Author | Robert Bly |
---|---|
Language | English |
Subject | Iron John |
Publisher | Addison-Wesley |
Publication date | 1990 |
Media type | |
Pages | 268 |
ISBN | 978-0-201-51720-0 |
Iron John: A Book About Men is a book by American poet Robert Bly. It is an exegesis of Iron John , a parable belonging to the Grimms' Fairy Tales (1812) by German folklorists Brothers Grimm about a boy maturing into adulthood with help of the wild man.
Published in 1990 by Addison-Wesley, the book is Bly's best-known work, [1] having spent 62 weeks on The New York Times Best Seller list and went on to become a pioneering work in the mythopoetic men's movement. [2]
Bly used Jungian psychology applied to myths, legends, and fairy tales to analyze Iron John, so as to find lessons especially meaningful to men and the men's movement. [1] [3]
Bly believed that the fairy tale of Iron John contained lessons from the past of great importance to modern men, which could provide positive images of masculinity—such as that of Zeus energy [4] —in an increasingly feminist age. He considered Iron John to be an archetype of the Self, and the hero's interactions with him to represent a katabasis, or exploratory journey into the inner depths, where new sources of positive masculine sexuality could be found and tapped. [5]
Bly also stressed in the book the need in consciousness raising to accept the father's world, the paternal values of limitation, sobriety, and authority; and warned against the dangers of the high-flying ascensionist who is "flying away from the father, not toward him...the psychology of men like Thoreau determined to have a higher consciousness than their fathers". [6]
Bly built upon material in "What Do Men Really Want?: A New Age Interview With Robert Bly" by Keith Thompson, New Age Journal , May 1982, and which first appeared as a series of pamphlets. The cover of his book was illustrated by Bruce Waldman; while the 2004 edition ( ISBN 0306813769, Da Capo Press), comes with a new preface by the author. [7] In 1993 a full-length critique of the book was published by Charles Upton. [8]
Author Tom Butler-Bowdon says that, in a nutshell, Bly reveals that "Through old stories we can resurrect the ancient and deep power of the masculine". [9] Entrepreneur and blogger Max Mednik appointed the book as enjoyable, and found "the anthropological details and the studies of initiation rites around the world the most compelling as lessons to learn from" while still being skeptical of the secrets and messages hidden in myths and fairy tales appointed by the book's author. [10]
The American poet Charles Upton considered Bly's approach self-defeating in its efforts to redefine masculinity by a regressive return to the primitive "wild" self. [11] In 2019, journalist Hephzibah Anderson wrote that the book had not aged well: "its flaws have been magnified by the passage of time. […] We may well need to redefine masculinity, but re-wilding doesn't seem the optimal way of going about it". [12]
The Brothers Grimm, Jacob (1785–1863) and Wilhelm (1786–1859), were German academics who together collected and published folklore. The brothers are among the best-known storytellers of folktales, popularizing stories such as "Cinderella", "The Frog Prince", "Hansel and Gretel", "Town Musicians of Bremen", "Little Red Riding Hood", "Rapunzel", "Rumpelstiltskin", "Sleeping Beauty", and "Snow White". Their first collection of folktales, Children's and Household Tales, began publication in 1812.
A fairy tale is a short story that belongs to the folklore genre. Such stories typically feature magic, enchantments, and mythical or fanciful beings. In most cultures, there is no clear line separating myth from folk or fairy tale; all these together form the literature of preliterate societies. Fairy tales may be distinguished from other folk narratives such as legends and explicit moral tales, including beast fables. Prevalent elements include dragons, dwarfs, elves, fairies, giants, gnomes, goblins, griffins, merfolk, monsters, pixies, talking animals, trolls, unicorns, witches, wizards, magic, and enchantments.
"Sleeping Beauty", also titled in English as The Sleeping Beauty in the Woods, is a fairy tale about a princess cursed by an evil fairy to sleep for a hundred years before being awakened by a handsome prince. A good fairy, knowing the princess would be frightened if alone when she wakes, uses her wand to put every living person and animal in the palace and forest asleep, to awaken when the princess does.
"Bluebeard" is a French folktale, the most famous surviving version of which was written by Charles Perrault and first published by Barbin in Paris in 1697 in Histoires ou contes du temps passé. The tale tells the story of a wealthy man in the habit of murdering his wives and the attempts of the present one to avoid the fate of her predecessors. "The White Dove", "The Robber Bridegroom", and "Fitcher's Bird" are tales similar to "Bluebeard". The notoriety of the tale is such that Merriam-Webster gives the word Bluebeard the definition of "a man who marries and kills one wife after another". The verb bluebearding has even appeared as a way to describe the crime of either killing a series of women, or seducing and abandoning a series of women.
"Hansel and Gretel" is a German fairy tale collected by the Brothers Grimm and published in 1812 as part of Grimms' Fairy Tales. It is also known as Little Step Brother and Little Step Sister.
Robert Elwood Bly was an American poet, essayist, activist and leader of the mythopoetic men's movement. His best-known prose book is Iron John: A Book About Men (1990), which spent 62 weeks on The New York Times Best Seller list, and is a key text of the mythopoetic men's movement. He won the 1968 National Book Award for Poetry for his book The Light Around the Body.
Giovanni Francesco "Gianfrancesco" Straparola, also known as Zoan or Zuan Francesco Straparola da Caravaggio, was an Italian writer of poetry, and collector and writer of short stories. Some time during his life, he migrated from Caravaggio to Venice where he published a collection of stories in two volumes called The Facetious Nights or The Pleasant Nights. This collection includes some of the first known printed versions of fairy tales in Europe, as they are known today.
"Iron John" is a German fairy tale found in the collections of the Brothers Grimm, tale number 136, about an iron-skinned wild man and a prince. The original German title is Eisenhans, a compound of Eisen "iron" and Hans. It represents Aarne–Thompson type 502, "The wild man as a helper".
Addison–Wesley is an American publisher of textbooks and computer literature. It is an imprint of Pearson plc, a global publishing and education company. In addition to publishing books, Addison–Wesley also distributes its technical titles through the O'Reilly Online Learning e-reference service. Addison–Wesley's majority of sales derive from the United States (55%) and Europe (22%).
"The Frog Prince; or, Iron Henry" is a German fairy tale collected by the Brothers Grimm and published in 1812 in Grimm's Fairy Tales. Traditionally, it is the first story in their folktale collection. The tale is classified as Aarne-Thompson type 440.
"The Goose Girl" is a German fairy tale collected by the Brothers Grimm and first published in Grimm's Fairy Tales in 1815. It is of Aarne-Thompson type 533.
"The Twelve Dancing Princesses" is a German fairy tale collected by the Brothers Grimm and published in Grimm's Fairy Tales in 1815. It is of Aarne-Thompson type 306.
"The Stone-cutter" is a supposed Japanese folk-tale published by Andrew Lang in The Crimson Fairy Book (1903), taken from David Brauns's Japanische Märchen (1885). However, the story has been pointed out to closely resemble the "Japanese Stonecutter" parable in Dutch novelist Multatuli's Max Havelaar (1860), which is in turn a reworking of a story written by Wolter Robert baron van Hoëvell aka "Jeronimus".(1842)
The mythopoetic men's movement was a body of self-help activities and therapeutic workshops and retreats for men undertaken by various organizations and authors in the United States from the early 1980s through the 1990s. The term mythopoetic was coined by professor Shepherd Bliss in preference to the term "New Age men's movement". Mythopoets adopted a general style of psychological self-help inspired by the work of Robert Bly, Robert A. Johnson, Joseph Campbell, and other Jungian authors. The group activities used in the movement were largely influenced by ideas derived from Swiss psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung, known as Jungian psychology, e.g., Jungian archetypes, from which the use of myths and fairy tales taken from various cultures served as ways to interpret challenges facing men in society.
The men's movement is a social movement that emerged in the 1960s and 1970s, primarily in Western countries, which consists of groups and organizations of men and their allies who focus on gender issues and whose activities range from self-help and support to lobbying and activism.
"The Seven Ravens" is a German fairy tale collected by the Brothers Grimm. It is of Aarne–Thompson type 451, commonly found throughout Europe.
"The Three Little Men in the Wood" or "The Three Little Gnomes in the Forest" is a German fairy tale collected in 1812 by the Brothers Grimm in Grimm's Fairy Tales. Andrew Lang included it in The Red Fairy Book (1890) as "The Three Dwarfs," and a version of the tale appears in A Book of Dwarfs (1964) by Ruth Manning-Sanders.
In Jungian psychology, the Wise Old Woman and the Wise Old Man are archetypes of the collective unconscious.
Marie Magdalene Elisabeth Hassenpflug was a German author whose versions of various folk tales were an important source for the collection of tales by the Brothers Grimm. She is best known for her versions of "Little Red Riding Hood" (Rotkäppchen), "Sleeping Beauty" (Dornröschen), and "Snow White" (Sneewittchen).