KARSILASTIRMALI EDEBIYAT VE MITOLOJI ILISKISI
THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN COMPARATIVE LITERATURE AND MYTHOLOGY

Summary/Abstract: The relationship between mythology and literature cannot be ignored because just like literature myths are the products of understanding, perception and representation of human existence. Myths are one of the most important resources of literature and in the course of time mythological elements are used by artists, writers and poets in their works. The mystery of the universe and human nature can be discovered by observing myths. That is why it is possible to link myths and mythology to other disciplines in relation to human beings. Being products of collective unconsciousness, myths are accepted by everybody. Myths can help us to guide the life by creating a general and universal model. Myths reflect societies in which they form and underlie intercultural communications. The universal features of the human beings can be transferred to literature through myths, literature reflecting, thus, societies and cultures as well. In the progress of time, cultures of the societies which are in interaction with their myths and their literatures, can also affect each other. Societies communicate with each other and the cultural interactions are important in terms of comparative literature, because interdisciplinarity underlies this domain. Comparative literature tries to understand and transfer cultural interactions by investigating them through literature. Underlying the cultural interactions, myths are directly involved in the field of comparative literature studies and they lead to literature and culture studies. In this study we aim to reveal the relation between mythology and comparative literature based on the assumption that the mythological elements are echoed in literary works by undergoing through changes, people sharing common grounds even they may belong to different cultures.

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