Paper long abstract:

Folklore and mythology often tell of journeys between the world of the living and an "other" world (or worlds), variously portrayed as the abode of, for example, gods, spirits, animals or the dead. Such other worlds are both distinct from the everyday world (e.g. time passes more slowly) and yet, under certain circumstances, accessible from it. Hence, the transit between worlds often takes the form of a physical journey, involving the traversing of large distances by land or water, aerial flight or a descent into the depths of the sea or earth. Drawing mainly on European sources, this paper uses the dynamics and physical topography of otherworld journeys to ask whether accounts of a plurality of non-identical but (potentially) intercommunicating worlds can usefully be understood through a conception of reality as simultaneously one and multiple and whether the mythopoeic imagination plays a distinctive role in articulating such a conception.