Myth as Symbol: A Psychoanalytic Study in Contemporary German Literature

Product Description The mythological patrimony is an excellent example of the unconscious creative ability that brings reason both to the existence of myth as well as to its symbolic function. Reconsidering the connection between literature and psychoanalysis, this study starts from the Jungian archetypal theory up to the Freudian unconscious and its ability to produce symbols, and provides the tools for a reading of the phenomenon of the literary rework, in the modern age, of meaningful themes and mythological figures. Therefore, revising and rewriting the myth means thinking again about one's cultural memory, attempting to re-propose in a new dimension the ever present questions that have not found an answer and which the figures of the myth symbolise across the time. The attention focuses on figures like the elementary spirits of the Romantic imagery, in particular on that of the Wasserfrau, up to the analysis of a twentieth-century reinterpretation of the myth of Undine. Moreover the Medea myth is reconsidered starting from the contradiction implicit in this figure-and in that of every Mother Goddess-in order to then explore the most problematic and conflicting aspect of this image of womanhood, the infanticide, which over time becomes the symbol of the denial of the maternal principle. Review . . . [O]ne of the rare books [concerning] Italian German Studies that deals with the interplay between literary texts and hermeneutical tools, in particular with those of psychoanalytic culture as well as of those on myth and mythology. . . . The monograph [by] Sonia Saporiti proves to be innovative in the panorama of German Studies and the choice of combining literature, psychoanalysis and mythography gives a solid hermeneutic value to the research, not least because it is supported by a rare and solid knowledge of the critical tools of classical philology and philosophy, which goes beyond the hermeneutical horizons of the very lively debate of Italian German Studies. --Marino Freschi, Full Professor of German Literature, University of Roma Tre , RomeSonia Saporiti s study, Myth as Symbol, represents a major contribution to the interplay between literary criticism and psychoanalysis. As a sound scholar of psychoanalytic disciplines, Saporiti provides foremost a new and profound insight into unexpected connections between Freud s and Jung s concept of a collective origin of imagery, symbols and myths. And as a sensitive poetic interpreter, she surveys the literary re-birth of myth, its survival and metamorphoses in modern German poetry, drama and narrative fiction since Romanticism up to post-modern authors. Well acquainted with both theoretical and concrete horizons of work on myth , Sonia Saporiti focuses [on] crucial symbols of modern cultural consciousness as the menacing images of the feminine: seductive water creatures such as the ondines and Melusine, bundles of love and death, Lustprinzip and Todestrieb, or the terrific Great Mother who became the eponym [of] infanticide, Medea . . . --Antonella Gargano, Full Professor of German Literature, University of Rome La Sapienza ; President of the Italian German Studies Association (AIG) About the Author Sonia Saporiti (1975), Assistant Professor for German Studies at the University of Molise, lives between Rome and Berlin, where she studied Psychoanalysis. Among her publications Erinnerungsarbeit und autofiktionales Schreiben im Werk Herta Mullers; Die Geographie des Imaginaren. Die Reportagen von Christoph Ransmayr zwischen journalistischer Prosa und literarischer Erfindung; Il confine tra illusione e realta. Il Silenzio delle sirene di Franz Kafka. She is member of the American German Studies Association.