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THE MYTH AS SOURCE OF ART AND LITERATURE |
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Dursun
Ali TÖKEL |
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One of the most
important sources of art and literature is mythology. In ancient ages,
natural phenomenas, such important events as birth and death, the creation
and end of the earth, relationship between the God and
a man, stories consisting of extraordinary events developing from
great heroism have been used sometimes as basic narrative, sometimes as an
image or as a symbol in the works of art and literature in almost every
period. The basic characteristic
of such narratives as Mahabarata, Odyssea, Illiad, Manas, Oguz Kagan,
Shakhname etc. is that they all have mythological narrative texts. In
order to understand such works it is necessary to know well the
mythological stories in ancient time and their symbolic meanings in daily
life. In these works, the mythological narrative constitutes the work
itself. In later centuries, although literary works mostly depended on
mental states, they tended to use the myths as an image or as a symbol so
as to establish a deep meaning. In a literary work, the
language used is usually a means of creating a new unknown meaning from
the words known. In this point, the literary language is not an
‘objection’ that means the reflection of those known but is an
‘objectivation’ that means the creation of a new meaning from those
known. Myths are excellent sources used in organizing a literary work
dependent on objectivation. An artist uses myths and re-interprets this present source through his genious so that he can create mostly a field of a new meaning and concept, and that he can form a rich meaning addressing to collective subconsciousness, and that he can establish the unity of less words-deep meaning, and that he can express deep humanistic realities and internal concerns which mostly can’t be expressed, and that he can intense the mystery and charm of the work increasing the layers of the meaning and that he can demonstrate human’s tragedy today is in fact not much more different than yesterday’s. . |
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