From Epic to Labours to Saga: Myth-Making
One of the most fascinating aspects of myths in general is how there are so frequently variations of the “same” stories.
I mean this in a few senses, but, primarily, consider, say, the stories of Heracles and Hercules, and, secondarily, consider Joseph Campbell‘s concept of the monomyth. I’ll introduce the tertiary consideration later.
Similarily, “The Labours of the MERCANARY™” will be a reimagining of – in other words, an adaptation of – “The Epic of the MERCANARY™.”
Further, the Labours shall use the exact memeoems from the Epic, just reordered, remixed, re-cut.
And, the Labours will significantly shape the prose of the novel, “The Marvelous Saga of the MERCANARY™.”
The tertiary sense of variations of myths focuses (perhaps) more on interpretation. Roland Barthes engages the rhetoric of myth in his theories on semiotics (how meaning is made, how communication functions, etc.).
An Occam’s razor explanation: consider how the reader/viewer/listener brings with them a whole set of biases, attitudes, values, beliefs, and more when they encounter any communicated expression, and that set determines how they might interpret any message.
These memeoems are meant to explode meaning; they ought to have great variance in how they are read.
The prose of the novel will be clearer than the memeoems, without a doubt, but readers should still expect a great deal of coy obfuscation, ambiguity, and wordplay.
By the time the novel is in print, this whole project will be a strange intermedial loop of potential interpretations of the work as a whole.
Sincerely,
David Reynolds
© 2020
PROBLEMATIC PRESS