The Seven Basic Plots - Christopher Booker [530]
1. There is of course much more to David's story after this point, during the 40 years when he remains king of Israel; and part of the continuing psychological subtlety of the story is that he is by no means shown as remaining flawless in his conduct. He faces further tests of his character, such as the episode involving his adultery with Bathsheba and the ruthless fashion in which he disposes of her husband by ordering him into the front line of battle. But always his moments of weakness are resolved in greater understanding and recognition of his failings. Thus when he eventually dies `stricken in years' (Kings 1), he hands on the kingdom to his son Solomon, who has remained legendary as `the wisest king' of all.
2. In many respects the Disney version echoed a Japanese animated film made 30 years earlier, Kimba The White Lion (1965), although the studio strongly denied that there was any link between the two.
1. Procleon is a typical example of that stock character who was to become familiar in later Roman comedy as senex. the dried-up, judgemental old man, opposed to the flow of life, who has continued to play the role of Dark Father or Tyrant through the history of storytelling. In fact senex characteristics are so well-defined that they constitute an archetype, which can affect older women just as much as men, as in the fearsome Granny-figure, constantly complaining about the younger generation and the modern world, made famous over many decades by the British cartoonist Giles.
2. There are occasions when Comedy presents a situation remarkably similar to that familiar in Overcoming the Monster stories, where we see the `Princess' locked away by the Tyrant in a tower, with the handsome hero arriving to free her. In Rossini's opera The Barber of Seville the young heroine Rosina is kept shut away by her grim guardian, Dr Bartolo, until the Count Almaviva and his ally Figaro manage by a series of stratagems to liberate her. In Mozart's Il Seraglio the beautiful young English heroine Constanze has been imprisoned by the Pasha Selim in his palace, and her lover Belmonte arrives to risk his life in rescuing her: until the Tyrant magnanimously recognises the force of their love and lets her go.
1. As with all archetypes, Jung saw the puer aeternus as having both light and dark aspects. In its light aspect, the `eternal Child' - as represented in paintings of the Madonna and Child - is the archetype which shapes our basic emotional response to any new-born life. This instinctively-conditioned response is not only aroused by a human child. We can experience it when confronted by the sight of the new-born young of almost any species at the higher end of the evolutionary ladder, such as lambs, chicks, ducklings, calves or foals (prompting the exclamation `aaah, how sweet!'). But in its dark aspect Jung uses the same term puer aeternus in a different context: to describe an adult male locked into immaturity by a psychological over-dependence on `Mother' and his resulting inability to grow up into fully mature manhood. While it might seem entirely apt to describe someone suffering from this psychological condition as an `eternal child, it may seem confusing to use the same term for