Readers and mythic signs

Some literary scholars view myth criticism as passe; an approach to literature that enjoyed a heyday in the l950s and 1960s before being replaced by approaches that are considered to be more theoretically sophisticated and satisfying, such as feminism, new historicism, and deconstruction. Moddelmog argues that there are many good reasons not to cast out myth criticism from the community of critical approaches. Most obvious among them is that myth has attracted many writers of this century -- from James Joyce to Thomas Pynchon, Virginia Woolf to Flannery OʹConnor, Thomas Mann to Alain Robbe-Grillet, William Faulkner to Alberto Moravia -- and that to ignore myth is to dismiss an essential part of their work. Moddelmog suggests that by reconstruing the relationship between myth and literature, we will find that mythic approaches are frequently not only necessary but also highly stimulating, engaging readers in many varieties of questions, quests, and conclusions. -- Publisher description.