24 Endnotes
That myths are represented in comic books is mentioned in Carl Jung's The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious (1959/1969), which cites an article by Alan McGlashan, "Daily Paper Pantheon: A New Fantasia of the Unconscious," which was published in The Lancet in 1953. The article discusses newspaper comic strips from a Jungian perspective, and McGlashan's article specifically cites Jung, and includes such concepts, including "shadow," "archetypes," "hierarchy," and "enantiodromia," which is the idea that "all things [turn] into their opposites" (p. 239). While McGlashan's article approaches things from a Jungian perspective, it is worth noting that both Sigmund Freud and Kenneth Burke also tough on such matters, and have interest in hierarchy, dialectics, and transformation would seem to fit in here.
More recently, various articles use a rhetorical perspective to examine comic book heroes such as Batman and Spider-Man, also using a Jungian perspective. Sometimes such studies have used a Jungian framework and a Burkeian methodology (e.g., Rushing & Frentz, 1989). However, such articles typically use film versions adapted from comics, rather than the comics themselves (e.g., Meyer, 2000; Terrill, 1993, 2000).
While noting the differences between the psychological perspectives of Freud and Jung (Burke, 1966, pp. 356-357), Burke (1966, pp.,380-409) cites neither in the essay, "Myth Poetry, and Philosophy," but rather, bases his own perspective on Joseph Fontenrose's study of a particular myth, Python, A Study of Delphic Myth and Its Origins (1959). Likewise, Coupe's Kenneth Burke on Myth (2005) offers a close reading of Burke's ideas on myth, but like Burke, does not offer explicit ideas for linking Burke's work with other perspectives on myth.
In the current study, I am guided by Bassil-Morozow's idea that a combination of perspectives may be useful. Thus, I am less concerned with theoretical purity than I am with using concepts and apply them to analyzing students' comics. My use of terms including guilt, perfection, shame, scapegoating and mortification, hierarchy and others do not specify a particular theoretical orientation. Some originate with Kenneth Burke, others from Freud and Jung. I also cite research from education, as well as literature about comics.
In general, however, I view the assignment of the "literature review" as a source of shame and the students' comics as compensatory creative work as a way to address that shame. The comic represents a myth that is also an ideological resistance to, and affirmation of, the political power structures that guide life within the context of my course in research methods, and of university life in general. Similar to Bassil-Morozow (2015), I view the "shadow" and the "trickster" as "two developmental stages of the same phenomenon--the drive to be an individual, to be a personality, to leave one's mark on the world" (p. 56).
My representation of "The Myth of the Student Hero and the Dreaded Lit. Review," is also guided by Joseph Campbell's mythic perspective, where the hero leaves the world, goes into a strange new world, and the returns, with something of great value that will help the hero's culture, tribe, society, or world. Campbell is well-regarded in terms of his popularizing the idea of myth, particularly resulting from a series of television interviews in a program, The Power of Myth, hosted by Bill Moyers. Mac Linscott Ricketts' (1993) "The Shaman and the Trickster," acknowledges Campbell's contributions (cf. Segal, 1987).