• Plato suggested that the future citizens of his ideal republic begin their literary education
with the telling of myths, rather than with mere facts or so-called rational teaching
o Myth is a form of wisdom
o Myth and fairy tales are models for human behavior that give meaning and value to life
—Mircea Eliade
• Reality vs. Fantasy
o Fairy tales have an attraction to people from its expression of which is normally
prevented from coming to awareness
• Dream vs. Fairy tale
o Dreams’ wish fulfillment is disguised
• You don’t really have a goal to the story
• The result of inner pressure which have found no relief
• No solutions in the end
• We can’t control our dream since it happens in our unconscious level
o Fairy tales
• Openly expressive
• Projects the relief of all pressures and offers various ways to solve them
• Plus there’s a happily ever after ending
• Controlled and shaped by the universal agreement of what is the desirable solution
• Similarities
o Myth and fairy tale speak to us in the language of symbols representing unconscious
content
o Appeals to our id, ego, and superego
o Freud: showing the unconscious material in myth and fairy tale and how it relates to
dreams and daydreams
o Jung: figures and events represent archetypical psychological phenomena, and
symbolically suggest the need for gaining a higher state of selfhood
o Inner renewal→achieved as personal and racial unconscious forces becomes available
• Differences:
o In myths the events and people are unique, such events are grandiose and could not
happen to an mortal
o Fairy tales presents characters as ordinary, something that could happen to you
