Myths And Children’s Literature

As is known to all, Marx said in The Introduction to Critique of Political Economy, thatGreek mythology is "a standard and template to be very difficult to exceed in some sphere"and have "a permanent charm". The standard and template of Greek mythology are by nomeans confined to the arts. Their ideological value can not be ignored likewise. Myths are thecrystallization of the original human wisdom. Their significance may have beenunderestimated in a certain extent, which result in the human strength is so exaggerated thatthe harmonious relationship between man and nature was destructed and caused a lot of socialissues. Traceably reflecting on the limitations of civilization, humans began to rediscover themeaning of the original wisdom and began to "template" meaning "norm" of human behaviorby using this wisdom. Children’s culture and children’s literature, which have the originalsimilarity with the original human wisdom, are the important way of human understandingoriginal wisdom but also the future ideological and important resources of culturalconstruction.Especially myths and children’s literature clearly reflect the characteristic of the HumanSciences Research which is both an objective existence and also integrated into the researchercultural imagination and mental construction. The artistic spirit of myths and children’sliterature is the same, which is reflected in the following: First, The artistic spirit of myths andchildren’s literature has the symbolic and divine quality which is detached, transcendental andceremonial. Second, showing an intuitive and poetic wisdom, myths and children’s literaturemore emphasize on the perception of the body than other literary genres. Third, myths andchildren’s literature are ‘Carnival of Life’ what M.M.Bakhtin said, they are demonstrated:inorganic and organic life is unified, the civil stance is held and "the pros and cons is in thesame body".C.G.Jung believes that steeped in ancient memory of the "collective unconscious" theliterary narrative prototype is the original image of the human. Studying myths and children’sliterature from the point of view of the narrative prototype, we can find that the process of thenarrative prototype drifting from myths to children’s literature show some characters: they arefrom recessive to dominant, from the philosophical content to personality traits, frommonophonic to polyphonic,and from the universe areas to the characteristics of the personalsituation. If comparing the narrative prototype characteristics between the adult literature andchildren’s literature, we will see that the narrative prototype of children’s literature is moretypical, more vivid, more contrasting colors.The development process of the Chinese children’s literature in the new era can clearlysee the influence of the spirit of myths. This effect is reflected in the following:1. children’s"root seeking literature" in the late1980s and exploring the meaning of dreams in somechildren’s literature;2. the characteristics of the animal literature Interpretating the mythologyof wild creatures;3. the "myths" created by a "fairy master" ZhengYuanJie;4. the "bigfantasy literature "arising;5. the mythological themes of children’s novels by Xue Tao and Cao Wenxuan;6. the influence of "Harry Potter" for the Chinese children’s literature; and8.embedding the emotions of mythology in children’s novels such as the creation of QinWenjun and Peng Xuejun. If expanding research horizons, we can find that some elements ofmyths and children’s literature in the adult writer works. We can get a new discovery in theworks of these writers by children’s literature method. These show that the theory ofchildren’s literature can enlighten the adult literary studies.The turn of the century, Chinese children’s literature showed some features of mythology,such as the mutual influence of the literary image and animation image, literary languagegraphical orientation and picture books, the "New deificationism" advocated and practiced, aswell as influence of virtual culture to the creation of children’s literature.