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or illustrating. We might in this
sense speak of the "American myth
of success." Stated that way, this
particular myth does not seem to
have much to do with literature,
and the anthropologist studying our
folkways will perhaps not connect
it with literature. Still the literary
critic will be impressed by the fact
that this myth of success always
finds its concrete forms in stories
about Benjamin Franklin, tales by
Horatio Alger, or Hollywood mov–
ies. And of course there are many
non-mythical general or typical
ideas: no one would speak of the
myth of the wetness of water or
the myth of the binomial theorem.
Even so, the literary critic will
find it necessary to account both
for the typicality of the statements
myth makes and for its aesthetic
quality of magic or quasi-transcen–
dent force, in short its quality of
mana.
One way to perform this
task is to employ Freud's idea of
the Uncanny. The Uncanny, Freud
says, is that sensation of fright, of
wonder, or of electric momentous–
ness which we have when, in an
hallucination, an involuntary mem–
ory, or a dream, we suddenly face
an image of ourselves or of some
event in our lives which we have
taken care to repress. We repressed
it because it was of special impor–
tance to us, because it was some–
how related to a critical passage
in our lives. Suppose then, that we
amend our definition to read: myth
is
a magical tale which deals with
the critical passages of life. This
will leave room for cultural and
historical myths, if to the crises of
individual life-the crises of birth,
infancy, initiation, marriage, death
and so on-we add the crises of
the society in which the myth exists.
I t will occur to you that novels,
poems, and epics are also typically
concerned with the critical passages
of life, and once again you will ask,
How do we tell when literature has
become mythical? Is the marriage
of Charles and Emma Bovary
mythical? Surely not. Flaubert
never allows any eruptions from
the dark to disturb the close-knit
texture of his narrative. But Spen–
ser's "Prothalamion" and Donne's
"Epithalamion made at Lincolnes
Inne" are certainly mythical poems.
And they are mythical because they
contain epiphanies of the Uncanny.
Myths are not to be exactly
equated with dreams or with the
illusions of neurosis. But they are,
as we might crudely put it, half
way between dreams and non–
mythical literature. They are more
extensively the product of the con–
scious creative mind and they are
more social. Yet they are closer to
the unconscious than ordinary lit–
erature, and this is why they are
valuable to literary critics. As the
psychoanalyst learns about the
workings of the normal mind from
the study of neuroses, so the lit–
erary critic learns about the literary
imagination from the study of
myths.
And now we have come to the
point I wish to make
in
favor of
