Story Types
understanding the subtle differences between story types


Stories have entertained, bound and led humankind since the beginning of time. As long as there have been people, we have had stories in oral, symbolic and eventually, written, linear form. Stories are products of humanity trying to communicate our understanding of ourselves and our place within Nature and the universe. Tales of every kind entertain, enlighten, quicken and calm all ages, during all occasions and for all reasons. Characters, places, time, and space may differ but all stories share a common thread: archetypes which are symbols genetically imprinted within our collective souls that form a shared language of spirit and experience, defying boundaries of any kind, gender, heritage, or culture.

Below please find explanations and resources to help understand the differences and commonalities between the various types of stories and how archetypes connect them.

OneWomansMind.net has partnered with Amazon.com to offer product previews using simple mouseovers. Just roll your mouse over a book title and the product information and associated links are provided. Any item linked from this site and purchased from Amazon.com helps support and maintain OneWomansMind.net.


Search for a specific title, author or illustrator

 
Web OneWomansMind.net


The Interpretation of Fairy Tales
by Marie-Louise von Franz


A Discussion of Story Types

Fairytales
Fairytales merit special attention because they impact the emotions so deeply. Unlike myths which impart spiritual knowledge or folktales which make us smile or shiver with their fireside familiarity, fairytales, even subdued, are horrific. Fairytales paint the most desperate pictures of how life can go terribly wrong, how devastating loss and fear can infect anyone's life. Fairytales are born from dark, historical times and places - pitch-black forests, poverty-stricken families, disease-infected villages, motherless childhoods. However, their archetypal themes eternally speak to children and adults, offering a safe way of imagining and working out how we would deal with the worst life can offer. Tucked into the arm of a loving parent or adult, fairytales give children a way to imagine, feel and heal through initiatory experiences of parent separation and death. These stories provide discussion opportunities and pathways for bonding and understanding. Additionally, the fairy element in most fairytales gives a sense of wonder and hope about the invisible aspects of life that support, sustain and hear our cries for help and respite.


Myths

Myths are the universal language of creation speaking through humankind. There is nothing simple, artificial or untrue about any myth. In fact myths offer the most fundamental knowledge of human essence of all stories, being found worldwide in every culture beginning in the symbolic language of the Paleolithic and stretching forward into our time. Myths are our souls working outward the mechanisms of creation, biology, genetics, and eternity. Myths tell how the world is created as well as how humans psychologically, heroically evolve through the stages of infant to adult. Myths form the foundation of religion void of dogma and didacticism, telling a common story of man and woman and their interplay through time. Myths also call to humanity's participation in Nature as part of rather than beyond the animal world. Myths speak to children, exciting and enlivening their wonderous curiosity and imagination. Myths remind us that we are all Divine and that we are the Earth and she is us - we are not supposed to think ourselves apart.


Folklore

Folklore has a special, homey quality that soothes and comforts the way hot chocolate does on a cold day. Folktales are tales of the folk, those people who live close to Nature in rural settings and experience the invisibles in ways that those in technological societies will never know. Folktales preserve cultural, ancestral heritage that is vital for individual, personal understanding and growth. Folklore can be funny or frightening, but always entertaining in its ability to guide and caution the listener. Tricksters, heroes and heroines - both human and animal - interact in wonderful adventures that have made fireside listening a favorite pastime.


The Subtle Difference Between Story Types

Joseph Campbell explains in Flight of the Wild Gander: Explorations in the Mythological Dimension: Select Essays, 1944-1968 the subtleties between story types. Please find these descriptions to follow.


Myths
- religious recitations conceived as symbolic of the play of eternity in time
- present in pictorial form intuitions about the nature of being and creation


Legends
- reviews of a traditional history that permit mythological symbolism to inform human event and circumstance
- refer to immediate life and setting of a given society

Both myths and legends are essentially tutorial and are often indistinguishable.


Tales - Fairy, Folk, Tall and Other
- tales include mythical gods and divinities whose roles are diminished to characters and superstitions
- tales are considered past-times that include drama, narrative, repetition, and resolution
- tales have a rhythmic spell that often begins with variations of "once upon a time..." that transport the listener to another realm
- tales can become narrative in verse, or story in song, including bardic lays, epics and folk ballads


Fables
- didactic, clever illustration of political and ethical points of view


Archetypes

Story types are interwoven by a commonality that can blur, even sometimes erase, differences between genres: archetypes. Archetypes are genetic, living, universal imprints of creation in time found within the collective (rather than personal) unconscious of humanity. Archetypes are influenced by history, geography and culture but their intrinsic meanings never change, remaining static throughout time. Complex and vital, archetypes take shape in various forms and communicate through various methods.

Archetypes can take the forms of:

Explained by Anne Baring and Jules Cashford, The Myth of the Goddess: Evolution of an Image an archetypal image is identified when:

Archetypes are experienced through:

Archetypes are interpreted for the community by:

Religious, political, corporate, or any authoritative, group-mind embracing and forcing dogma and didacticism may attempt to repress archetypes; however, archetypes cannot be denied and will always find a way to live and breathe. For example, the Great Mother Goddess of prehistory has morphed over time into the lovely, eternal Mother Mary. Please find definitions, explanations and information below to help elucidate the meaning of archetypes.

Archetypes are inherited, pictorial forms of the instincts that make up the structural elements of the collective unconscious - the psychic organs upon whose functioning the well-being of the individual depends and whose injury has disastrous consequences.
- Erich Neumann, Jungian Analyst, The Origins and History of Consciousness (definition an amalgam of Neumann's theories)

(Archetypes) transmute our personal destiny into the destiny of mankind, thereby evoking in us all those beneficent forces that ever and anon have enabled mankind to find a refuge from every peril and to outlive the longest night.
- Carl Jung

Every relationship to the archetype whether through experience or simply through the spoken word is "stirring" that is to say, it works because it releases in us a mightier voice than our own.
- Erich Neumann, Jungian Analyst, The Origins and History of Consciousness

(Archetype) is a potential being who exists in all of us and how, since the beginning of human history, has emerged in varying degrees into consciousness.
- David Page and Jake Leeming, Myths of the Female Goddess


Are Stories True?

All stories are true in that any image or idea born from the unconscious must have a correlating experience in reality - either physical, spiritual or quantum - influencing its creation. Creatures, character and experiences described in myth, folklore, fairytales and related stories do have foundations in truth despite a lack of physical, forensic evidence or proof. Much of story is born from the invisible, intangible realm open to sensitive people, visionaries and artists who translate or describe their knowledge for all - the community, the village, the tribe - to understand. Gods and goddesses discovered in mythology are real to the people who ritualize and deify them, just as ghosts and faery are absolutely alive in the cultures' folklore and tales that celebrate them. So, when your child or student asks "Is that story true?" you can answer with a definitive, glorious "YES!"


OneWomansMind.net Resources

What is Myth?

Children's Literature Categories - including fairytales, folklore and myth

Glossary of Mythical and Jungian Definitions

OneWomansMind.net Link Repository


Teacher, Parent and Adult Resources

Flight of the Wild Gander: Explorations in the Mythological Dimension: Select Essays, 1944-1968 by Joseph Campbell
Phenomenal discussion of story types

The Hero With A Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell - Groundbreaking, in-depth explanation of the Hero cycle found in myth and all our lives

The Power of Myth - Book version of Bill Moyers' Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth videotaped interviews with Campbell. Life altering.

The Archetypes and The Collective Unconscious (Collected Works of C.G. Jung Vol.9 Part 1) by Carl Jung

Man and His Symbols by Carl Jung


Authors and Psychologists Exploring the Meaning of Story

Marie-Louise von Franz - understanding and interpreting fairytales psychologically

Clarissa Pinkola Estes - exploring the value of stories for emotional and psychological well-being

Joseph Campbell - academic analysis of mythology in cultures across time and place

Robert Bly - analysis of story as healing guideposts to unlocking personal, psychological issues - especially helpful for men and boys


© Copyright Paula Vaughan
Not to be reprinted without permission.


Want to receive the OneWomansMind.net
Education Newsletter?
Please enter your email address.
Subscribe Unsubscribe
Hosting by YMLP.com



...in fairy tales and mythos are initiators; they are the wise ones who teach those who have come after.
- Clarissa Pinkola Estes


Table of Contents | OneWomansMind.net Home