Tolstoy's epic kaleidoscope: Mythomorphing, archetypes and the Hero's Journey

Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace provides a powerful mythopoetic experience, which maximizes experiential reciprocity and potentiates choice and the consequent repositioning of the personal mythological lens. This is the result of the epic's kaleidoscope effect, which is a phenomenon beginning with a three-part sequence. This sequence includes that which occurs reciprocally between the reader and the text during the reading process by engaging the psyche and opening it to the tools of transformation, the results of the reading process on brain plasticity, and "platform construction," which is the point of departure from which to imagine and to give shape to imagination and to project possibility.;This dissertation defines the kaleidoscopic effect of this epic as "mythomorphing," which is the re-visioning of and the manifest re-formation of one's personal mythology. It examines one inflection of the mythomorphing experience through Jungian archetypal analysis of the development of the five most significant characters central to War and Peace, as well as the unfolding of the protagonist's Hero's Journey. The process associated with writing his epic work created a virtual and elastic timeframe and the consequent psychic space necessary for Tolstoy to ponder his newly formed personal mythology. This consequently enabled him, and the readers of his epic, to examine and exploit the possibilities associated with the ever-fresh images that resulted from the powerful and kaleidoscopic creation-dissolution-re-creation cycle.;The mythomorphing experience, though not exclusive to readers of Tolstoy's epic War and Peace, is a significantly more likely possibility in association with this particular work. This is because of Tolstoy's cultivation and use of his "perpetual present" dialogue and description technique, his archetypal development of characters and the exposition of a portion of his own personal Hero's Journey illustrated through the protagonist's Hero's Journey. Ultimately, the process of writing War and Peace provided Leo Tolstoy with the specific qualities of depth of vision, perspective, choice and change that subsequently affected not only the author, but the readers of his epic work, including Mohandas "Mahatma" Gandhi and Martin Luther King. Their respective consequent responses potently illustrate the mythologically charged influence of Tolstoy's epic kaleidoscope.