Mythology

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Mythology refers both to the study of myths and the body of myths belonging to a particular religious tradition. Myths are traditional, symbolic narratives, often associated with religious beliefs, especially accounts of gods or superhuman beings, and may include descriptions and explanations regarding natural and social origins and existences. Myths are frequently distinguished from legends, traditional stories told about particular human or places.

History

The term "mythology" can refer to either the study of myths, or to a body of myths.[1] For example, comparative mythology is the study of connections between myths from different cultures,[2] whereas Greek mythology is the body of myths from ancient Greece. In the study of folklore, a myth is a sacred narrative explaining how the world and humankind came to be in their present form.[3][4][5] Many scholars in other fields use the term "myth" in somewhat different ways.[5][6][7] In a very broad sense, the word can refer to any traditional story.[8]

Nature of myths

Typical characteristics

The main characters in myths are usually gods, supernatural heroes and humans.[9][10][11] As sacred stories, myths are often endorsed by rulers and priests and closely linked to religion.[9] In the society in which it is told, a myth is usually regarded as a true account of the remote past.[9][10][12][13] In fact, many societies have two categories of traditional narrative, "true stories" or myths, and "false stories" or fables.[14] Myths generally take place in a primordial age, when the world had not yet achieved its current form,[9] and explain how the world gained its current form[3][4][5][15] and how customs, institutions and taboos were established.[9][15]

Related concepts

Closely related to myth are legend and folktale. Myths, legends, and folktales are different types of traditional story.[16] Unlike myths, folktales can take place at any time and any place, and they are not considered true or sacred by the societies that tell them.[9] Like myths, legends are stories that are traditionally considered true, but are set in a more recent time, when the world was much as it is today.[9] Legends generally feature humans as their main characters, whereas myths generally focus on superhuman characters.[9]

The distinction between myth, legend, and folktale is meant simply as a useful tool for grouping traditional stories.[17] In many cultures, it is hard to draw a sharp line between myths and legends.[18] Instead of dividing their traditional stories into myths, legends, and folktales, some cultures divide them into two categories, one that roughly corresponds to folktales, and one that combines myths and legends.[19] Even myths and folktales are not completely distinct. A story may be considered true (and therefore a myth) in one society, but considered fictional (and therefore a folktale) in another society.[20][21] In fact, when a myth loses its status as part of a religious system, it often takes on traits more typical of folktales, with its formerly divine characters reinterpreted as human heroes, giants, or fairies.[10]

Myth, legend, saga, fable, folktale, or marchens are only a few of the categories of traditional stories. Other categories include anecdotes and some kinds of jokes.[17] Traditional stories, in turn, are only one category within folklore, which also includes items such as gestures, costumes, and music.[21]

Origins of myth

Euhemerism

One theory claims that myths are distorted accounts of real historical events.[22][23] According to this theory, storytellers repeatedly elaborated upon historical accounts until the figures in those accounts gained the status of gods.[22][23] For example, one might argue that the myth of the wind-god Aeolus evolved from a historical account of a king who taught his people to use sails and interpret the winds.[22] Herodotus (5th century BC) and Prodicus made claims of this kind.[23] This theory is named "euhemerism" after the mythologist Euhemerus (c.320 BC), who suggested that the Greek gods developed from legends about human beings.[23][24]

Allegory

Some theories propose that myths began as allegories. According to one theory, myths began as allegories for natural phenomena: Apollo represents fire, Poseidon represents water, and so on.[23] According to another theory, myths began as allegories for philosophical or spiritual concepts: Athena represents wise judgment, Aphrodite represents desire, etc.[23] The 19th century Sanskritist Max Müller supported an allegorical theory of myth. He believed that myths began as allegorical descriptions of nature, but gradually came to be interpreted literally: for example, a poetic description of the sea as "raging" was eventually taken literally, and the sea was then thought of as a raging god.[25]

Personification

Some thinkers believe that myths resulted from the personification of inanimate objects and forces. According to these thinkers, the ancients worshipped natural phenomena such as fire and air, gradually coming to describe them as gods.[26] For example, according to the theory of mythopoeic thought, the ancients tended to view things as persons, not as mere objects;[27] thus, they described natural events as acts of personal gods, thus giving rise to myths.[28]

The myth-ritual theory

According to the myth-ritual theory, the existence of myth is tied to ritual.[29] In its most extreme form, this theory claims that myths arose to explain rituals.[30] This claim was first put forward by the biblical scholar William Robertson Smith.[31] According to Smith, people begin performing rituals for some reason that is not related to myth; later, after they have forgotten the original reason for a ritual, they try to account for the ritual by inventing a myth and claiming that the ritual commemorates the events described in that myth.[32] The anthropologist James Frazer had a similar theory. Frazer believed that primitive man starts out with a belief in magical laws; later, when man begins to lose faith in magic, he invents myths about gods and claims that his formerly magical rituals are religious rituals intended to appease the gods.[33]

Functions of myth

Mircea Eliade argued that one of the foremost functions of myth is to establish models for behavior[34][35] and that myths may also provide a religious experience. By telling or reenacting myths, members of traditional societies detach themselves from the present and return to the mythical age, thereby bringing themselves closer to the divine.[12][35][36]

Lauri Honko asserts that, in some cases, a society will reenact a myth in an attempt to reproduce the conditions of the mythical age. For example, it will reenact the healing performed by a god at the beginning of time in order to heal someone in the present.[37] Similarly, Roland Barthes argues that modern culture explores religious experience. Because it is not the job of science to define human morality, a religious experience is an attempt to connect with a perceived moral past, which is in contrast with the technological present.[38]

Joseph Campbell defined myths as having four basic functions: the Mystical Function--experiencing the awe of the universe; the Cosmological Function--explaining the shape of the universe; the Sociological Function--supporting and validating a certain social order; and the Pedagogical Function--how to live a human lifetime under any circumstances.[39]

The study of mythology: a historical overview

Historically, the important approaches to the study of mythology have been those of Vico, Schelling, Schiller, Jung, Freud, Lévy-Bruhl, Lévi-Strauss, Frye, the Soviet school, and the Myth and Ritual School.[40]

Pre-modern theories

The critical interpretation of myth goes back as far as the Presocratics.[41] Euhemerus was one of the most important pre-modern mythologists. He interpreted myths as accounts of actual historical events, distorted over many retellings. This view of myths and their origin is criticised by Plato in the Phaedrus (229d), in which Socrates says that this approach is the province of one who is "vehemently curious and laborious, and not entirely happy . . ." The Platonists generally had a more profound and comprehensive view of the subject. Sallustius,[42] for example, divides myths into five categories – theological, physical (or concerning natural laws), animastic (or concerning soul), material and mixed. This last being those myths which show the interaction between two or more of the previous categories and which, he says, are particularly used in initiations.

Although Plato famously condemned poetic myth when discussing the education of the young in the Republic, primarily on the grounds that there was a danger that the young and uneducated might take the stories of Gods and heroes literally, nevertheless he constantly refers to myths of all kinds throughout his writings. As Platonism developed in the phases commonly called 'middle Platonism' and neoplatonism, such writers as Plutarch, Porphyry, Proclus, Olympiodorus and Damascius wrote explicitly about the symbolic interpretation of traditional and Orphic myths.[43]

Interest in polytheistic mythology revived in the Renaissance, with early works on mythography appearing in the 16th century, such as the Theologia mythologica (1532).

19th-century theories

The first scholarly theories of myth appeared during the second half of the 19th century.[41] In general, these 19th-century theories framed myth as a failed or obsolete mode of thought, often by interpreting myth as the primitive counterpart of modern science.[44]

For example, E. B. Tylor interpreted myth as an attempt at a literal explanation for natural phenomena: unable to conceive of impersonal natural laws, early man tried to explain natural phenomena by attributing souls to inanimate objects, giving rise to animism.[45] According to Tylor, human thought evolves through various stages, starting with mythological ideas and gradually progressing to scientific ideas. Not all scholars — not even all 19th century scholars — have agreed with this view. For example, Lucien Lévy-Bruhl claimed that "the primitive mentality is a condition of the human mind, and not a stage in its historical development."[46]

Max Müller called myth a "disease of language". He speculated that myths arose due to the lack of abstract nouns and neuter gender in ancient languages: anthropomorphic figures of speech, necessary in such languages, were eventually taken literally, leading to the idea that natural phenomena were conscious beings, gods.[47]

The anthropologist James Frazer saw myths as a misinterpretation of magical rituals; which were themselves based on a mistaken idea of natural law.[48] According to Frazer, man begins with an unfounded belief in impersonal magical laws. When he realizes that his applications of these laws don't work, he gives up his belief in natural law, in favor of a belief in personal gods controlling nature — thus giving rise to religious myths. Meanwhile, man continues practicing formerly magical rituals through force of habit, reinterpreting them as reenactments of mythical events. Finally, Frazer contends, man realizes that nature does follow natural laws, but now he discovers their true nature through science. Here, again, science makes myth obsolete: as Frazer puts it, man progresses "from magic through religion to science".[33]

Robert Segal asserts that by pitting mythical thought against modern scientific thought, such theories implied that modern man must abandon myth.[49]

20th Century theories

Many 20th century theories of myth rejected the 19th-century theories' opposition of myth and science. In general, "twentieth-century theories have tended to see myth as almost anything but an outdated counterpart to science […] Consequently, moderns are not obliged to abandon myth for science."[49]

Swiss psychologist Carl Jung (1873–1961) tried to understand the psychology behind world myths. Jung asserted that all humans share certain innate unconscious psychological forces, which he called archetypes. Jung believed that the similarities between the myths from different cultures reveals the existence of these universal archetypes.[50]

Joseph Campbell believed that there were two different orders of mythology: that there are myths that, "are metaphorical of spiritual potentiality in the human being", and that there are myths, "that have to do with specific societies".

Claude Lévi-Strauss believed that myths reflect patterns in the mind and interpreted those patterns more as fixed mental structures — specifically, pairs of opposites (i.e. good/evil, compassionate/callous) — than as unconscious feelings or urges.

In his appendix to Myths, Dreams and Mysteries, and in The Myth of the Eternal Return, Mircea Eliade attributed modern man’s anxieties to his rejection of myths and the sense of the sacred.

In the 1950s, Roland Barthes published a series of essays examining modern myths and the process of their creation in his book Mythologies.

Comparative mythology

Comparative mythology is the systematic comparison of myths from different cultures.[2] It seeks to discover underlying themes that are common to the myths of multiple cultures.[2] In some cases, comparative mythologists use the similarities between different mythologies to argue that those mythologies have a common source. This common source may be a common source of inspiration (e.g. a certain natural phenomenon that inspired similar myths in different cultures) or a common "protomythology" that diverged into the various mythologies we see today.[2]

Nineteenth-century interpretations of myth were often highly comparative, seeking a common origin for all myths.[51] However, modern-day scholars tend to be more suspicious of comparative approaches, avoiding overly general or universal statements about mythology.[52] One exception to this modern trend is Joseph Campbell's book The Hero With a Thousand Faces (1949), which claims that all hero myths follow the same underlying pattern. This theory of a "monomyth" is out of favor with the mainstream study of mythology.

Works

See also

Sources

  • Basque Mythology. Public Reading Network of the Basque Country (2018).
  • "Myth Template:Webarchive". Encyclopædia Britannica. 2009. 21 March 2009.
  • Anderson, Albert A. (2004), "Mythos, Logos, and Telos: How to Regain the Love of Wisdom", in Anderson, Albert A.; Hicks, Steven V.; Witkowski, Lech, Mythos and Logos: How to Regain the Love of Wisdom, Rodopi, https://books.google.com/books?id=UXxovhF7LMQC&q=mythos&pg=PA61 
  • Apollodorus (1976). "Introduction", Gods and Heroes of the Greeks: The Library of Apollodorus. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press. 
  • Armstrong, Karen (2010). A Short History of Myth (Myths series). Knopf Canada. ISBN 978-0-307-36729-7. 
  • Barthes, Roland (1972). Mythologies. Hill and Wang. ISBN 978-0-37-452150-9. 
  • Bascom, William Russell (1965). The Forms of Folklore: Prose Narratives. University of California. 
  • Bowker, John (2005). "Euhemerism", The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-861053-3. 
  • Bulfinch, Thomas (2004). Bulfinch's Mythology. Kessinger Publishing. ISBN 978-1-4191-1109-9. 
  • Corner, John (1999). Critical Ideas in Television Studies. Clarendon Press. ISBN 978-0-19-874221-0. 
  • Doniger, Wendy (2004). Hindu Myths: A Sourcebook Translated from the Sanskrit. Penguin Books Limited. ISBN 978-0-14-190375-0. 
  • Doty, William G. (2004). Myth: A Handbook. Greenwood Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0-313-32696-7. 
  • Downing, Christine (1996). The Goddess: Mythological Images of the Feminine. Continuum. 
  • Dundes, Alan (1996). "Madness in Method Plus a Plea for Projective Inversion in Myth", Myth and Method. University of Virginia Press, 147–. ISBN 978-0-8139-1657-6. 
  • — (1997). "Binary Opposition in Myth: The Propp/Levi-Strauss Debate in Retrospect." Western Folklore 56(Winter): 39–50.
  • (1984) Sacred Narrative: Readings in the Theory of Myth. University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-05192-8. 
  • (1999) "The Prehistory of Mythos and Logos", Theorizing Myth: Narrative, Ideology, and Scholarship. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-48202-6. 
  • Eliade, Mircea (1960). Myths, dreams, and mysteries: the encounter between contemporary faiths and archaic realities. Harvill Press. ISBN 978-0-06-131320-2. 
  • Eliade, Mircea (1998). Myth and Reality. Waveland Press. ISBN 978-1-4786-0861-5. 
  • Fabiani, Paolo "The Philosophy of the Imagination in Vico and Malebranche". F.U.P. (Florence UP), English edition 2009. (PDF)
  • (2013) The Intellectual Adventure of Ancient Man: An Essay of Speculative Thought in the Ancient Near East. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-11256-5. 
  • Frazer, Sir James George (1913). The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion. Macmillan and Company, limited, 10–. 
  • Graf, Fritz (1996). Greek Mythology: An Introduction. Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 978-0-8018-5395-1. 
  • Humphrey, Sheryl (2012). The Haunted Garden: Death and Transfiguration in the Folklore of Plants. New York: DCA Art Fund Grant from the Council on the Arts and Humanities for Staten Island and public funding from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs. ISBN 978-1-300-55364-9. 
  • Hyers, Conradl (1984). The Meaning of Creation: Genesis and Modern Science. Westminster John Knox Press. ISBN 978-0-8042-0125-4. 
  • Indick, William (2004). "Classical Heroes in Modern Movies: Mythological Patterns of the Superhero". Journal of Media Psychology 9 (3): 93–95.
  • Kirk, Geoffrey Stephen (1973). Myth: Its Meaning and Functions in Ancient and Other Cultures. University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-02389-5. 
  • Koven, Mikel J. (2003-05-22). "Folklore Studies and Popular Film and Television: A Necessary Critical Survey". Journal of American Folklore 116 (460): 176–195. doi:10.1353/jaf.2003.0027.
  • Leonard, Scott (August 2007). The History of Mythology: Part I. Youngstown State University.
  • Littleton, C. Scott (1973). The New Comparative Mythology: An Anthropological Assessment of the Theories of Georges Dumézil. University of California Press, 1–. ISBN 978-0-520-02404-5. 
  • Matira, Lopamundra (2008). "Children's Oral Literature and Modern Mass Media". Indian Folklore Research Journal 5 (8): 55–57.
  • Meletinsky, Eleazar M. (2014). The Poetics of Myth. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 978-1-135-59913-3. 
  • Northup, Lesley (2006). "Myth-Placed Priorities: Religion and the Study of Myth." Religious Studies Review 32(1):5–10. doi:10.1111/j.1748-0922.2006.00018.x.
  • Segal, Robert (2015). Myth: A Very Short Introduction. OUP Oxford, 19–. ISBN 978-0-19-103769-6. 
  • Simpson, Jacqueline, and Steve Roud, eds. 2003. "Myths." In A Dictionary of English Folklore. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Singer, Irving (2010). Cinematic Mythmaking: Philosophy in Film. MIT Press, 1–. ISBN 978-0-262-26484-6. 
  • Slattery, Dennis Patrick (2015). Bridge Work: Essays on Mythology, Literature and Psychology. Carpinteria: Mandorla Books. 
  • (2000) "Myth", Greek Theatre Performance: An Introduction. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-64857-8. 

External links

Encyclopedias

References

  1. ↑ Kirk, p. 8; "myth", Encyclopædia Britannica
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 Littleton, p. 32
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 Dundes, Introduction, p. 1
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 Dundes, "Binary", p. 45
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 Dundes, "Madness", p. 147
  6. ↑ Doty, p. 11-12
  7. ↑ Segal, p. 5
  8. ↑ Kirk, "Defining", p. 57; Kirk, Myth, p. 74; Simpson, p. 3
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 9.3 9.4 9.5 9.6 9.7 Bascom, p. 9
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 10.2 "myths", A Dictionary of English Folklore
  11. ↑ O'Flaherty, p.78: "I think it can be well argued as a matter of principle that, just as 'biography is about chaps', so mythology is about gods."
  12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 Eliade, Myths, Dreams and Mysteries, p. 23
  13. ↑ Pettazzoni, p. 102
  14. ↑ Eliade, Myth and Reality, p. 10-11; Pettazzoni, p. 99-101
  15. ↑ 15.0 15.1 Eliade, Myth and Reality, p. 6
  16. ↑ Bascom, p. 7
  17. ↑ 17.0 17.1 Bascom, p. 10
  18. ↑ Kirk, Myth, p. 22, 32; Kirk, "Defining", p. 55
  19. ↑ Bascom, p. 17
  20. ↑ Bascom, p. 13
  21. ↑ 21.0 21.1 Doty, p. 114
  22. ↑ 22.0 22.1 22.2 Bulfinch, p. 194
  23. ↑ 23.0 23.1 23.2 23.3 23.4 23.5 Honko, p. 45
  24. ↑ "Euhemerism", The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions
  25. ↑ Segal, p. 20
  26. ↑ Bulfinch, p. 195
  27. ↑ Frankfort, p. 4
  28. ↑ Frankfort, p. 15
  29. ↑ Segal, p. 61
  30. ↑ Graf, p. 40
  31. ↑ Meletinsky pp.19-20
  32. ↑ Segal, p. 63
  33. ↑ 33.0 33.1 Frazer, p. 711
  34. ↑ Eliade, Myth and Reality, p. 8
  35. ↑ 35.0 35.1 Honko, p. 51
  36. ↑ Eliade, Myth and Reality, p. 19
  37. ↑ Honko, p. 49
  38. ↑ Roland Barthes, Mythologies
  39. ↑ Campbell, p. 22-23
  40. ↑ Guy Lanoue, Foreword to Meletinsky, p.viii
  41. ↑ 41.0 41.1 Segal, p. 1
  42. ↑ On the Gods and the World, ch. 5, See Collected Writings on the Gods and the World, The Prometheus Trust, Frome, 1995
  43. ↑ Perhaps the most extended passage of philosophic interpretation of myth is to be found in the fifth and sixth essays of Proclus’ Commentary on the Republic (to be found in The Works of Plato I, trans. Thomas Taylor, The Prometheus Trust, Frome, 1996); Porphyry’s analysis of the Homeric Cave of the Nymphs is another important work in this area (Select Works of Porphyry, Thomas Taylor The Prometheus Trust, Frome, 1994). See the external links below for a full English translation.
  44. ↑ Segal, pp. 3-4
  45. ↑ Segal, p. 4
  46. ↑ Mâche (1992). Music, Myth and Nature, or The Dolphins of Arion, 8. 
  47. ↑ Segal, p.20
  48. ↑ Segal, p.67-68
  49. ↑ 49.0 49.1 Segal, p. 3
  50. ↑ Boeree
  51. ↑ Leonard
  52. ↑ Northup, p. 8
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