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Ways of Interpreting Myth:Modern
Modern Interpretations of Myth
Externalist Theories: Myths as Products of the Environment
Internalist Theories: Myths as Products of the Mind
Two modern meanings of “mythology”:• a system or set of myths• the methodological analysis of myths
A monolithic theory of myth vs. the multifunctionalism of mythThe autonomy of mythSee: Some Theories of Myth
Externalist Theories:Myths as Products of the Environment
Myths as Aetiology Comparative MythologyNature MythsMyths as RitualsCharter Myths
Myths as Aetiology
myth as explanation of the origin of things
myth as primitive science myth as primitive science
What aetiologies are in the myth of Tantalus?
F. Max MüllerNature Myths
Max Müller1823-1900)
For Müller, the culture of the Vedic peoples represented a form of nature worship, an idea clearly influenced by Romanticism
Comparative approach: Study of Vedic peoples of ancient India applied to myths of other cultures (Greece and Rome)
Founder of the social scientific study of religion
Zeus as the Sky
• Dyaus pitr Sanskrit– Dyaus = “he who shines”– pitr = father
• Zeus pater Greek• Jupiter Latin• Tiu Vater Teutonic
(German)
Indo-European
Myths as RitualSir James Frazer’ The Golden Bough (1890-1915)
Comparative mythology
myths as by products of ritual enactments
stories to explain religious ceremonies
Turner’s “Golden Bough”
http://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/ViewWork?cgroupid=999999996&workid=14718
Joseph M. W. Turner (1775-1851) The Golden Bough 1834Tate Gallery, London
Myths as RitualSir James Frazer’ The Golden Bough (1890-1915)
Comparative mythology
myths as by products of ritual enactments
stories to explain religious ceremonies
The Golden Bough On-Line:http://www.bartleby.com/196/
Is the myth of Tantalus a product of ritual enactment?
Charter Myths
Bronsilaw Malinowski (1884-1942)
Selected Bibliography:http://www.vanderbilt.edu/AnS/Anthro/Anth206/malinowski.htm
Does the myth of Tantalus validate social customs and institutions?
belief-systems set up to authorize and validate current social customs and institutions.
Structuralism
Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908-)
Jean-Paul Vernant
Pierre Vidal-Naquet
Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908-)
• myth reflect the mind's binary organization• diachronic vs. synchronic reading of myth• humans tend to see world as reflection of their own physical and cerebral structure ( two hands, eyes, legs, etc.)• Left/right, raw,/cooked, pleasure/pain• Myth deals with the perception and reconciliation of these opposites• mediation of contradictions
For more on Levi-Strauss see http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/information/biography/klmno/levi-strauss_claude.html
How does Tantalus mediate contradictions?
Mediating Contradictions in Tantalus
Narratology
Vlaimir Propp (1895-1970)
Propp argued that all fairy tales were constructed of certain plot elements, which he called functions, and that these elements consistently occurred in a uniform sequence. Based on a study of one hundred folk tales, Propp devised a list of thirty-one generic functions, proposing that they encompassed all of the plot components from which fairy tales were constructed.
What narrative functions are in the myth of Tantalus?
Johann Jakob Bachofen (1815 – 1887)
Feminist Approaches to Myth
Marija Gimbutas (1921-1994)
Marija Gimbutas was an archaeologist with a scholarly background in folklore and linguistics, making her uniquely qualified to synthesize information from science and myth into a controversial theory of a Goddess-based culture in prehistoric Europe. Joseph Campbell said that, if her work had been available to him, he would have held very different views about the archetypes of the female Divine in world mythology.
Primacy of Matriarchy
What about Tantalus?
Myths as Products of the Mind
Individual Mind
Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)id / ego / superego
dream world of the individual
Does Tantalus appeal to our individual dream world?
Myths as Products of the Mind
Collective Mind
Carl Jung (1875-1961) dream world of society
collective unconscious
archetypes: recurring myths characters, situations and events
archetype as primal form or pattern from which all other versions are derived
Does Tantalus appeal to our collective unconscious?
Students of Jung Ernst Cassirer (1874-1975)
Mircea Eliade (1907-1986)
Victor Turner (1920-1983)
Joseph Campbell (1904-1987)
Mircea Eliade (1907-1986)
Eliade's analysis of religion assumes the existence of "the sacred" as the object of worship of religious humanity.
Myths reflect a creative era, a sacred time, a vanished epoch of unique holiness. Is Tantalus living in a vanished epoch?
More on Eliade: http://www.angelfire.com/electronic/bodhidharma/mircea.html
Joseph Campbell1904-1987
Hero's rite of passage
journey of maturation
Growth into true selfhood (Jung's individuation)
More on Campbell: http://www.jcf.org/about_jc.php
Myth and Dream
Myths as Products of the MIND
The Monomyth (James Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake)
Rite of Passageseparation—initiation--return
(See Hero Pg. 30)
Tragedy and Comedy in the Monomyth
– “The universal tragedy of man”– “The happy ending of the fairy tale, the myth, and the
divine comedy of the soul, is to be read , not as a contradiction, but as a transcendence of the universal tragedy of man.” (pg. 28)
– It is the business of mythology proper, and of the fairy tale, to reveal the specific dangers and techniques of the dark interior way from tragedy to comedy. (pg. 29)
– Is Tantalus part of the Monomyth?
The World Navel
Delphi, the navel of the Greek world
The omphalos
The effect of the successful adventure of the hero is the unlocking and release again of the flow of life into the body of the world.(Campbell, pg. 40)
The world navel is ubiquitous. And since it is the source of all existence, it yields the world’s plentitude of both good and evil.”(Campbell, Pg. 44)