Ways of Interpreting Myth The Web of Myth Ancient Vs. Modern

Ways of Interpreting MythThe Web of Myth

Ancient Vs. Modern

The Web of Myth

Interpreting myth is like Penelope at her loom. Thread upon thread of interpretation is interwoven in myth. As one approach to myth goes out of favor and is unraveled from the fabric, another takes its place. The result is that, like Penelope's shroud, the cloth of myth interpretation is ever-changing and can never be finished. See Sienkewicz on the Web of MythSee also Michael Webster’s Ways of Interpreting Myths

http://department.monm.edu/classics/Courses/CLAS230/MythDocuments/WebofMyth.htm

http://faculty.gvsu.edu/websterm/ways.htm

Ancient Ways of Viewing Myth

Archaic 750-480 B.C.

Classical 480-323 B.C.

Hellenistic 323-146 B.C.

XenophanesTheagenes

AnaxagorasAeschylusEuripidesSocratesPlato

Euhemerus

Myth as Venerable TraditionQuestioning of Myths (Rationality)

Myths as Allegory

Myths as Instructive ModelsMyths as InaccurateMyths of Questionable MoralityMyths as Dangerous

Gods as Deified Heroes and KingsTimeline: http://homepage.mac.com/cparada/GML/Contemporaries.html

http://homepage.mac.com/cparada/GML/Contemporaries.html

Xenophanes of Colophonc.570 B.C.

Questioned the Anthropomorphism of the Gods

#170 But mortals consider that the gods are born, and that they have clothes and speech and bodies like their own.

#171 The Ethiopians say that their gods are snub- nosed and black, the Thracians that theirs have light blue eyes and red hair.

#172 But if cattle and horses or lions had hands, or were able to draw with their hands and do the works that men can do, horses would draw the forms of gods like horses, and cattle like cattle, and they would make their bodies such as they each had themselves.

Xenophanes of Colophonc.570 B.C.

Questioned Polytheism

#173 One god, greatest among gods and men, in no way similar to mortals either in body or in thought. #174 Always he remains in the same place, moving not at all; nor is it fitting for him to go to different places at different times, but without toil he shakes all things but the thought of his mind. #175 All of him sees, all thinks, and all hears.

Myths as AllegoryTheagenes of Rhegium (525 B.C.) gods as symbols of human qualities; e.g., Athena = wisdom

Anaxagoras of Clazomenae (c.500-428 B.C.) The misdeeds of the gods are intended to illustrate evil and teach virtue.

Myths as Instructive Models (Paradigmatic Model)

Orestes at trial with Apollo, Athena, and the Erinyes The Erinyes of Clytaemnestra pursue Orestes. Beside Athena, who presides the court, sits Apollo. Engraving from G. Schwab's Die schönsten Sagen, 1912

Aeschylus (c.525-456 B.C.) used myth to teach Athenians about the gods and the their role in the civic life of Athens.

Myths as Inaccurate

Euripides on the birth of Dionysus:

Confusion between thigh (meron) and hostage (hemeron), a reference to the false image of Dionysus which Zeus gave to Hera as a hostage.

Watch out for this in Euripides’ Bacchae (295)

Homer: The Embassy Scene in the Iliad

Boston Museum of Fine Arts 95.39Attic Red-Figure Lekythos





XenophanesTheagenes


Euhemerus


Myths as Allegory




Myths as DangerousPlato Banishes Poetry (=Myths) from his Ideal Republic

•The poets pretend to know all sorts of things, but they really know nothing at all. The things they deal with cannot be known: they are images, far removed from what is most real. By presenting scenes so far removed from the truth poets, pervert souls, turning them away from the most real toward the least.

•Worse, the images the poets portray do not imitate the good part of the soul. The rational part of the soul is quiet, stable, and not easy to imitate or understand. Poets imitate the worst parts—the inclinations that make characters easily excitable and colorful. Poetry naturally appeals to the worst parts of souls and arouses, nourishes, and strengthens this base elements while diverting energy from the rational part

•Poetry corrupts even the best souls. It deceives us into sympathizing with those who grieve excessively, who lust inappropriately, who laugh at base things. It even goads us into feeling these base emotions vicariously. We think there is no shame in indulging these emotions because we are indulging them with respect to a fictional character and not with respect to our own lives.

In Republic Book X Socrates banishes poets from the city as unwholesome and dangerous because:

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/results.asp?WRD=sparknotes%2C+no+fear+skills

EuhemerismOn Euhemerus of Messene, see http://www.csun.edu/~hcfll004/euhemerus.html.

From Diodorus Siculus:Now Euhemerus, who was a friend of King Cassander [of Macedonia (301 to 297 B.C.)] and was required by him to perform certain affairs of state and to make great journeys abroad, says that he traveled southward as far as the [Indian] ocean; for setting sail from Arabia he voyaged through the ocean for a considerable number of days and was carried to the shore of some islands in the sea, one of which bore the name of Panachaea. On this island he saw the Panachaeans who dwell there, who excel in piety and honor the gods with the most magnificent sacrifices and with remarkable votive offerings of silver and gold.... There is also on the island, situated on an exceedingly high hill, a sanctuary of Zeus, which was established by him during the time when he was king of all the inhabited world and was still in the company of men. And in the temple there is a stele of gold on which is inscribed in summary, in the writing employed by the Panchaeans, the deeds of Ouranos and Kronos and Zeus.

http://www.csun.edu/~hcfll004/euhemerus.html





XenophanesTheagenes


Euhemerus


Myths as Allegory




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

http://department.monm.edu/classics/Courses/Clas230/MythDocuments/some_theories_of_myth.htm

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

Aetiology in Greek Myth

Europa (eponymous hero) Creation myths Arachne Apollo as source of plague

Athena and Arachne in Ovid’s Metamorphoses

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

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nature_worship

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Muller.jpg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:MaxMuller.jpeg

Zeus as the Sky

• Dyaus pitr Sanskrit– Dyaus = “he who shines”– pitr = father

• Zeus pater Greek• Jupiter Latin• Tiu Vater Teutonic

(German)

Indo-European

Cyclops as Nature Myth

• Leo Meyer (1857) solar interpretation of Polyphemus' eye

• Grimm (1857) origin in nature symbolism

• Nature struggle: Night vs. Day

• Eye of Cyclops as solar symbol

Myths as RitualSir James Frazer’ The Golden Bough (1890-1915)

myths as byproducts of ritual enactments

stories to explain religious ceremonies

The Golden Bough On-Line:http://www.bartleby.com/196/

Germain (1954) Cyclops myth as a very ancient initiation rite with ram cult as source

http://www.bartleby.com/196/

Charter Myths

Bronsilaw Malinowski (1884-1942)

Selected Bibliography:http://www.vanderbilt.edu/AnS/Anthro/Anth206/malinowski.htm

belief-systems set up to authorize and validate current social customs and institutions.

Internalist Theories: Myths as Products of the Mind

Individual Mind

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)

Laistner (1889) All monsters of myth originated in nightmares. Roheim (1952) disguised version of the Oedipus complex

Collective Mind

Carl Jung (1875-1961)

Ernst Cassirer (1874-1975)

German philosopher and historian of ideas, often typed as one of the leading exponents of neo-Kantian thought in the 20th century.

The great symbol systems from science to mythology are not modeled on reality but model it.

Myth as mind's spontaneous creation of an emotionally satisfying cosmos. More on Cassirer: http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/cassir.htm

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.

More on Eliade: http://www.angelfire.com/electronic/bodhidharma/mircea.html

Victor Turner (1920-1983)Anthropologist at Stanford

developed a unique ritual approach stressing the processual nature of ritual among the Ndembu and of ritual activity in complex societies.

myths serve a combined psychological and social purpose in the present and promote a liminal or threshold experience

Myths ease people through life's difficult transitions

Rituals as symbolic actions.

PROCESSUAL SYMBOLIC ANALYSIS

Ritual analyses are dominated by myth, speech, and thought analysis.

More on Turner: http://www.cla.sc.edu/socy/faculty/deflem/zturn.htm

Structuralism

Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908-)

Jean-Paul Vernant

Pierre Vidal-Naquet

Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908-)

•myth reflect the mind's binary organization•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

DIACHRONIC vs. SYNCHRONIC

• To TELL the myth read the story chronologically. = DIACHRONIC

• To UNDERSTAND the myth, disregard chronologically and read the story thematically. = SYNCHRONIC

See: Ambivalence in the Cyclops’ Story

Jean-Paul Vernant

• Professor at the College de France in Paris and one of the foremost classicists of our time.

• He is the author of numerous scholarly books on Greek thought, myths, tragedy, politics, society, and religion, including Myth and Society in Ancient Greece (1990).

• unveils a complex and previously unexplored intersection of the religious, social, and political structures of ancient Greece.

• Focuses on the alien quality of ceremonial hunting, blood sacrifice, slavery, ritualized warfare and religious esctasy in ancient Greece.

Pierre Vidal-Naquet

With Jean-Paul Vernant, Vidal-Naquet has written Myth and Tragedy in Ancient Greece (1972, published in English in 1990).

They emphasize the contradictions and confusions of reality that characterize Greek tragic drama.

In the introduction to Myth and Tragedy in Ancient Greece, Vernant and Vidal-Naquet argue for the unique virtues of historical psychology as a means of comprehending tragedy and allude to their use of structural analysis to reduce tragic plots to their components.

Pierre Vidal-Nacquet is director of the Centre Louis Gernet de Recherches Comparées sur les Sociétés Anciennes at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris.

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.

More on Propp: http://library.marist.edu/diglib/english/theorists/propp.htm

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