The Storytelling of Myth: Eliot, Tennyson, and Stevens

초록

T. S. Eliot reviews the value of mythic figure, Ulysses, in his essay, “‘Ulysses,’ Order, and Myth.” This essay explores how mythic method is related with the storytelling of poems based on the mythic figures, since Eliot also uses mythical references in his poems. Homer and Dante deals with the story of Ulysses. Alfred Tennyson and Wallace Stevens also describes Ulysses in their own way. In attempting to recuperate the contemporaneity, this essay highlights certain features Eliot claims in Tennyson’s “Ulysses” and Stevens’s “The Sails of Ulysses.” The story of Ulysses is spoken differently by such different speakers. Storytelling is not mere to tell the story but to crystallize it with the speaker’s experience. Tennyson depicts Ulysses as a hero who seeks knowledge while Stevens emphasizes knowledge itself rather than an adventure for knowledge. Stevens describes Ulysses as a mental traveler, not as an adventurer on voyage. Another example is Penelope who is also portrayed as an artistic thinker. Both of them have different characters from what Homer, Dante, and even Tennyson create in their works. The difference between an ancient character of the hero and the contemporary character in those poems brings about each poet’s contemporaneity.

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