Abstract

The Storyteller's Journey is an archetypal, metaphorical, and mythological exploration of the woman storyteller's creative process. Addressed are the following questions: How is undertaking the creative storytelling process like the archetype of the journey of the heroine? What impact might mythologizing the storytelling process as the journey of the heroine have on a woman storyteller? How does the woman storyteller invoke and experience the Muse? ;Employing theoretical and artistic methodologies, this dissertation examines the archetypal journey of the woman storyteller through an exploration of texts written by women storytellers and writers about their experience of the creative process. Explored, too, are myths, fairy tales, and stories about women, as well as the dissertation author's experience writing the six short creative pieces included in the dissertation. ;Turning to the pre-Classical, pre-Hellenic Goddess myths---expressly, the myths of the Three Muses and the Goddess Hecate---this dissertation aims to restory the creative process for the woman storyteller in the images and language closest to the source of feminine power. These archaic myths, to the extent that we know them, serve as metaphors that offer a different, nonpathological perspective on her storytelling experience. ;The Storyteller's Journey posits a three-fold view of creativity: inspiration , process or journey , and form . Here the Three Muses---Mneme , Melete , and Aoide ---are stages or steps in the woman storyteller's journey, whereas the individual Muse is reimagined and renamed as the Goddess of Life, Death, and Regeneration, known in the Greek pantheon as Hecate. As individual Muse, Hecate stands at the crossroads where Memory, Meditation, and Song meet in both her birth or life-giving form and in her death-giving aspect simultaneously. Together the Three Muses and Hecate represent the feminine creative powers. ;This dissertation suggests that each storyteller contains within herself and in the stories she tells her own creative fate and imaginative power