First people deny a thing; then they belittle it; then they say it was known all along.
– Alexander von Humboldt
For those of you who are hard-core devotees of the power of story, Christopher Booker has written a master work. The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories is a 728 page reference guide extraordinaire. There will always be those that think storytelling is for children only – a plaything useful for entertaining. But one day, it will eventually be seen that one of the most remarkable failures of our scientific approach to understanding the world was not to see that our innate ability to imagine stories is as much governed by scientific laws as the structure of our genes. Booker has also tackled the use of conscious and unconscious archetypes and does an excellent job of explaining how archetypes – both personified and transformational – work in practice as well as theory.
Not a quick read but worth the time and effort!
MythGinger 