Create out loud

with Jennifer Louden

34 | How To Honor The Classics But Forge A New Path In Our Creativity w/ Maria Tatar

Show Notes

Do you ever feel overly constricted by ancient, patriarchal models of storytelling? Then THIS is the episode for you.

One of the most exciting and painfully overdue evolutions in creative history is the emergence of the female voice. Despite cultural sociologists of old focusing on men’s stories, author of the book The Heroine with 1001 Faces and Harvard professor, Maria Tartar is among a number of important voices who recognize that we can both acknowledge, even honor those historic works, but invite the female voice to break them apart.

In this episode, we discuss:

1:45 – What inspired Maria to begin exploring the characteristics of heroines in stories and what makes them heroic, outside of the structural model of the hero’s journey

5:00 – What’s lacking in the hero’s journey framework and classical mythology and how looking at heroines allows us to see heroism in a different light informed by the historical moment we are currently in

7:35 – What stories are we writing and why? What does it mean to be bound by tradition and archetypes in our creativity?

10:14 – How to avoid culturally repressive tropes in our art with iconoclastic and kaleidoscopic thinking

12:14 – Why Maria was drawn to fairy tales and myth

16:45 – How to respect the old while still exploring the new in our art

17:50 – Valuing and promoting curiosity in ourselves and our children and how the patriarchy restrained curiosity through stories

24:18 – How storytelling gives us life

25:10 – How to promote female models of storytelling while avoiding a gender binary

30:09 – Maria’s writing process and her complicated relationship with Joseph Campbell

34:02 – How Maria allows herself to be adventurous when exploring new ideas and collaborating with her students

36:30 – Trusting your instincts and finding the bravery to take risks in your creative work

Get a copy of Maria’s book here:

The Heroine with 1001 Faces
Amazon
Bookshop

Visit jenniferlouden.com/podcastkit to get instant access to a collection of audios that will

  • help you with some of the most common struggles we creatives have to manage including fear of choosing,
  • falling into compare and despair, managing the inner critic (s),
  • and feeling too exposed and vulnerable when you put yourself or your work into the world.

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