Ways of Interpreting Myth: Modern

1. Ways of Interpreting Myth:Modern

2. Modern Interpretations of Myth • 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 myth The autonomy of myth See: Some Theories of Myth Externalist Theories: Myths as Products of the Environment Internalist Theories: Myths as Products of the Mind

3. Externalist Theories:Myths as Products of the Environment Myths as Aetiology Comparative Mythology Nature Myths Myths as Rituals Charter Myths

4. 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?

5. F. Max MüllerNature Myths Founder of the social scientific study of religion Comparative approach: Study of Vedic peoples of ancient India applied to myths of other cultures (Greece and Rome) For Müller, the culture of the Vedic peoples represented a form of nature worship, an idea clearly influenced by Romanticism Max Müller 1823-1900)

6. Zeus as the Sky • Dyaus pitr Sanskrit • Dyaus = “he who shines” • pitr = father • Zeus pater Greek • Jupiter Latin • Tiu Vater Teutonic (German) Indo-European

7. Myths as Ritual • Sir James Frazer’ The Golden Bough (1890-1915) • Comparative mythology • myths as by products of ritual enactments • stories to explain religious ceremonies

8. Turner’s “Golden Bough” Joseph M. W. Turner (1775-1851) The Golden Bough  1834 Tate Gallery, London http://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/ViewWork?cgroupid=999999996&workid=14718

9. Myths as Ritual • Sir 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?

10. Charter Myths belief-systems set up to authorize and validate current social customs and institutions. 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?

11. Structuralism Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908-) Jean-Paul Vernant Pierre Vidal-Naquet

12. 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 How does Tantalus mediate contradictions? For more on Levi-Strauss see http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/information/biography/klmno/levi-strauss_claude.html

13. Mediating Contradictions in Tantalus

14. 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?

15. Johann Jakob Bachofen(1815 – 1887) 

16. 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?

17. 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?

18. 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?

19. Students of Jung Ernst Cassirer (1874-1975) Mircea Eliade (1907-1986) Victor Turner (1920-1983) Joseph Campbell (1904-1987)

20. 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

21. 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

22. Myth and Dream Myths as Products of the MIND The Monomyth (James Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake)

23. Rite of Passageseparation—initiation--return(See Hero Pg. 30)

24. 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?

25. The World Navel 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) 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) Delphi, the navel of the Greek world