Just for Wayne
Frye, p. 150
Corresponding to the apocalyptic way or straigth road, the highway in the desert for God prophesied by Isaiah, we have in this world [demonic imagery] the labyrinth or maze, the image of lost direction, often with a monster at its heart like the Minotaur. The labyrinthine wanderings of Israel in the desert, repreated by Jesus when in the company of the devil (or "wild beasts," according to Mark), fit the same pattern. The labyrinth can also be a sinister forest, as in "Comus." The catacombs are effectively used in the same context in "The Marble Faun," and of course in a further concentration of metaphor, the maze would become the winding entrails inside the sinister monster himself.
posted by Jensen @ 2:08 PM
2 Comments
2 Comments:
Charity, thanks for the "portals" to more labyrinth material. I particularly like the relationship of entrails to the winding and inevitable path of what is consumed.
In my thesis, my trouble right now is trying to come to terms with the Labyrinth as a method of literary analysis.
Campbell and others suggest the labyrinth is all of life; Borges in "Library of Babel" says some people refer to life as the Library. Library-Labyrinth... I know this is an inflation of the metaphor... but... I guess that is part of the paradox.
My job, so far, is to connect the journey of the labyrinth with its center (if it even has one), a center that Campbell suggests is the axis mundi or that great communal scene at the end of
comedy.
Have you ever read Eco's "The Name of the Rose"? The library there is a sort of a labyrinth. I bet you could find something by Eco on that stuff.
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