• The Collective Unconscious of Rome and India: Narrative Archetypes in the Abduction of Proserpina of Ovid’s Metamorphoses and Sita of the Ramayan

    Author(s):
    Arish Mudra Rakshasa-Loots (see profile)
    Date:
    2023
    Subject(s):
    History, Ancient, Mythology, South Asia
    Item Type:
    Article
    Permanent URL:
    https://doi.org/10.17613/3np3-kw84
    Abstract:
    The Ramayan, a seminal South Asian mythological text, is rarely examined in scholarship concerning ancient literary texts, in part due to the overwhelming focus on the Greco-Roman canon. Ovid’s Metamorphoses has long served as a window into Greco-Roman culture and mythology. However, the ways in which the Metamorphoses may be shaped by, and in turn shape, the interactions between myths and cultures beyond the Greco-Roman world is underexplored. This article highlights stark narrative parallels between the abduction of Proserpina in the Metamorphoses and the abduction of Sita in the Ramayan. Given that these texts are genetically and geographically distinct, tracing the origin of these parallels remains challenging. Here, I leverage a Jungian analytical framework to propose that “narrative archetypes” – collections of images stored in the collective unconscious which manifest in myths across cultures – may explain why episodic details are conserved between the Metamorphoses and the Ramayan.
    Notes:
    This is a pre-peer review (pre-print) version of this research article.
    Metadata:
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    Status:
    Published
    Last Updated:
    10 months ago
    License:
    Attribution
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