Primitivism and Myth

Flashcards on Primitivism and Myth in Literature

Primitivism

The pursuit of ways of life running counter to the development of technology and its alienating antecedents.

Art Nègre

Simplicity of forms evokes magic atmosphere, experimentation.

D.H. Lawrence

Criticized capitalism and searched for primitivism, traveling to countries uncontaminated by civilization.

Lawrence's view on primitivism

Extreme formalization suggested a degeneration of civilization.

Birkin's definition of art in 'Women in Love'

Conveys a complete truth about a state, whatever you feel about it.

Katherine Mansfield & Primitivism

Focus on indigenous populations and their cultural presence, central to revealing views on characters and characterization.

Joseph Conrad - Heart of Darkness & Primitivism

Indigenous populations are enslaved, used for background and local color, not individualized.

Aldous Huxley – Brave New World

Uses the opposition between the civilized world and a primitive population in a reservation.

William Golding – Lord of the Flies

Civilized world reverts to primitivism, representing the ending of civilization.

Doris Lessing - The Fifth Child

Makes use of primitivism to reveal hidden fears, desires are a throwback to earlier times.

Primitivism in Postmodernism

Rewritings of earlier texts dealing with savages, from the point of view of the savage.

Myth

Seen as primordial, universal, not modern, left behind.

Enlightenment view on Myth

Myth equals superstition, credulity and ignorance, but felt and imagined.

Romantic writers – Friedrich Schlegel on Myth

Reawakening of mythopoeic sensibility and remaking of myth.

Anthropology & Myth

Myth no longer held a central position, understanding of primitive culture was necessary to make sense of myth.

W.B. Yeats, T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, D.H. Lawrence & Frazer

Attention was captured by the local patterns of resonance and recurrence between the different kinds of myths and practices, Jungian interpretation.

Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy & Myth

Conflict between the abstract Apollonian principle and the violent Dionysian principle.

T.S. Eliot – the Mythical method

Using myth to control, order, and give shape and significance to futility and anarchy.

Psychology & Myth

Myth is connected to the unconscious.

C.G. Jung & Myth

The origin and subject of myth are closely connected with the life of the mind.

New conception of myth

A positive form of self-making, constructing man's relation to the world.

Mythical method in literature

Employ myth systems as an assertion of certainties that were crumbling in the world.