Manuel Ruiz y Vicente Penalva

Between 24 and 28 on October there were celebrated in the Complutensian University of Madrid the IV International Conference of Myth Criticism, dedicated to the “Myth and the Emotions”, and the Institute Hermes was present, with paths presentations of Manuel Ruiz and Vicente Penalva developed in one of the numerous tables that were celebrated these days in the Faculty of Philology.

Manuel Ruiz developed a qualified presentation “The current myths in the search of sense”. The myths, and the symbols contained in them, have been used from ancient in the search of sense, in the process of comprehension of the sacred thing. The contact with the sacred thing, with the completely opposite thing to the profane thing, produces a type of singular feelings, which they need from symbols and myths to be able to integrate and answer this experience. One of the consequences of the sacred fact is to be felt to the life, especially when the daily thing is temporary, subject to the loss and wear.

When there takes place the desacred of the western companies, the myths and symbols linked with the sacred thing lose force and relevancy. Nevertheless, to find a sense to the profane thing continues being a need for the human being and, dismantled the area of the sacred thing, they have to recreate myths and contemporary symbols on those who get up particular feelings that provide sense.

Examples of these myths and symbols are in the power social and political of the States, in the culture and in the economy. Somehow, sacred the profane thing in the search of sense.

On the other hand, Vicente Penalva spoke of “The myths of the origins: the way towards the sacred thing”. In the first part of the exhibition it treated the question of the emotions as category in the statements. The reader of any type of story has to find in the text something that him is sufficiently significant that it makes him follow in his reading. As normally it is said, the statement has to achieve that the reader sympathizes with the history, which happens or the personage. Ultimately, to feel motivated. And one of these powerful motives also they are the emotions that provoke the literary images that are in use.

In case of the mythical texts of sacred character, we find them present as a fundamental element. In the myths that treat a contact with the sacred thing, and specially recounted to the origins, one warns that this type of stories contain ethical values on which both the individuals and the companies base the sacred fact of the existence and the institutions that they formalize concerning her. For it, in the text one finds present an emotional logic that provokes that one sympathizes affectively with these values; in other occasions they themselves are of emotional type. In addition, the affectibility turns out to be necessary in the process of survival of the myth, helping to connect the present time with a basic time in which it has originated.

There treated each other the emotions that appear in the mythical stories related to the trip of the hero according to the counterfoil of J. Campell, putting as example of the path of the tests in the contemporary literature ” The Alchemist ” of P. Coelho, ” The Master of the Rings ” of J. R. Tolkien, and “Axion Esti” of Or. Elytis.
Definitively, very advisable to attend in future occasions, on a raw material which the Institute not only is not foreign, but it can learn, and also reach.