Huh! Well, I learned something myself today! I had never heard this word, ever, but I think the explanations are probably right. At the time Steinbeck was writing this, he was spending a good deal of time with Joseph Campbell, who was then writing his own book, The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Steinbeck, Campbell, and Ed Ricketts (John's marine biologist friend, and inspiration for Doc in Cannery Row) spent long hours discussing myth and sybolism.
There is not much Steinbeck more than myths of the world. It makes perfect sense to me that he would have absorded this idea into The Chrysanthemums.
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