ABSTRACT
By joining the debate among postmodern critics that highlights the complexities of defining the Modernist movement, Chapter 2 underscores Nin’s contribution within this literary context. To better understand that Modernism did not produce a single brand of mythopoesis, I examine two seminal essays of the early Modernist period: “Ulysses, Order and Myth,” by T. S. Eliot, and “Modern Fiction,” by Virginia Woolf. I argue that Nin dared to make her own mythic method, including symbolic modes existing within her own subjectivity, mythic tropes and a feminine-embodied creativity. This chapter also introduces Nin’s interests in the then-emerging fields of psychology and surrealism as a framework for my study. I analyze Nin’s mythopoesis in the literary diary from the perspective of two basic, but often antagonistic, myths: Earth-mother consciousness and sky-father consciousness, as first proposed by Baring and Cashford in The Myth of the Goddess: Evolution of an Image. I show how Nin’s use of mythic tropes in her diary reveals a creation myth, and mythic structure, out of her feminine-embodied creativity.
