Folklore and Mythology in Neil Gaiman's American Gods

FOLKLORE AND MYTHOLOGY IN NEIL GAIMAN'S AMERICAN GODS by SEAN EDWARD DIXON A THESIS Presented to the Folklore Program and the Graduate School of the University of Oregon in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts June 2017 THESIS APPROVAL PAGE Student: Sean Edward Dixon Title: Folklore and Mythology in Neil Gaiman's American Gods This thesis has been accepted and approved in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Master of Arts degree in the Folklore Program by: Daniel Wojcik Chairperson John Baumann Member and Scott L. Pratt Dean of the Graduate School Original approval signatures are on file with the University of Oregon Graduate School. Degree awarded June 2017 ii © 2017 Sean Edward Dixon iii THESIS ABSTRACT Sean Edward Dixon Master of Arts Folklore Program June 2017 Title: Folklore and Mythology in Neil Gaiman's American Gods This thesis provides a critical analysis of the use of folklore and mythology that exists in Neil Gaiman's award-winning novel, American Gods. I focus on the ways in which American Gods is situated within an intertextual corpus of mythological and mythopoeic writing. In particular, this study analyses Gaiman’s writing by drawing upon Mircea Eliade’s ideas about mythology and Northrop Frye’s archetypal criticism to discuss the emergence of secular myth through fantasy fiction. iv CURRICULUM VITAE NAME OF AUTHOR: Sean Edward Dixon GRADUATE AND UNDERGRADUATE SCHOOLS ATTENDED: University of Oregon, Eugene American University, Washington DC DEGREES AWARDED: Master of Arts, Folklore, 2017, University of Oregon Bachelor of Arts, History, 2011, American University AREAS OF SPECIAL INTEREST: Folklore and Mythology Narrative Theory Scandinavian Studies Narratology Comparative Religion Sociology and Identity Construction PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE: UO Graduate Teaching Assistant, FLR 250: Introduction to Folklore, University of Oregon, September 2015-December 2015 UO Graduate Teaching Assistant, University of Oregon, September 2014-June 2015 Guest Lecturer, FLR 411: Folklore and Religion, June 2014 Student Archivist, Randall V. Mills Archives of Northwest Folklore, University of Oregon, September 2013-March 2014 v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I wish to express sincere appreciation to my thesis committee members Dr. Daniel Wojcik and Dr. John Baumann for their assistance and support in preparation of this manuscript. In addition, special thanks are due to Dr. Gantt Gurley for his input and advice throughout my time at University of Oregon. I also thank members of the Folklore Program and staff for their unwavering dedication and guidance during this project. vi For my father, who always told a good story. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter Page I. INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................... 1 II. MYTH, NARRATIVE, AND SECULAR MYTHOLOGY ................................... 21 III. THE MYTHIC AND NEIL GAIMAN’S AMERICAN GODS ............................. 34 IV. CONCLUSION...................................................................................................... 52 REFERENCES CITED ................................................................................................ 57 viii CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION “I liked myths. They weren't adult stories and they weren't children's stories. They were better than that. They just were.” —Neil Gaiman, Ocean at the End of The Lane (2013) Storytelling is a major part of being human. We tell stories for any number of reasons: to entertain, to instruct, to bond with others, to explain the world around us. The art of creating and re-creating cohesive narratives for a multitude of purposes is one thread that binds individuals together within the wider fabric of human experience. The popularity of various forms and modes of storytelling have changed over time. At one point in history, storytelling was far more performative than what many of us are familiar with today, as stories were shared at events at which storytellers performed their tales directly for listeners. These sorts of storytelling events still occur; however, it is less common for individuals to experience full narratives in this performative manner when one considers the number of stories that individuals now experience through the largely solitary act of reading. In industrialized societies, the former method of storytelling—oral communication directly to an audience—occurred more frequently in the past where saga, myth, folk tale, and legend formed the bulk of the narrative corpus of the storyteller. The latter mode of storytelling— written narrative—became increasingly prominent after the advent of the printing press and the cultural progression into modernity wherein, according to some scholars, narratives tended to illustrate largely the lives of average human beings.1 Interestingly, one finds a resurgence of the subject matter 1 Frye and Denham (2006): 54–62. 1 of traditional storytelling (e.g., myth, legend, folk tale, and saga) within the writing of a number of post-modernist authors. This resurgence of the use and function of myth in literary works, and its meaning, is the focus of this thesis. Modern storytelling, some have argued, takes place largely within the confines of a written document—an assertion which is questionable given the fact that people continue to tell stories verbally today, and a proposal that is certainly challenged when one considers the popularity of film, television, radio plays, and comics, all of which convey narrative through a combination of visual and aural mediums. However, for the purposes of study, the academic assertion about the prominence of written texts is intended to convey the importance of printed documents to the continuation and dissemination of storytelling as transformed into literature. The cultural transformation from oral to written storytelling has led some theorists to suggest that the mode of the traditional storyteller, whose narratives are rooted in the face-to-face exchanges of interwoven tales—didactic, mythological, or any other form—has had difficulty surviving into the modern era of “insular” narratives which make up a large percentage of novels.2 In dialogue with such assertions, this thesis offers two interventions into current commentary on narrative and the nature of mythology in the modern world. First, this project questions the common notion that mythology “no longer exists” by looking at the interplay between the subject matter of mythically-rooted oral storytelling and the manner in which similar subject matter is manipulated and deployed within modern written literature, specifically within the fantasy genre. The second focal point of this 2 See Walter Benjamin, "The Storyteller: Reflections on the Works of Nikolai Leskov," in The Novel: An Anthology of Criticism and Theory (2004): 370. 2 study suggests that the use of traditional myth within the fantasy genre acts as an active form of postmodern popular myth creation by recycling and reworking aspects of myths and legends into an intertextual, but modern narrative. To articulate my key points, I will interrogate the novel American Gods by British author of fantasy, Neil Gaiman. I argue that American Gods is not only a stand-alone fiction narrative that uses elements of myth to tell an interesting story, but that it belongs to the overarching structural complex of mythological storytelling highlighted in both Mircea Eliade’s theories on myth as well as in Northrop Frye’s archetypal criticism, which are discussed in the chapter II. Pivotal to my analysis is the assertion that myth is not an antiquated concept that receded into history as storytelling moved increasingly into the written word as some have suggested. I examine the ways that myth is alive, well, and actively bridging the gap between oral and written narrative. In this case, the concept of myth is conceived of as one that links oral and written forms through an intertextual dialogue between traditional subject matter and popular narrative forms, specifically, the novel. This assertion challenges the notion that modernity and the novel have resulted in the demise of traditional mythology; rather it suggests that mythology or the mythic continues to be created in the present through what Eliade calls “religiously oriented behavior.”3 In his often-cited essay “The Storyteller,” Walter Benjamin describes the storyteller (a purveyor of myth and folk narratives) as an individual who “could let the wick of his life be consumed completely by the gentle flame of his story.”4 For Benjamin, the storyteller is one who aggregates into his or her own life experiences previously existing tales culled from both the storyteller’s lived experience and broader cultural 3 Eliade (1959): 210-211. 4 Benjamin (2004): 378. 3 memory that is expressed within an oral performative context. Benjamin suggests that memory provides a linkage between the people (those who listen to a story) and the storyteller, who crafts and performs the story forming an orally-based intertextuality.5 The story—in this case mythology—continues to live on in the lives of individuals through their repeated retelling in stories and novels, and change even after the culmination of a storytelling performance. In this context, intertextuality in narrative involves the repetition of elements, or motifs, found in various stories; it provides a matrix by which the individual experiencing stories is aided in understanding the relevance of that story through interrelation and quotation

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