Ovid, Shakespeare, Blixen

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Rediscovering the magic of myths : Retelling our personal narratives Somewhere between the Enlightenment criticism of myth as the `sick delirium of

imagination ' and the 20th century use of myths as propaganda by the Nazis , lies

the true place of myth in people 's lives . Rather than banish myths as childish

preoccupations , we must first ask ourselves why they persist We would not be

far from the truth if we chose a simple answer myths exist because we find

pleasure in telling them . As Professor Marina Warner

writes , in Introduction to World

Myths , It seems that myth making marks out human beings in the same way language

does : we are a speculative species and our consciousness and storytelling are bound up

together in a defining cognitive process .There is no need to make excuses for the sheer

enjoyability of myths : the fascination of the stories is reason enough for exploring them (Warner , 2003

However , as pleasurable as it is to retell myths , they have also been recognized

as having the potential to disrupt . The poet Ovid is said to have been

banished `to a distant edge of the empire ' for one of his tales

Ovid 's aesthetic approach , however , does not prevent him from using the myth

as a disguised political statement against Emperor Augustus . Ovid 's comedy of Apollo , the Emperor 's favorite deity , betrays his disdain for Augustan religious ideology and moral doctrine (Barnard 1987

Warner suggests another value of myths - that of preserving our memory of

events , the `private memory palaces of individuals ' in contrast to the official version of

events

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It is also the case that the split between official worship and mythology places mythic stories in the private memory palaces of individuals , rather than in the archives of a state priesthood (Warner , 2003

Yet what is it , exactly , that rulers and governments find so threatening about

myths ? It is , undoubtedly , the prospect of change itself

Ovid 's Metamorphoses presents us with the ultimate in anthropometamorphosis

In this poem the human body is not simply modified , but unrecognisably

transformed into animal , plant or tree , sometimes disappearing altogether

like Echo , who becomes merely an incorporeal voice (see frontispiece This

is a world in which all conventional boundaries are dissolved : at any point

you might find your hair sprouting horns , your feet rooted to the spot or

curving into claws , your arms bristling with coarse black hair , bark

surrounding your thighs you might find you were growing leaves instead of

hair , or had hideous gaping jaws instead of a once beautiful face . What

happens to a human being when his or her body undergoes such drastic

modification ? How important is the body to our understanding of what it is to

be human (Montserrat , 1998

The notion of a human transforming into an animal to escape a pursuing god was

a suitable subject for entertainment , but not if it contained political undertones

On the other extreme , we have the 20th century Nazi movement , which took the...