Introduction: Myth in the Modern Novel?

The quest for myth

Whoever visits any of the great historical or art museums, in Europe or elsewhere, soon becomes convinced of the overwhelming importance of myth in human history. The wooden sarcophagi of Egyptian mummies are decorated with figures that are part human, part animal; Greek sculptures of deities are accompanied by vases depicting mythological figures; the Middle Ages are represented by the Madonna and Child, the Crucifixion and the saints; while the following centuries, down to the eighteenth, show a cavalcade of mythical images, comprising both biblical and Greco-Roman motifs. Only over the last two centuries or so do mythological motifs no longer predominate in painting and sculpture: it seems that Modernity, drawing on a realistic representation of contemporary life or on the artist’s individual imagination, does not need the help of myth to express its view of life. Turning to literature, we find that myth played a central role in ancient literature and remained important down to mid-eighteenth-century Neo-Classicism and Rococo; but does it play any role in the novel as we know it – the central genre of modern literature? Is myth a useful and valuable device in dealing with certain aspects of human life in the modern novel or is it, on the contrary, outdated or even downright detrimental, and something to be avoided? In which ways and to which purposes have modern novelists dealt with myth? These are questions that will be explored in this study by means of a close examination of some of the works of nine representative novelists.

If we are asked for a definition of myth, we might say, thinking of Greco-Roman mythology as the paradigmatic case, that myths are stories about the deeds of deities and ancient heroes. The question immediately arises: what might we do with such stories today? In myths things happen that do not occur in the real world as we conceive of it. The modern view of the world relies on science, which excludes any intervention in events by the gods (or God). Rather, we trust in our own ability to give shape to the human world, a creation of history; today we even know that humanity can – and does – also transform the living conditions of other species on the planet. That being so, what purposes might myths serve for modern humanity? This question was addressed by the German Early Romantic movement, towards the end of the eighteenth century, proposing that Modernity, too, is in need of myth, but that the manner in which myth is approached has to be in harmony with the character of Modernity. The Early Romantics regarded poetry (literature) as the site where a new mythology might be created. It was here that a new beginning of mythological thought took place: the bringing of myth into Modernity (see Graevenitz 1987, xxv; Von Hendy 2001, xi; Uerlings 2006, 45). As we will see, most of the writers discussed in this study who make use of myth in their novels sustain this Early Romantic conception, even if some of them deny the compatibility of myth with Modernity.

Before going on to discuss the novels themselves, we need an overview of the theoretical discussion concerning myth and its compatibility with Modernity. The expansion of the concept in both spatio-cultural and temporal terms over the past two centuries makes a definition of the concept ever more difficult. In the nineteenth century, ethnographic research revealed that myth is a general phenomenon in what was then referred to as “primitive” cultures. In the course of the twentieth century, the concept of myth was adopted in a great variety of fields, including psychoanalysis, sociology, historiography, politology, and – towards the end of the century – the study of popular culture and media. With this development, the concept of myth was not only expanded but also became highly diversified. At the turn of the millennium, the American scholar of myth theories Robert E. Segal noted that theories of myth are found in anthropology, sociology, psychology etc., but that there does not exist any theory of myth per se (Segal 2004, 2; see also Jamme 1999, 15). The various definitions found, however, arguably tend to aim at a general definition of the concept, even though they are formulated in terms of one specific field, and are thus in fact in a state of competition with one another. At that, even within a single discipline we find a wide variety of different views. Peter Tepe, for example, has identified 68 distinct senses in which the term “myth” is used in the field of literary scholarship (Tepe 2001, 17–68). There have been other suggestions for a classification of conceptions of myth, but these are only of limited help, since the classificatory criteria vary greatly and often lack clarity.1 This lack of a generally accepted definition of myth is commonly acknowledged.2

In this situation, doubting the existence of anything such as a quintessential myth, many scholars of myth – especially in Germany – have followed Gerhart von Graevenitz’s suggestion: rather than focusing on defining the essence of myth, we should regard myth as a discursive creation and examine the formation of the concept (or conception) of myth in various, historically limited discourses (Graevenitz 1987). This approach suggests the transformation of the question of myth into an empirical, historical one, thus releasing the scholar from the obligation to offer a conclusive definition of the concept.3 Acknowledging the historical transformations of the concept of myth, however, does not free the scholar from having to take a stand on it. This is because we also have to be able to study myth where the word itself is never mentioned – for example in popular culture and politics; furthermore, even when the word “myth” appears in the research material itself, we have to be able to subject the use of the concept to critical analysis. In order to study myth, we need to have a preliminary understanding of what is meant by the term, but our understanding of myth must be open to transformation and expansion on the basis of what we find in our material.

In this introductory chapter the study of myth in the modern novel is positioned in the thinking of myth, especially in its relationship to the historical development of our conceptions of literature and to modern thought. To introduce the problem – that of the compatibility of myth and the modern way of thinking in the modern novel – I start with two representative instances of opposed theoretical stances on the question: on the one hand, Ian Watt’s classic study, The Rise of the Novel (1957), on the emergence of the new novel in England in the first half of the eighteenth century, and on the other, a brief note known by its editorial title “Das älteste Systemprogramm des deutschen Idealismus” (“The oldest system programme of German Idealism”), dating from 1796 or 1797 and co-authored by three young students of theology at the University of Tübingen – young men who later in life became famous as Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling and Friedrich Hölderlin. This is followed by a survey of the historical development of European thinking about myth prior to the era of Modernity. It starts with an exploration of the original mythic mode of thought, succeeded by a review of the birth of literature out of myth in Greek culture, and the rivalry between literature and philosophy for the status of the most profound truth; a few pages are also allotted to the use of myth in classical (premodern) literature. I then present an overview of the theoretical discussion concerning the possibility and desirability – or contrariwise – of myth in Modernity. The chapter concludes with a few words on the approach taken in this study.

Myth and Modernity: Empiricism, myth and the question of compatibility

Implicit in the concept of the “modern novel” is the concept of “Modernity”. In this study I adopt a notion of the latter similar to that dominant in the domains of sociology and history: Modernity is the era of modern bourgeois civil society, in which inherited class privileges no longer determine the structure of society.4 Modern civic societies were established in the course of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, beginning with a gradual process in England, where we also find the first flowering of the modern novel. This was followed by France and the Great Revolution of 1789, along with its aftermath in other European countries. The experience of the French Revolution made it clear to all European nations that the state and its institutions are to be regarded as a historical creation by the people themselves, which meant for both peoples and individuals an enormous sense of empowerment. The modern state does not have subjects in the sense that a sovereign does, but independent citizens, who have a say in how affairs are conducted. Modernity also means institutional diversification and the modernisation of economic life; a classic analysis of this is provided by Max Weber. Further, Modernity means secularisation: the Church remains an institution of its own, but religion no longer provides a shared worldview or the basis for action for the society as a whole; rather, it is now regarded as a private matter. In its stead, rational and empirical knowledge of nature and society is adopted as the basis of decision-making and action. With the...