Hermes and Aphrodite Encounters

Abstract

In the age of globalization, the rekindled myth of Hermes as the symbolic paradigm of our times seems to incarnate the major features of contemporary communication, trickstery, commerce, crossing of boundaries, connections between worlds, and hybrid ways of existence. In contemporary literature, philosophy, arts and culture in general, various appearances and analyses of these archetypal dimensions seem to call for a complementary feminine mythical figure, through a renewed version of Aphrodite, which combines a number of feminine myths that permeate contemporary literature and culture, such as especially a remodeled myth of a new Eurydice. This essay focuses on the developments and characteristics of myth studies, mainly inherited from C. G. Jung and repositioned in an epistemological leap around a new approach called myth criticism, founded in France by Gilbert Durand, and later by a number of post-Jungian and mainly feminist thinkers in North America. Applied to a number of contemporary literary and cultural phenomena, the notions of myth criticism have proven valuable tools in approaching changes in our collective consciousness and in analyzing contemporary literary phenomena.