Archetypes and Motifs in Folklore and Literature: A Handbook (review)

Garry and El-Shamy's handbook examines recurring thematic and linguistic patterns in folklore and literature. Two principal theoretical stances inhere in this subject. One assumes a single tale inventor or author, that is, a monogenetic origin followed by an often widespread dissemination, either by oral or print routes. The other assumes polygenetic origins, that is, the emergence of "[p]ersistent cultural symbols" (xvii) in widely differing cultures far distant from one another. The term, Archetypes from the title of the book, is borrowed from C. G. Jung, who noted similarities among different cultures' written narrative traditions. Jung posited individual participation in a world of archetypal episodes and situations. In response to the evident existence of parallel and sometimes identical narrative episodes and images that he had encountered in his reading, Jung came to believe that human psyches—even in vastly different cultures—responded to archetypal situations by developing indwelling cultural images that he called "archetypes." Jung applied the term archetype to his analyses of modern narrative as well as to ancient mythologies. Nineteenth- and twentieth-century folklorists confirmed Jung's ideas when they encountered analogies to European narrative episodes and imagery in non-European cultures. This, in turn, supported the idea of cross-cultural universals (xvii).

Thinkers at the turn of the nineteenth to the twentieth century who were influential in systematizing basic assumptions within the newly emerging discipline of folklore—for example, Thomas Keightley, Edward B. Tylor, Adolf Bastian, Andrew Lang, Robert R. Marett, and James G. Frazer—also adhered to the notion that folk narrative formed an integral part of cultural universals, although Lang sometimes recognized diffusion as a means by which folk narrative was disseminated (xviii).

In a thought-provoking aside, the introduction notes that whereas the Aarne-Thompson Tale Type Index assumes a genetic relationship between all tales listed (i.e., monogenesis followed by dissemination), the Thompson Motif Index imagines that individual motifs could have arisen independently (xx) (i.e., polygenesis in those same cultures). The introduction also reminds us that the motif index covers more genres than does the Tale-Type Index (xxi).

What follows are sixty-six essays, most well written and accessible and of uniformly high quality. The essays are by various scholars in the field of folklore and are based on Thompson's motifs. The collection addresses the most significant of the motifs and, in many instances, incorporates material uncovered since the last printed edition of Thompson's Index. Since it is impossible in this space to summarize all sixty-six essays, I will try to give the flavor of the whole by discussing two, both written by the editors themselves.

Garry's discussion of motifs of transformation, which occupy D 0 to D 699 in Thompson's Motif Index, is consistent with the volume's Jungian archetypal approach as a whole. Garry attributes the prominence of transformations in magic tales to a basic impulse in telling and listening, namely, "a desire for escape from the everyday world" (125). It is a huge category, as Garry acknowledges, and she discusses the most significant narrative instances. Among these are the shape-shifting of the Odyssey's Proteus, who changes into animals (lion, serpent, leopard, boar), running water, and a tree as he tries to escape captors that Menelaus has set upon him. The Hercules cycle includes a similar episode with Nereus, as does a British ballad, "Tam Lin" (136–37). Everyone who's taken high school Latin remembers Daphne's shape-shifting (into a tree) to escape an unwanted suitor, a motif perhaps related to a myth of generation in the Indian Brihadaranyaka-Upanishad (127). Shape-shifting also forms a strategic part of military battles, as well as of erotic skirmishes, and martial campaigns (128–32) in folklore and literature. The most enduring Western document of shape-shifting is Ovid's Metamorphoses, a title that was frequently used in the antique world, most notably by Apuleius (his Golden Ass...