Comments on: Myth Beyond Words http://journeytothesea.com/myth-beyond-words/ an online magazine devoted to the study of myth Fri, 10 Sep 2010 14:32:14 -0500 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 hourly 1 By: Laura Gibbs http://journeytothesea.com/myth-beyond-words/comment-page-1/#comment-286 Laura Gibbs Thu, 11 Dec 2008 15:41:24 +0000 http://journeytothesea.com/?p=494#comment-286 <p>I am so glad you have started this discussion here, Randy! The way that images reinforce awareness of stories is really powerful (the students in my online classes all illustrate their creative writing with images they find on the Internet... often choosing familiar images from movies).</p> <p>Meanwhile, I don't know if you have had this experience, but it can also be the case that a first meeting with an image that clearly tells a story UNKNOWN to you can be a great first meeting, too - you don't know the story per se, but you can tell that that there IS a story... and the image begins your quest to discover what that story is. </p> <p>For example, I have often encountered medieval stories in visual form before I was able to track down the text on which they are based! when I first toured around Europe in 1985, there were so many many many stories I did not know - stories from the lives of the saints, stories from the apocryphal books of the Bible (like Tobit, or Judith, or the story of Susannah and Daniel - all parts of the Bible beloved by artists, apocryphal or not!)... I could see that some kind of story was being told in the painting or in the sculpture, but I had to find a text somewhere to tell me the story... or ask a person to tell me, if there happened to be a gregarious and knowledgeable person there in the museum or church or public square as the case might be! :-)</p> I am so glad you have started this discussion here, Randy! The way that images reinforce awareness of stories is really powerful (the students in my online classes all illustrate their creative writing with images they find on the Internet… often choosing familiar images from movies).

Meanwhile, I don’t know if you have had this experience, but it can also be the case that a first meeting with an image that clearly tells a story UNKNOWN to you can be a great first meeting, too – you don’t know the story per se, but you can tell that that there IS a story… and the image begins your quest to discover what that story is.

For example, I have often encountered medieval stories in visual form before I was able to track down the text on which they are based! when I first toured around Europe in 1985, there were so many many many stories I did not know – stories from the lives of the saints, stories from the apocryphal books of the Bible (like Tobit, or Judith, or the story of Susannah and Daniel – all parts of the Bible beloved by artists, apocryphal or not!)… I could see that some kind of story was being told in the painting or in the sculpture, but I had to find a text somewhere to tell me the story… or ask a person to tell me, if there happened to be a gregarious and knowledgeable person there in the museum or church or public square as the case might be! :-)

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