A Comparison Of The Gender Archetypes Between Chinese National Mythology And Greek Mythology

Mythology is the literature tradition of collective unconscious and the literature form in early human history. The completeness and richness of the minority mythology in southern China fill up the gap of the Chinese literature, as an indivisible treasure of Chinese national literature. The minority mythology in southern China reflects the speculation and exploration for the natural mystery by ancestors in the primitive society, just like Greek mythology. Because Greek mythology exceeds the minority mythology in southern China in its influence and world reputation, there is few comparative studies between them by regarding the latter as a whole at present.However, as the outcome of creative thinking by ancient human being, the minority mythology in southern China has many archetypal characters that close to Greek mythology. This paper regarding the combination of myth archetype and gender archetype as the starting point, compares the typical archetypes that involving gender consciousness in two kinds of mythologies to discuss their similarities and differences,master the common gender consciousness that implied in the mythology archetypes and further comprehend its connotations and influences, helping us recognize the minority literature in southern China in a new viewpoint. This paper is divided into five chapters besides Introduction and Conclusion, about 42000 words in total.The first chapter elaborates the theoretical foundation of the comparative study between the minority mythology in southern China and Greek mythology. On the one hand, the study combines Myths and Archetypal criticism with gender stereotype from linguistics. On the other hand, it views the comparability between them from the direction of parallel study in comparative literature.The second, third and fourth chapter comparatively analyze the typical archetypal characters in the minority mythology in southern China and those in Greek mythology respectively from three kinds of gender archetypes--male, female(feminine)and gender relationship between male and female, then give each of them a conclusion of gender feature: male’s dominance and intellengence, female’s subordination and attraction, reproduction and ethic of the relationship between male and female.The fifth chapter makes comparative studies in the following two aspects of gender archetype: the presentation of archetypes in the gender consciousness from each literature in later ages made by them, including the presentation of the Greek mythical gender archetypes in the gender consciousness from Euro literature and those from Miao, Zhuang and Yi national literature; the cross-culture interpretation of these two kinds of mythical gender archetypes, including natural environment, social formation, cultural traditions and national aesthetics.