At a time when the place and significance of myth in society has come under renewed scrutiny, Myth, Literature, and the Unconscious contributes to shaping the new interdisciplinary field of myth studies. The editors find in psychoanalysis a natural and necessary ally for investigations in myth and myth-informed literature and the arts. At the same time the collection re-values myths and myth-based cultural products as vital aids to the discipline and practice of psychoanalysis. The volume spans a vast geo-cultural range (including ancient Egypt, India, Japan, nineteenth-century France, and twentieth-century Germany) and investigates cultural products from the Mahabharata to J. W. Goethe's opus and eighteenth-century Japanese fiction, and from William Blake's visionary poetry to contemporary blockbuster television series. It encompasses mythic topics and figures such as Oedipus, Orpheus, the Scapegoat, and the Hero, while mobilising Freudian, Jungian, object relations, and Lacanian psychoanalytic approaches.

Introduction , Myth in the Modern World , Apocalypse, transformation, and scapegoating: moving myth into the twenty-first century , The divine image: remaking Blake's myths , Oedipus Reconsidered , The Yayati complex: a contra-oedipal take on myth and the unconscious , The slaughter of Isaac: oedipal themes in the Akedah narrative revisited , From Oedipus to Ahab (and back): myth and psychoanalysis in science fiction , Theorising Myth and the Unconscious , Freudian and Jungian approaches to myth: the similarities , The boy who had dreams in his mouth , Myth, synchronicity, and re-enchantment , Readings in Myth and the Imaginary , The confrontation with the anima in Akinari Ueda's story "Jasei no in" ("A serpent's lust", 1776) , Sorrow and surprise: a reading of Théophile Gautier's sphinx complex , Orpheus and Literature , From the archaic into the aesthetic: myth and literature in the "Orphic" Goethe , Orpheus, Eurydice, Blanchot: some thoughts on the nature of myth and literature*