domesticated. The peculiarity of the novel «Apothecary» consists in combining the real with the fantastic, giving color and identity to demonic images in the original author's reading of them. Among the images explored in the article are the following: a witch, a devil, a golem woman, a warlock, an alchemist, a werewolf, etc. It was found that the image of the witch is represented by two types. The first type is related to the modern stereotypical idea of the impossibility of the existence of such a being. Through the lens of the gaze of one of the main characters of the work, doctor Lukasz, who as a «scientist» is used to rationalizing everything he sees, the reader looks at women who go to prison due to accusations of witchcraft, and together with Lukasz understands the absurdity of these events. Tortured women confess to witchcraft, are forced to prove their own connection with diabolical forces, testify for themselves, sharing details of the witch's life. The second type of witches are «real» ones. The reader is offered an episode of witch orgies on Lysia Gora, which is replaced by a detailed description of the witch's life, presented without any comedy. Thanks to this technique, the image of the witch does not appear folk-comic, but original and very authentic. An old witch named Vyvdia is depicted as a recluse, she knows how to make magic potions, and often helps visitors solve personal problems for a fee. The author depicts the image of a witch-healer, a wise woman who knows about herbs and ancient wisdom, and personifies in it the second stereotypical image of a witch, which is related to the etymology of the name. Witch from the word «to know» («vidaty», that sounds similar to «vidma» (witch in Ukrainian)). The devil is personified by a character named Franz. Its peculiarity is the difference from the traditional depiction of this image in classical Ukrainian literature. Devil Franz appears as a descendant of the demonological images of the romantic tradition in Ukrainian literature, but was created in the vortex of the author's myth of Yury Vinnychuk. He is a unique character, different from his predecessors. It has been found that the devil and the witch are the most productive demonological images in the novel. Other fantastic creatures form a kind of artistic background for them, make their appearance organic. All demonological images are completely woven into the realistic course of events of the work. The article concludes that the demonological images depicted by Yury Vynnychuk in the novel «The Apothecary» are undoubtedly related to the literary tradition. This work reflects a long-standing culture of using mythical characters in works of various genres. As an expert in folkloristics and classical Ukrainian literature, Y. Vynnychuk skillfully weaves ancient folk beliefs into his work about the 17th century, playing with eras, weaving modern discourses into antiquity. The artistic world of the novel is saturated with images of Ukrainian and European demonology (the devil Franz, the witch Vivdia, the alchemist Kalkbrenner, his creation the golem Amalia, warlocks, werewolves, spirits, demons, etc.). These characters are surprisingly real, believable and incredible, belong to different eras, cultures and at the same time are very harmonious.

Mythology of Infants’ Excessive Crying and Certain Mythical Characters in the Folk Culture of the Carpathian Mountains of Ukraine

Basing on the materials from expeditions to the Ukrainian and Rusyn villages of the Carpathian Mountains in Ukraine, we describe two groups of beliefs concerning excessive crying in infants. According to one group of beliefs, such crying represents something similar to a magical infection and can be transmitted from a crying infant to a non-crying one by manipulations with the crying infant’s bath water. According to another group of beliefs, infant crying results from the human child being exchanged for a non-human child by a female mythological creature connected with wind and forest. This creature is also known in the Balkans, and is probably genetically related to the Western European, especially Irish, fairy. We also suggest that the spell for curing infant crying describing an exchange of crying for non-crying between a human woman and a “forest woman”, known in Slavic traditions since the 14th c., might be a reduced refl ection of the belief in changelings in Slavic areas.

Breeding of Domestic Animals by Tanja Stupar Trifunović

Reviewed by: Breeding of Domestic Animals by Tanja Stupar Trifunović Petar Penda Tanja Stupar Trifunović Razmnožavanje domaćih životinja [ Breeding of Domestic Animals] Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina: Buybook, 2018. 114 Pp. ISBN 978-995830408-0-8 Tanja Stupar Trifunović's collection of poetry, Breeding of Domestic Animals, is permeated with the spirit of play and irony. Monotheism and pagan religions are intertwined here, and old Greek mythic characters are downgraded into the gloom of contemporary life. In this book, mythic heroines and heroes are presented as human-like and they have the lure of imperfection of the little man or woman, which produces the effect of dark irony pregnant with humor. This is also a book about women, their courage, and everyday ups and downs, a catalogue of their destinies filled with wisdom of someone who is in search of love despite inevitable defeats. Tanja Stupar Trifunović was born in 1977 in Zadar, Croatia, and now lives in Banja Luka, Bosnia and Herzegovina, working as a librarian at the University of Banja Luka Library. She has published five volumes of poetry, one volume of short stories, two novels and a graphic novella. Her award- winning works have been translated into English, German, French, Polish, Slovenian, Danish, Swedish, Macedonian, Czech, Hungarian, Bulgarian, and Spanish. For her first novel Satovi u majčinoj sobi [Clocks in My Mother's Room], she won the European Union Prize for Literature (EUPL) in 2016. She has also won a number of prestigious literary prizes in the Balkans both for her poetry and fiction. The poetry in this collection is brave, conscientious and free. It is brave because it offers the reader the cruel truth of contemporary life, conscientious because it depicts both beautiful and ugly aspects of life, and free because it isn't strict when it comes to metrical and grammatical [End Page 162] rules. By a total neglect of punctuation and capitalization, along with a visual play with lines, the author opposes uptight conventions of order and tradition. Another feature of this poetry are long, narrative poems with themes of everyday life. The wide range of topics make the poems precious for readers. The author writes about: women, love, body, transience of life, god, men, longing, and death. At first sight, these are everyday topics, but the way they are presented by means of exquisite metaphors and impressive figures of speech makes this poetry remarkable. In addition, the narrative quality of the poems avidly lures the reader into reading Stupar Trifunović's poetry. When she writes of women's experience, she writes of everyday experience and by this points out the position of women in a male dominant society. Writing about love, relationships and marriage, everyday problems are at the center of her poetics. Love and marriage are not naïve or commonplace, but are the points of departure depicting the subdued position of women, as well as of the female body, their sexuality, motherhood, infatuation, growing up, getting old, divorcing, and ultimately dying. All these themes are presented as the essence of women's experience. Diverse characters and perspectives make the poetic world richer and more versatile. A multitude of voices and experiences make this book of poetry more comprehensive and enables these poems to communicate with a great number of different life experiences of its readers. What makes this poetry vivacious and attractive to the reader in particular are irony, humor, and erotic motifs. All of these are abundant even in the poems which deal with pain, misery, and death, and by this Stupar Trifunović defies the gloominess of life. It is as if she has taken for her credo D. H. Lawrence's opening sentence from Lady Chatterley's Lover, "Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically." The fusion of the mythic and the everyday in Tanja Stupar Trifunović's poetry creates a vivid world with an array of characters, thus contributing to the appeal of her narrative poems. The grandeur and the strength of the mythic heroes and heroines is reduced to the weakness of an ordinary man or woman. They become a laughing stock for ordinary people and an amusement for...

Carmen Miranda: an Embodied Marketplace Icon

Abstract Building upon the CCT framework of incorporation of ideologies, taste regimes, and national and regional interests by consumer cultures, this paper proposes that social and political ideologies are also embodied in marketplace icons. This paper aims, then, to bring together the concepts of iconicity and liminality to provide an account of Carmen Miranda as a marketplace icon who not only embodied the national myths of her time but also continues to be employed in the current marketplace for a variety of purposes. As such, icons like Carmen contribute to the production of marketplaces in which historical, political, and ideological issues are naturalized. Carmen’s collaboration via cultural industries such as radio and cinema, her omnipresence in advertising campaigns and in the printed media, and her influence on female fashion contributed to the consumer culture of her time. Moreover, the mythical character of her persona and her cultural legacy hold an expressive symbolic power, making her a remarkable contemporary marketplace icon. The key to her iconicity is her liminality; unsettling hierarchies, traversing social planes, and questioning identity. As a marketplace icon, Carmen’s legacy is thus constantly reissued, founded upon the ambivalence of her persona and signaling her transgressive potential.

Carmen Miranda: an Embodied Marketplace Icon

Abstract Building upon the CCT framework of incorporation of ideologies, taste regimes, and national and regional interests by consumer cultures, this paper proposes that social and political ideologies are also embodied in marketplace icons. This paper aims, then, to bring together the concepts of iconicity and liminality to provide an account of Carmen Miranda as a marketplace icon who not only embodied the national myths of her time but also continues to be employed in the current marketplace for a variety of purposes. As such, icons like Carmen contribute to the production of marketplaces in which historical, political, and ideological issues are naturalized. Carmen’s collaboration via cultural industries such as radio and cinema, her omnipresence in advertising campaigns and in the printed media, and her influence on female fashion contributed to the consumer culture of her time. Moreover, the mythical character of her persona and her cultural legacy hold an expressive symbolic power, making her a remarkable contemporary marketplace icon. The key to her iconicity is her liminality; unsettling hierarchies, traversing social planes, and questioning identity. As a marketplace icon, Carmen’s legacy is thus constantly reissued, founded upon the ambivalence of her persona and signaling her transgressive potential.

Bashkir Onomastic Heritage in the Materials of Linguistic Expeditions in the 1920s–1930s

The article aims to identify and interpret the onomastic material collected in the course of linguistic and general field research in the Tamyan-Katai and Argayash cantons of Bashkiria, carried out by the Academic Center of the People’s Commissariat of Education of the BASSR together with the Academy of Sciences of the USSR in 1920s–1930s. The source materials were the documents, reports, and texts collected from the population during the expeditions of 1928–1929, now stored in the Scientific Archives of the Ural Federal Research Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences. These sources were found to include much data on the onomastics of the Bashkir language: personal names and surnames, collective and individual nicknames, geographical names, ethnic names of clans and tribes, tribal divisions and ethnic groups living on the territory of the republic. This also includes the names of mythical characters, placenames, and cosmic objects registered both is documents (reports, route sheets, lists of informants, indexes of tribal names and attributes of Bashkir clans, etc.) and first-person records from informants (regarding the history of the clan, village, family, customs, beliefs, fairy tales, legends, etc.) These documents are of great value, since they contain archaic material relating not only to onomastics, but also to the views and beliefs of the Bashkirs. A good example would be the mention of names and nicknames of the Bashkir healer-spirits (baksy), which evidences that the forest Bashkirs still retained relics of shamanism at the beginning of the 20th century.

ACSI 모델을 융합한 애니메이션 영화 신화 캐릭터의 사용자 선호도 연구

Based on the ACSI model, according to the specific characteristics of the animation industry, this paper uses multicultural integration and multidisciplinary research to study the user preference of animated film mythological characters. Taking the Chinese fairy tale NeZha as an example, this study designs a customer satisfaction questionnaire using the Rickett scale, and obtains a customer satisfaction index model through exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis, Structural Equation Modeling and ACSI formula. According to the customer satisfaction model analysis of customer needs, this study hopes to integrate the animation character design knowledge and economic customer satisfaction model to provide practical help for animation character design practice and the cultural heritage of fairy tales. Integrating multidisciplinary research content and customer satisfaction models to analyze user needs, master the user preferences of animated movie mythological characters, design mythical animated characters that meet customer satisfaction and provide practical help for the practice of animation character design creation and multicultural inheritance. In view of the integration of science and art development in the animation industry in the future, this study takes sample from mythical characters as a cognitive evaluation dimension. It aggregates various data of Customer’s satisfaction with animation characters, so as to provide logical help for animation creators and animation market, thus providing more efficient design help for peers.

Beer in Antiquity, Antiquity in Beer?

Modern breweries taking inspiration from ancient cultures appear as a quite interesting phenomenon, because beer is absent from the current imaginarium about the ancient Greeks and Romans. Yet it was not unknown to them, as demonstrated by the survey of sources in the first part of the text. Actually, some brewers today are aware of the beverage’s presence in ancient literature and use this knowledge in the naming of their products. Others decide on less direct references, to some historical or mythical characters. Some producers do not limit themselves to names of their brews, but also attempt to reconstruct the ancient drinks. In the second (main) part of the article several cases of each type are presented, together with an analysis of methods of the references’ presentation and explanation to the consumer. Also, some observations are made about the reasons why breweries decide to use ancient themes at all.

Iconic Celebration of Charms and Friendship in Poetry: Fálétí’s “Adébímpé Ọ̀jẹ́dòkun”

Iconic Celebration of Charms and Friendship in Poetry: Fálétí’s “Adébímpé Ọ̀jẹ́dòkun”

W poszukiwaniu hierofanii – o filmie Góra Sulejmana Jelizawiety Stiszowej

The subject of the article is Elizaveta Stishova's film Suleiman Mountain, the action of which focuses on the Kyrgyz mountain, surrounded by religious veneration. The title place is treated as a spatial hierophany, that is, according to Mircea Eliade's concept, a place where and through which the sacred is revealed. The text will analyze the film's space-time and its symbolic dimension, and the characters' relations with the title place, especially the relationship between women and the mountain and its mythical character.

Magical and Mystical Aspects in Nepali Manuscript Illuminations

Nepali Manuscript illuminations are traditional miniature paintings found in religious manuscripts, including Prajnaparamita, Pancaraksa, Shivadharma, Visnudharma, and Devimahatmya. The religious manuscripts narrate mythical events in verbal texts and illustrate mythical characters and their actions simultaneously. The forms, figures and activities of the characters are symbolic, magical and mystical. The paintings present divine and supernatural characters in their spectacular feats of real life. The artworks represent the characters and events of Hindu and Buddhist myths. Despite the presence of magical and mystical elements, the visual narratives teach moral lessons to the real people of the real world. The symbols signify something else beyond the represented visuals. The miniature paintings motivate the readers and viewers for reading and learning by telling interesting stories. Presentation of strange and unusual characters and events renews viewers' perception providing delight while suggesting ethical values of the society. The presentation through magical and mystical characters and actions conveys moral lessons aesthetic manner. This article traces the magical and mystical features of Nepali manuscript illuminations and attempts to throw light on their significances.

Magpie in Lithuanian and Slavic Ethnic Culture

The article, based on a variety of ethnolinguistic material, especially folklore texts, aims to reveal the main similarities and differences in the interpretation of the image of the magpie in the ethnic culture of Lithuanians and Slavs. This bird in two traditions, in Lithuanian and in Slavonic, is treated ambivalently, more often negatively. This is due to the peculiarities of the bird’s appearance, and in particular the variegation of its plumage. This characteristic feature in the ethnic culture of many peoples is traditionally associated with evil spirits. Too talkative people, most often women, are compared with this bird. Common is the motive of the thief magpie. The name of the bird in all the languages is feminine, therefore, in both Lithuanian and Slavic mythopoetic texts, the social roles of a peasant woman are attributed to it: a daughter-in-law, a mother, a hostess, a cook, a nanny. Another common feature is the image of a magpie as a sorceress, herald of good or evil news and future events. These functions are associated with the tendency to depict witches and other mythical characters in the form of a magpie. The most striking differences in the interpretation of the magpie are the following ones: it is unusual for Lithuanians to associate the idea of procreation with it, and some Slavs (for example, the Czechs) believe that magpies bring children into the house. Lithuanians are also unaware of some features of the “working” behavior of a magpie, for example, the threshing motive. In their turn, Lithuanians attribute such crafts as shoemaking, brewing, and agriculture to magpies.

Guillermo del Toro’s Political Fairy Tales

While critical attention has largely focused on Del Toro’s overt fairy tale Pan’s Labyrinth (2006), Del Toro’s Hollywood films similarly incorporate the mythic, moral and gothic qualities of classic fairy tales. His new fairy tales present vital contemporary lessons embedded in these archetypal journeys – and their audience’s memories. His free borrowings from fairy tales and popular culture deliberately connect the familiar to his uncanny worlds. This construction is most evident in his films Hellboy II: The Golden Army (2008) and The Shape of Water (2017). The contemporary politics of race, sexuality, gender and environmentalism are embedded within these original Hollywood fairy tales. This essay focuses on the intersecting political messages woven into Hellboy II: The Golden Army and The Shape of Water, messages amplified not obscured by their fairy tale delivery. Through rich textual references, intersections, and hidden subtexts, Del Toro creates new gothic fairy tales, with original protagonists, emerging from the margins. By resisting previous patriarchal and racial boundaries, these films challenge their audiences to embrace new paradigms.

Mermaid Allusions and Star Promotion in the Greek Video-Film Gorgona (1987)

This article examines the first Greek film to give a central role to the concept of the mermaid: Georges Skalenakis’ 1987 direct-to-video feature Gorgona (‘Mermaid’). Although actually concerning an all-human female, Gorgona attaches to her many traits of both the internationally common half-fish/half-woman creature (known in Greek as γοργόνα/gorgona) and the mermaid sister (also known as γοργόνα) in the legend of Alexander the Great. The article identifies the video-film’s allusions to these fishtailed figures and argues that the film produced an updated mermaid image that responded to other national and foreign audiovisual conceptions of the mermaid of the 1980s and enriched the star persona of its female lead, Eleni Filini, with a mythic quality and national symbolism.

An Afterlife of a Scholarly Epic: Frazer's Golden Bough and Lewis's Argument from Myth

C.S. Lewis believed that Jesus Christ embodied, in historical fact, a mythic pattern of dying and rising exemplified by deities such as Balder and Osiris. Taken from James Frazer's Golden Bough, an enormously influential work of early anthropological scholarship, the idea of a generalized ‘dying and rising’ motif is now substantially outmoded. Resting specifically on the resemblance between that motif and the story of Christ, and not (unlike Tolkien's argument from myth) on the gospel's general qualities as a story, Lewis's argument from myth thus presupposes an incorrect vision of actual ancient pagan religion. That shortcoming is not fatal, however. In contrast to Chesterton in The Everlasting Man (another formative influence), Lewis used an aesthetic or ideal, rather than a historical, conception of myth, which he carefully distinguished from the word's ordinary senses. Although Lewis did believe that ancient myth-makers worshipped ‘dying and rising’ gods, the core of his case is ‘our’ apprehension of a mythic quality in such stories and the Gospels, independent of the beliefs of ancient writers or hearers of myths. That conclusion should discourage overly sanguine appropriations of Lewis's arguments, which never developed into a general theory of mythology and, once the historicity of the ‘dying and rising’ motif is set aside, can be developed into a case much like Tolkien's.

El imaginario mítico del Fausto de Goethe

This article vindicates the mythical character of the Faustian tragedy of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe by relating its plot configuration with the hero’s symbolic itinerary. For this, the mythical structures predetermined by Gilbert Durand, Lévi-Strauss and Joseph Campbell are taken as a basis. In the first two sections Faust is diachronically compared with the mythical figure of the hero, and in the next two sections, each part of the work is related in a synchronic and specific way to the proper mythemes of the hero myth.

El imaginario mítico del Fausto de Goethe

This article vindicates the mythical character of the Faustian tragedy of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe by relating its plot configuration with the hero’s symbolic itinerary. For this, the mythical structures predetermined by Gilbert Durand, Levi-Strauss and Joseph Campbell are taken as a basis. In the first two sections Faust is diachronically compared with the mythical figure of the hero, and in the next two sections, each part of the work is related in a synchronic and specific way to the proper mythemes of the hero myth.

SACRED CONCEPTS CONCERNING COWS IN KAZAKH FOLKLORE

From ancient times our people, who grazed four food animals, believed that they had an owner. The owners of the four food animals were considered to be their "ancestors" or "peers". That is why he gave them a mythical character. He leaned on his holy ancestors and asked them to help him. He wished them well and wished them well. He thought that only then he could have cattle. That is why various rituals and ceremonies have come to everyone. Currently in the country spread a lot of myths, indicating that the cow was the cow skorlupok animal. Special attention was paid to cattle, including bull. Even the purpose of the human earth that applies to spelled. He was known in myths as the blue bull, sometimes the blue bull, which was known in folklore with special vividness. This is mostly associated with myths about the injury of the earth. In the mythology of the peoples of the world say that the earth put on, fish, elephant (for the concept of the ancient Indians), snake Cotes, the myth, widespread among the peoples of Turkic origin, including among Kazakh people put on the surface of the blue ox, and sometimes on a blue bull to pick it up. He draws attention to the myths of the bull or bull and one case depends on the blue bull. In General, the blue color has a special property, for example, "blue Bor", "blue bull", etc. "Blue" is formed from mythical concepts: " blue sky","bull of the blue God". In this regard, it should be noted that in nomadic life, it became the first cargo transport.

The augment use in the five oldest Odes of Pindar

In this short article I discuss the augment use in Pindar's five oldest Odes (based on the text of the editions by Snell & Maehler' in the Teubner and Race in the Loeb), namely Pythian 10 (498 BC), Pythian 6 (490), Pythian 12 (490), Olympian 14 (488, if correctly dated) and Pythian 7 (486). As the augment use in Pindar has never been studied in detail before and commentaries often do not mention it, I use the observations made for epic Greek as basis, more specifically that the augment is used to refer to foregrounded actions and actions in the recent past, and that it remains absent when actions in a remote or mythical past are related. I start by outlining these observations, then I determine which (un)augmented forms in Pindar are secured by the metre (the transmission of Pindar's Odes has not been unproblematic) and at the end apply the epic observation to the metrically secure forms of these five Odes. My investigation will show that the verb forms referring to the near-deixis (the victor's deeds, his origins and those of his city and the mythical characters with whom he is compared), are augmented, whereas the forms referring to other (mythical) actions remain unaugmented, but, as was the case with epic Greek, there are nevertheless also exceptions.