Vilnius pedagogical university faculty of foreign languages department of english philology

VILNIUS PEDAGOGICAL UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH PHILOLOGY

JELENA KANECKIENĖ


THE FUNCTIONS OF MYTH IN JOHN UPDIKE‘S NOVEL
THE CENTAUR

MA Paper

Academic Advisor: Dr. Daina Miniotaitė

Vilnius, 2007

CONTENTS
Abstract

1. 
   Introduction 2
   
   1. 
      Myth in the literature of the twentieth century 4
      
   2. 
      Meanings of myth 7
      
   3. 
      Categories of mythological fiction 8
      
   4. 
      Ritual as an underlying principle of Updike’s novels 10
      
   5. 
      Joseph Campbell’s vision of myth 11
      
   6. 
      Campbell’s classification of the functions of myth 14
      
2. 
   The myth of Chiron in Updike’s The Centaur 16
   
   1. 
      Metaphysical function of myth in The Centaur 21
      
   2. 
      Sociological function of myth 29
      
   3. 
      Cosmological function of myth 37
      
   4. 
      Pedagogical function of myth 42
      
3. 
   Conclusions 48
   
4. 
   Summary in Lithuanian 50
   

References 51
Bibliography 52

1. INTRODUCTION

The paper analyzes the functions of myth in an American writer’s John Updike’s novel The Centaur (1963). It is a wonderful example of a mythological novel; the Greek myth about the noble centaur Chiron, employed by the author, determines the content of the book, affects the system of images and characters. Many writers of the twentieth century turned to traditional mythologies in their works. Such books as Dorothy Baker’s Cassandra at the Wedding (1966), James Blish’s Black Easter or Faust Aleph-Null (1969), Pamela Hill’s Forget Not Ariadne (1965) and many others illustrate how contemporary writers employ ancient myths in their novels.
Many critics and literary scholars of the twentieth century were interested in the literature employing myths. The search for archetypal patterns was made by Maud Bodkin, Joseph Campbell, Gilbert Murray, Northrop Frye and many others. Richard Chase remarked that “an interest in the creative literature of our [twentieth] century forces upon us an interest in myth.” (Quoted by White, p. 4) Updike’s mythological novel The Centaur was analyzed by Granville Hicks, J. A. Ward, George Steiner, Larry Taylor, David D. Galloway and other critics. Some of them (Steiner and Hicks) saw Updike’s myth as an “obtruding allegoric scaffold” (Rainstorms and Fire, p. 81). Other critics concluded that Updike succeeded in his attempt to integrate myth and reality (J. A. Ward). Nevertheless, Updike’s novel The Centaur was not properly analyzed from the perspective of the functions of myth employed by the author.
Despite the fact that there are many thinkers who enriched the field of mythology and rendered it quite accessible, the paper is based on the theory of a famous mythologist Joseph Campbell (1904-1987). This choice appeals to the fact that Campbell was one of the most versatile scholars working in the sphere of mythology. His vision of myth was the most flexible and complete; for that reason his theory suits best for the purposes of this work.
Whereas the paper is based on Campbell’s theory of myth, it employs the functions of myth introduced by this mythologist in order to better understand Updike’s purpose of using the myth of Chiron in his novel. According to Campbell’s classification, there are four main functions of myth: metaphysical, sociological, cosmological and pedagogical.
The aim of the work is to unfold the functions of myth employed by Updike in one of his most famous novels The Centaur. It is obvious that such an occurrence of the ancient Greek myth in the work of a contemporary writer is not incidental. Updike employed the myth as a tool which provided him with appropriate possibilities. So, the aim of the paper is to educe the myth’s functions in the novel.
In this paper several objectives are set up. They are: to present the mythological literature of the twentieth century and to offer a few approaches to a mythological novel; to introduce Updike as an important writer in American literature and to prove that ritual plays a great role in the majority of his novels (The Poorhouse Fair; Rabbit, Run; Of the Farm; Couples; Rabbit Redux); to introduce the concept of myth and unfold its functions; to present the Greek myth about Chiron, to disclose deviation of Updike‘s myth from the myth proper and to determine its role and purpose.
The mythocritical-functional method is employed in the paper to achieve its goals, due to the fact that the research is based on the mythological criticism of Joseph Campbell and the main focus of the work is the functions of myth in Updike’s The Centaur.

1. 
   MYTH IN THE LITERATURE OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
   

It is not by coincidence that the German novelist Hermann Broch named the twentieth century “the mythical age”. The return to myth is assumed to be a certain feature of the Modernist movement at the beginning of the last century. Such books as James Joyce’s Ulysses (1922), Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita (1967), John Updike’s The Centaur (1963), Guido Bachmann’s Gilgamesh (1966), Thomas Mann’s Doctor Faustus (1960), and many others, illustrate how writers of our times are still returning to traditional mythologies in their works. Despite the fact that many of them, including Eliot, Joyce, Pound and Yeats were interested in myths and employed them in their works, such an interest is also found in much subsequent twentieth-century literature. For example, the legendary motif of Faust and the devil occurs in the novel by John Hersey Too Far to Walk (1966). However, among numerous possible features characterizing the contemporary interest in myths, the novel based on a traditional myth remains the most frequently misunderstood example of the function of mythology in contemporary literature (Mythology in the Modern novel, pp. 3-7).
As far as myths employed in the twentieth century novels are concerned, it is crucial to draw a distinguishing line between a mythological novel and a mythic one. The most famous mythological novel is, certainly, James Joyce’s Ulysses. According to J. White, there are two basic features describing a mythological novel: first, the mythological parallel is suggested as an analogy or contrast to the contemporary world in which the events of the novel take place; second, the parallel is an extended one. Both features are brilliantly employed in Ulysses and many other mythological novels. So, it should be emphasized, that a mythological novel differs from a mythic one, because the latter remains in the world of myths despite the fact that it is written in the modern tone. The examples of such a kind of novel are, for instance, Thomas Mann’s Joseph tetralogy (4 vols., 1933-1943), Sir James Frazer’s The Golden Bough (1890), Ernst Cassirer’s Philosophy of Symbolic Forms (4 vols., 1923-1929) and others. In conclusion, works that are mythical do not offer myths as analogies, but make them their main structural principal. This paper analyzes Updike’s novel The Centaur, which is one of the best examples of the mythological novels of the twentieth century.
It is also essential to note the distinctions between myths proper and mythological motifs. Actually, the moment that a myth occurs in one or another novel, it is no longer possible to speak about it as a myth, for it is set in a different environment, it is usually modified or even altered beyond recognition. Consequently, myths which appear in the modern literature are called mythological motifs, unless they are exact re-narrations of
traditional myths. However, in this paper the term “myth” (which has all the features of the mythological motif) will be used instead of the other term, because it is more acceptable and it prevails in the sphere of the mythological criticism. According to John White: