Information about Mythology
The word mythology (from the Greek μύθολογία mythología, from μυθολογείν mythologein to relate myths, from μύθος mythos, meaning a narrative, and λόγος logos, meaning speech or argument) literally means the (oral) retelling of myths – stories that a particular culture believes to be true and that use the supernatural to interpret natural events and to explain the nature of the universe and humanity. In modern usage, "mythology" is either the body of myths from a particular culture or religion (as in Greek mythology, Egyptian mythology or Norse mythology) or the branch of knowledge dealing with the collection, study and interpretation of myths, also known as mythography.
In contrast to the OED's definition of a myth as a "traditional story", many folklorists apply the term to only one group of traditional stories. By this system, traditional stories can be arranged into three groups:[4][5][6]
Some scholars disagree with such attempts to restrict the definition of the word "myth". The classicist G. S. Kirk thinks the distinction between myths and folktales may be useful,[8] but he argues that "the categorizing of tales as folktales, legends, and proper myths, simple and appealing as it seems, can be seriously confusing".[9] In particular, he rejects the idea "that all myths are associated with religious beliefs, feelings or practices".[10] The religious scholar Robert A. Segal goes even farther, defining myths simply as stories whose main characters are "personalities — divine, human, or even animal".[11]
By the Christian era, the Greco-Roman world had started to use the term "myth" (Greek μῦθος, muthos) to mean "fable, fiction, lie"; as a result, early Christian writers used "myth" with this meaning.[12] This use of the term "myth" passed into popular usage.[13] In this article, the term "myth" is used in a scholarly sense, detached from popular associations with falsehood.
Historically, the important approaches to the study of mythological thinking have been those of Vico, Schelling, Schiller, Jung, Freud, Lévy-Bruhl, Levi-Strauss, Frye, the Soviet school, and the Myth and Ritual School.[14]
Myths are narratives about divine or heroic beings, arranged in a coherent system, passed down traditionally, and linked to the spiritual or religious life of a community, endorsed by rulers or priests. Once this link to the spiritual leadership of society is broken, they lose their mythological qualities and become folktales or fairy tales.[15] In folkloristics, which is concerned with the study of both secular and sacred narratives, a myth also derives some of its power from being more than a simple "tale", by comprising an archetypical quality of "truth". Writer, philologist, and religious thinker J.R.R. Tolkien expressed a similar opinion: "I believe that legends and myths are largely made of 'truth', and indeed present aspects of truth that can only be received in this mode."[16]
Myths are often intended to explain the universal and local beginnings ("creation myths" and "founding myths"), natural phenomena, inexplicable cultural conventions or rituals, and anything else for which no simple explanation presents itself. This broader truth runs deeper than the advent of critical history, and it may or may not exist as in an authoritative written form which becomes "the story" (preliterate oral traditions may vanish as the written word becomes "the story" and the literate class becomes "the authority"). However, as Lucien Lévy-Bruhl puts it, "The primitive mentality is a condition of the human mind, and not a stage in its historical development."[17]
Most often the term refers specifically to ancient tales of historical cultures, such as Greek mythology or Roman mythology. Some myths descended originally as part of an oral tradition and were only later written down, and many of them exist in multiple versions. According to F. W. J. Schelling in the eighth chapter of Introduction to Philosophy and Mythology, "Mythological representations have been neither invented nor freely accepted. The products of a process independent of thought and will, they were, for the consciousness which underwent them, of an irrefutable and incontestable reality. Peoples and individuals are only the instruments of this process, which goes beyond their horizon and which they serve without understanding." Individual myths or mythemes may be classified in various categories:
Many myths, such as ritual myths, are clearly part of religion. However, unless we simply define myths as "sacred stories" (instead defining them as "traditional stories", for instance), not all myths are necessarily religious. As the classicist G. S. Kirk notes, "many myths embody a belief in the supernatural [...] but many other myths, or what seem like myths, do not".[20] As an example, Kirk cites the myth of Oedipus, which is "only superficially associated [...] with religion or the supernatural", and is therefore not a sacred story.[21] (Note that folklorists would not classify the Oedipus story as a myth, precisely because it is not a sacred story.[22])
Examples of religious myths include:
As discussed above, the status of a story as myth is unrelated to whether it is based on historical events. Myths that are based on a historical events over time become imbued with symbolic meaning, transformed, shifted in time or place, or even reversed. One way of conceptualizing this process is to view 'myths' as lying at the far end of a continuum ranging from a 'dispassionate account' to 'legendary occurrence' to 'mythical status'. As an event progresses towards the mythical end of this continuum, what people think, feel and say about the event takes on progressively greater historical significance while the facts become less important. By the time one reaches the mythical end of the spectrum the story has taken on a life of its own and the facts of the original event have become almost irrelevant. A classical example of this process is the Trojan War, a topic firmly within the scope of Greek mythology. The extent of a historical basis in the Trojan cycle is disputed, see historicity of the Iliad.
This method or technique of interpreting myths as accounts of actual events, euhemerist exegesis, dates from antiquity and can be traced back (from Spencer) to Evhémère's Histoire sacrée (300 BCE) which describes the inhabitants of the island of Panchaia, Everything-Good, in the Indian Ocean as normal people deified by popular naivety. As Roland Barthes affirms, "Myth is a word chosen by history. It could not come from the nature of things". [27]
This process occurs in part because the events described become detached from their original context and new context is substituted, often through analogy with current or recent events. Some Greek myths originated in Classical times to provide explanations for inexplicable features of local cult practices, to account for the local epithet of one of the Olympian gods, to interpret depictions of half-remembered figures, events, or to account for the deities' attributes or entheogens, even to make sense of ancient icons, much as myths are invented to "explain" heraldic charges, the origins of which has become arcane with the passing of time. Conversely, descriptions of recent events are re-emphasised to make them seem to be analogous with the commonly known story. This technique has been used by some religious conservatives in America with text from the Bible, notably referencing the many prophecies in the Book of Daniel and the Book of Revelation especially. It was also used during the Russian Communist-era in propaganda about political situations with misleading references to class struggles. Until World War II the fitness of the Emperor of Japan was linked to his mythical descent from the Shinto sun goddess, Amaterasu.
Mâche argues that euhemerist exegesis, "was applied to capture and seize by force of reason qualities of thought, which eluded it on every side."[28] This process, he argues, often leads to interpretation of myths as "disguised propaganda in the service of powerful individuals," and that the purpose of myths in this view is to allow the "social order" to establish "its permanence on the illusion of a natural order." He argues against this interpretation, saying that "what puts an end to this caricature of certain speeches from May 1968 is, among other things, precisely the fact that roles are not distributed once and for all in myths, as would be the case if they were a variant of the idea of an 'opium of the people.'"
Contra Barthes Mâche argues that, "myth therefore seems to choose history, rather than be chosen by it" [29], "beyond words and stories, myth seems more like a psychic content from which words, gestures, and musics radiate. History only chooses for it more or less becoming clothes. And these contents surge forth all the more vigorously from the nature of things when reason tries to repress them. Whatever the roles and commentaries with which such and such a socio-historic movement decks out the mythic image, the latter lives a largely autonomous life which continually fascinates humanity. To denounce archaism only makes sense as a function of a 'progressive' ideology, which itself begins to show a certain archaism and an obvious naivety."[30]
Catastrophists [31] such as Immanuel Velikovsky believe that myths are derived from the oral histories of ancient cultures that witnessed "cosmic catastrophes". The catastrophic interpretation of myth, forms only a small minority within the field of mythology and often qualifies as pseudohistory. Similarly, in their book Hamlet's Mill, Giorgio De Santillana and Hertha Von Dechend suggest that myth is a "technical language" describing "cosmic events", [32]
Term
The term mythology has been in use since the 15th century, and means "an exposition of myths". The current meaning of "body of myths" itself dates to 1781 Oxford English Dictionary (OED).[1] The adjective mythical dates to 1678. Myth in general use is often interchangeable with legend or allegory, but some scholars strictly distinguish the terms.[2] The term has been used in English since the 19th century. The newest edition of the OED distinguishes the meanings- 1a. "A traditional story, typically involving supernatural beings or forces or creatures , which embodies and provides an explanation, aetiology, or justification for something such as the early history of a society, a religious belief or ritual, or a natural phenomenon", citing the Westminster Review of 1830 as the first English attestation[3]
- 1b. "As a mass noun: such stories collectively or as a genre." (1840)
- 2a. "A widespread but untrue or erroneous story or belief" (1849)
- 2b. "A person or thing held in awe or generally referred to with near reverential admiration on the basis of popularly repeated stories (whether real or fictitious)." (1853)
- 2c. "A popular conception of a person or thing which exaggerates or idealizes the truth." (1928)
In contrast to the OED's definition of a myth as a "traditional story", many folklorists apply the term to only one group of traditional stories. By this system, traditional stories can be arranged into three groups:[4][5][6]
- myths - sacred stories concerning the distant past, particularly the creation of the world; generally focussed on the gods
- legends - stories about the (usually more recent) past, which generally include, or are based on, some historical events; generally focussed on human heroes
- folktales/fairytales (or Märchen, the German word for such tales) - stories whose tellers acknowledge them to be fictitious, and which lack any definite historical setting; often include animal characters
Some scholars disagree with such attempts to restrict the definition of the word "myth". The classicist G. S. Kirk thinks the distinction between myths and folktales may be useful,[8] but he argues that "the categorizing of tales as folktales, legends, and proper myths, simple and appealing as it seems, can be seriously confusing".[9] In particular, he rejects the idea "that all myths are associated with religious beliefs, feelings or practices".[10] The religious scholar Robert A. Segal goes even farther, defining myths simply as stories whose main characters are "personalities — divine, human, or even animal".[11]
By the Christian era, the Greco-Roman world had started to use the term "myth" (Greek μῦθος, muthos) to mean "fable, fiction, lie"; as a result, early Christian writers used "myth" with this meaning.[12] This use of the term "myth" passed into popular usage.[13] In this article, the term "myth" is used in a scholarly sense, detached from popular associations with falsehood.
Characteristics
)
Historically, the important approaches to the study of mythological thinking have been those of Vico, Schelling, Schiller, Jung, Freud, Lévy-Bruhl, Levi-Strauss, Frye, the Soviet school, and the Myth and Ritual School.[14]
Myths are narratives about divine or heroic beings, arranged in a coherent system, passed down traditionally, and linked to the spiritual or religious life of a community, endorsed by rulers or priests. Once this link to the spiritual leadership of society is broken, they lose their mythological qualities and become folktales or fairy tales.[15] In folkloristics, which is concerned with the study of both secular and sacred narratives, a myth also derives some of its power from being more than a simple "tale", by comprising an archetypical quality of "truth". Writer, philologist, and religious thinker J.R.R. Tolkien expressed a similar opinion: "I believe that legends and myths are largely made of 'truth', and indeed present aspects of truth that can only be received in this mode."[16]
Myths are often intended to explain the universal and local beginnings ("creation myths" and "founding myths"), natural phenomena, inexplicable cultural conventions or rituals, and anything else for which no simple explanation presents itself. This broader truth runs deeper than the advent of critical history, and it may or may not exist as in an authoritative written form which becomes "the story" (preliterate oral traditions may vanish as the written word becomes "the story" and the literate class becomes "the authority"). However, as Lucien Lévy-Bruhl puts it, "The primitive mentality is a condition of the human mind, and not a stage in its historical development."[17]
Most often the term refers specifically to ancient tales of historical cultures, such as Greek mythology or Roman mythology. Some myths descended originally as part of an oral tradition and were only later written down, and many of them exist in multiple versions. According to F. W. J. Schelling in the eighth chapter of Introduction to Philosophy and Mythology, "Mythological representations have been neither invented nor freely accepted. The products of a process independent of thought and will, they were, for the consciousness which underwent them, of an irrefutable and incontestable reality. Peoples and individuals are only the instruments of this process, which goes beyond their horizon and which they serve without understanding." Individual myths or mythemes may be classified in various categories:
- Ritual myths explain the performance of certain religious practices or patterns and associated with temples or centers of worship.
- Origin myths (aetiologies) describe the beginnings of a custom, name or object.
- Creation myths, which describes how the world or universe came into being.
- Cult myths are often seen as explanations for elaborate festivals that magnify the power of the deity.
- Prestige myths are usually associated with a divinely chosen king, hero, city, or people.
- Eschatological myths are stories which describe catastrophic ends to the present world order of the writers. These extend beyond any potential historical scope, and thus can only be described in mythic terms. Apocalyptic literature such as the New Testament Book of Revelation is an example of a set of eschatological myths.
- Social myths reinforce or defend current social values or practices.
- the Trickster myth, which concerns itself with the pranks or tricks played by gods or heroes. Heroes do not have to be in a story to be considered a myth.
Religion and mythology
Many myths, such as ritual myths, are clearly part of religion. However, unless we simply define myths as "sacred stories" (instead defining them as "traditional stories", for instance), not all myths are necessarily religious. As the classicist G. S. Kirk notes, "many myths embody a belief in the supernatural [...] but many other myths, or what seem like myths, do not".[20] As an example, Kirk cites the myth of Oedipus, which is "only superficially associated [...] with religion or the supernatural", and is therefore not a sacred story.[21] (Note that folklorists would not classify the Oedipus story as a myth, precisely because it is not a sacred story.[22])
Examples of religious myths include:
- the Hebrew creation account in Genesis
- the Mesopotamian Enuma Elish, a creation account around which the Babylonians' religious New Year festival revolved[23]
- an Australian myth describing the first sacred bora ritual[24]
Related concepts
Myths are not the same as fables, legends, folktales, fairy tales, anecdotes or fiction, but the concepts may overlap. Notably, during Romanticism, folktales and fairy tales were perceived as eroded fragments of earlier mythology (famously by the Brothers Grimm and Elias Lönnrot). Mythological themes are also very often consciously employed in literature, beginning with Homer. The resulting work may expressly refer to a mythological background without itself being part of a body of myths (Cupid and Psyche). The medieval romance in particular plays with this process of turning myth into literature. Euhemerism refers to the process of rationalization of myths, putting themes formerly imbued with mythological qualities into pragmatic contexts, for example following a cultural or religious paradigm shift (notably the re-interpretation of pagan mythology following Christianization). Conversely, historical and literary material may acquire mythological qualities over time, for example the Matter of Britain and the Matter of France, based on historical events of the 5th and 8th centuries, respectively, were first made into epic poetry and became partly mythological over the following centuries. "Conscious generation" of mythology has been termed mythopoeia by J. R. R. Tolkien[25], and was notoriously also suggested, very separately, by Nazi ideologist Alfred Rosenberg.Formation of myths
Robert Graves said of Greek myth: "True myth may be defined as the reduction to narrative shorthand of ritual mime performed on public festivals, and in many cases recorded pictorially." (The Greek Myths, Introduction). Graves was deeply influenced by Sir James George Frazer's mythography The Golden Bough, and he would have agreed that myths are generated by many cultural needs. Myths authorize the cultural institutions of a tribe, a city, or a nation by connecting them with universal truths. Myths justify the current occupation of a territory by a people, for instance. All cultures have developed over time their own myths, consisting of narratives of their history, their religions, and their heroes. The great power of the symbolic meaning of these stories for the culture is a major reason why they survive as long as they do, sometimes for thousands of years. Mâche distinguishes between "myth, in the sense of this primary psychic image, with some kind of mytho-logy, or a system of words trying with varying success to ensure a certain coherence between these images[26]. Joseph Campbell is one of the more famous modern authors on myths and the history of spirituality. His book The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1948) outlined the basic ideas he would continue to elaborate on until his death in 1987.Myths as depictions of historical events
)
Relief of the "Descent of the Ganga" in Mahabalipuram (also Mamallapuram), India; detail of the central part, the complete relief is 9 m high and 27 m wide.
This method or technique of interpreting myths as accounts of actual events, euhemerist exegesis, dates from antiquity and can be traced back (from Spencer) to Evhémère's Histoire sacrée (300 BCE) which describes the inhabitants of the island of Panchaia, Everything-Good, in the Indian Ocean as normal people deified by popular naivety. As Roland Barthes affirms, "Myth is a word chosen by history. It could not come from the nature of things". [27]
This process occurs in part because the events described become detached from their original context and new context is substituted, often through analogy with current or recent events. Some Greek myths originated in Classical times to provide explanations for inexplicable features of local cult practices, to account for the local epithet of one of the Olympian gods, to interpret depictions of half-remembered figures, events, or to account for the deities' attributes or entheogens, even to make sense of ancient icons, much as myths are invented to "explain" heraldic charges, the origins of which has become arcane with the passing of time. Conversely, descriptions of recent events are re-emphasised to make them seem to be analogous with the commonly known story. This technique has been used by some religious conservatives in America with text from the Bible, notably referencing the many prophecies in the Book of Daniel and the Book of Revelation especially. It was also used during the Russian Communist-era in propaganda about political situations with misleading references to class struggles. Until World War II the fitness of the Emperor of Japan was linked to his mythical descent from the Shinto sun goddess, Amaterasu.
Mâche argues that euhemerist exegesis, "was applied to capture and seize by force of reason qualities of thought, which eluded it on every side."[28] This process, he argues, often leads to interpretation of myths as "disguised propaganda in the service of powerful individuals," and that the purpose of myths in this view is to allow the "social order" to establish "its permanence on the illusion of a natural order." He argues against this interpretation, saying that "what puts an end to this caricature of certain speeches from May 1968 is, among other things, precisely the fact that roles are not distributed once and for all in myths, as would be the case if they were a variant of the idea of an 'opium of the people.'"
Contra Barthes Mâche argues that, "myth therefore seems to choose history, rather than be chosen by it" [29], "beyond words and stories, myth seems more like a psychic content from which words, gestures, and musics radiate. History only chooses for it more or less becoming clothes. And these contents surge forth all the more vigorously from the nature of things when reason tries to repress them. Whatever the roles and commentaries with which such and such a socio-historic movement decks out the mythic image, the latter lives a largely autonomous life which continually fascinates humanity. To denounce archaism only makes sense as a function of a 'progressive' ideology, which itself begins to show a certain archaism and an obvious naivety."[30]
Catastrophists [31] such as Immanuel Velikovsky believe that myths are derived from the oral histories of ancient cultures that witnessed "cosmic catastrophes". The catastrophic interpretation of myth, forms only a small minority within the field of mythology and often qualifies as pseudohistory. Similarly, in their book Hamlet's Mill, Giorgio De Santillana and Hertha Von Dechend suggest that myth is a "technical language" describing "cosmic events", [32]
Modern mythology
Film and book series like Star Wars and Tarzan have strong mythological aspects that sometimes develop into deep and intricate philosophical systems. These items are not mythology, but contain mythic themes that, for some people, meet the same psychological needs. Mythopoeia is a term coined by J. R. R. Tolkien for the conscious attempt to create myths; his Silmarillion was to be an example of this, although he did not succeed in bringing it to publication during his lifetime. In the 1950s Roland Barthes published a series of essays examining modern myths and the process of their creation in his book Mythologies. Swiss psychologist Carl Jung (1873-1961) and his followers also tried to understand the psychology behind world myths.Notes
1. ^ In extended use, the word can also refer to collective or personal ideological or socially constructed received wisdon, as in "At least since Tocqueville compared American society to 'a vast lottery', our mythology of business has celebrated risk-taking." (2000 The New Republic, 29 May 2000)
2. ^ Doyle
3. ^ Earlier editions of the OED also present this quote as the earliest attestation of myth, but consider it an example of the definition corresponding to definition 2.
4. ^ Glenn
5. ^ Segal, p. 5
6. ^ Zong, p. xxi
7. ^ Segal, p. 5
8. ^ Kirk, p. 37-41
9. ^ Kirk, p. 22
10. ^ Kirk, p. 11
11. ^ Segal, p. 5
12. ^ Eliade, Myth and Reality, 1968, p. 162.
13. ^ Eliade, Myths, Dreams and Mysteries, 1967, p. 23.
14. ^ Guy Lanoue, Foreword to Meletinsky, p.viii
15. ^ Simpson & Roud (2000). Dictionary of English Folklore, 254.
16. ^ Letters, no. 147.
17. ^ Mâche (1992). Music, Myth and Nature, or The Dolphins of Arion, 8.
18. ^ Middleton (1990). Music, Myth and Nature, or The Dolphins of Arion, 222.
19. ^ Lewis, God In The Dock, p. 66
20. ^ Kirk, p. 11
21. ^ Kirk, p. 11
22. ^ Dundes, p. 45
23. ^ Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane, p. 77
24. ^ Reed, p. 33-36
25. ^ Tolkien (1997). The Monsters and the Critics. HarperCollins; New Ed edition.
26. ^ Mâche (1992). Music, Myth and Nature, or The Dolphins of Arion, 20.
27. ^ Mâche (1992). Music, Myth and Nature, or The Dolphins of Arion, 20.
28. ^ Mâche (1992). Music, Myth and Nature, or The Dolphins of Arion, 10.
29. ^ Mâche (1992). Music, Myth and Nature, or The Dolphins of Arion, 21.
30. ^ Mâche (1992). Music, Myth and Nature, or The Dolphins of Arion, 20.
31. ^ Researchers include Dwardu Cardona (author of God Star ISBN 1-4120-8308-7), Ev Cochrane (The Many Faces of Venus ISBN 0-9656229-0-9), Alfred de Grazia (Quantavolution series), David Talbott and (Saturn Myth ISBN 0-385-11376-5), and authors at Catastrophism! Man, Myth and Mayhem in Ancient History and the Sciences
32. ^ Santillana & Dechend (1990). Hamlet's Mill: An Essay Investigating the Origins of Human Knowledge And Its Transmission Through Myth, 222.
2. ^ Doyle
3. ^ Earlier editions of the OED also present this quote as the earliest attestation of myth, but consider it an example of the definition corresponding to definition 2.
4. ^ Glenn
5. ^ Segal, p. 5
6. ^ Zong, p. xxi
7. ^ Segal, p. 5
8. ^ Kirk, p. 37-41
9. ^ Kirk, p. 22
10. ^ Kirk, p. 11
11. ^ Segal, p. 5
12. ^ Eliade, Myth and Reality, 1968, p. 162.
13. ^ Eliade, Myths, Dreams and Mysteries, 1967, p. 23.
14. ^ Guy Lanoue, Foreword to Meletinsky, p.viii
15. ^ Simpson & Roud (2000). Dictionary of English Folklore, 254.
16. ^ Letters, no. 147.
17. ^ Mâche (1992). Music, Myth and Nature, or The Dolphins of Arion, 8.
18. ^ Middleton (1990). Music, Myth and Nature, or The Dolphins of Arion, 222.
19. ^ Lewis, God In The Dock, p. 66
20. ^ Kirk, p. 11
21. ^ Kirk, p. 11
22. ^ Dundes, p. 45
23. ^ Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane, p. 77
24. ^ Reed, p. 33-36
25. ^ Tolkien (1997). The Monsters and the Critics. HarperCollins; New Ed edition.
26. ^ Mâche (1992). Music, Myth and Nature, or The Dolphins of Arion, 20.
27. ^ Mâche (1992). Music, Myth and Nature, or The Dolphins of Arion, 20.
28. ^ Mâche (1992). Music, Myth and Nature, or The Dolphins of Arion, 10.
29. ^ Mâche (1992). Music, Myth and Nature, or The Dolphins of Arion, 21.
30. ^ Mâche (1992). Music, Myth and Nature, or The Dolphins of Arion, 20.
31. ^ Researchers include Dwardu Cardona (author of God Star ISBN 1-4120-8308-7), Ev Cochrane (The Many Faces of Venus ISBN 0-9656229-0-9), Alfred de Grazia (Quantavolution series), David Talbott and (Saturn Myth ISBN 0-385-11376-5), and authors at Catastrophism! Man, Myth and Mayhem in Ancient History and the Sciences
32. ^ Santillana & Dechend (1990). Hamlet's Mill: An Essay Investigating the Origins of Human Knowledge And Its Transmission Through Myth, 222.
References
- Dundes, Alan. "Binary Opposition in Myth: The Propp/Levi-Strauss Debate in Retrospect". Western Folklore 56 (Winter, 1997): pp. 39-50.
- Roland Barthes, Mythologies (1957)
- Kees W. Bolle, The Freedom of Man in Myth. Vanderbilt University Press, 1968.
- Reed, A. W. Aboriginal Myths, Legends and Fables. Chatswood: Reed, 1982.
- Thomas Bulfinch, Bulfinch's Mythology (1880s).
- Caillois, Roger (1972). Le mythe et l'homme. Gallimard.
- Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Princeton University Press, 1949.
- Joseph Campbell, Flight of the Wild Gander: Explorations in the Mythological Dimension: Select Essays 1944-1968 New World Library, 3rd ed. (2002), ISBN 978-1577312109.
- Mircea Eliade
- Cosmos and History: The Myth of the Eternal Return. Princeton University Press, 1954.
- The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion. Trans. Willard R. Trask. NY: Harper & Row, 1961.
- James George Frazer, The Golden Bough (1890).
- Louis Herbert Gray [ed.], The Mythology of All Races, in 12 vols., 1916.
- Edith Hamilton, Mythology (1998)
- Lucien Lévy-Bruhl
- Mental Functions in Primitive Societies (1910)
- Primitive Mentality (1922)
- The Soul of the Primitive (1928)
- The Supernatural and the Nature of the Primitive Mind (1931)
- Primitive Mythology (1935)
- The Mystic Experience and Primitive Symbolism (1938)
- Charles H. Long, Alpha: The Myths of Creation. George Braziller, 1963.
- Meletinsky, Eleazar Moiseevich The Poetics of Myth (Translated by Guy Lanoue and Alexandre Sadetsky, foreword by Guy Lanoue) 2000 Routledge ISBN 0415928982
- Barry B. Powell, "Classical Myth," 5th edition, Prentice-Hall.
- Santillana and Von Dechend (1969, 1992 re-issue). "Hamlet's Mill: An Essay Investigating the Origins of Human Knowledge And Its Transmission Through Myth", Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-87923-215-3.
- Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling
- Introduction to the Philosophy of Mythology, 1856.
- Philosophy of Mythology, 1857.
- Philosophy of Revelation, 1858.
- Segal, Robert A. Myth: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2004
- Welker, Glenn. "Stories/Myths/Legends". Indigenous Peoples Literature. 14 August 2004 <http://www.indigenouspeople.net/stories.htm>.
- Zǒng In-Sǒb. Folk Tales from Korea. Elizabeth: Hollym International, 1982
- Kirk, G. S. Myth: Its Meaning and Functions in Ancient and Other Cultures. Berkeley: Cambridge UP, 1973
See also
- General: Archetypal literary criticism, Comparative mythology, Folklore, National myth, Artificial mythology, Legendary creature, Mytheme, Monomyth, Mythical place, Origin belief
- Mythological archetypes: Culture hero, Death deity, Earth Mother, First man or woman, Hero, Life-death-rebirth deity, Lunar deity, Psychopomp, Sky father, Solar deity, Trickster, Underworld
- Myth and religion: Religion and mythology, Hindu mythology and Puranas, Christian mythology (Mythological and eschatological Biblical interpretation and Jesus as myth), Jewish mythology, Islamic mythology
- Lists: List of mythologies, List of deities, List of mythical objects, List of species in folklore and mythology, List of species in folklore and mythology by type, List of woman warriors in legend and mythology
External links
- Myths and Myth-Makers Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by comparative mythology by John Fiske.
- www.myth-os.com video portal exploring allegorical myths.
- www.mythologyweb.com Information about myths, legends and folklore, as well as a message board.
- Timeless Myths.
- Winged Sandals An interactive learning website.
Ancient Greek refers to the second stage in the history of the Greek language[1] as it existed during the Archaic (9th–6th centuries BC) and Classical (5th–4th centuries BC) periods in Greece.
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Culture (from the Latin cultura stemming from colere, meaning "to cultivate,") generally refers to patterns of human activity and the symbolic structures that give such activity significant importance.
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The supernatural (Latin: super- "above" + natura "nature") pertains to entities, events or powers regarded as beyond nature, in that they cannot be explained from the laws of the natural world.
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Greek mythology is the body of stories belonging to the Ancient Greeks concerning their gods and heroes, the nature of the world and the origins and significance of their own cult and ritual practices.
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Ancient Egyptian religion encompasses the beliefs and rituals of Ancient Egypt. It was followed in Egypt for over three thousand years until the establishment of Coptic Christianity and Islam.
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Norse, Viking or Scandinavian mythology comprises the indigenous pre-Christian religion, beliefs and legends of the Scandinavian peoples, including those who settled on Iceland, where most of the written sources for Norse mythology were assembled.
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A mythographer, or a mythologist, according to a strict dictionary definition, is a compiler of myths. Mythography is then the rendering of myths in the arts.
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The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) is a dictionary published by the Oxford University Press (OUP), and is the most comprehensive dictionary of the English language.
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legend (Latin, legenda, "things to be read") is a narrative of human actions that are perceived both by teller and listeners to take place within human history and to possess certain qualities that give the tale verisimilitude.
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An allegory (from Greek αλλος, , "other", and αγορευειν, agoreuein, "to speak in public") is a figurative mode of representation conveying a meaning other than the literal.
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Etiology (alternately aetiology, aitiology) is the study of causation. Derived from the Greek αίτιολογία, "giving a reason for" (
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ritual is a set of actions, often thought to have symbolic value, the performance of which is usually prescribed by a religion or by the traditions of a community.[1][2]
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The Westminster Review was founded in 1823 by Jeremy Bentham and James Mill as a journal for philosophical radicals, and was published from 1824 to 1914.
In 1851 the journal was acquired by John Chapman based at 142 the Strand, London, a publisher who originally had medical
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In 1851 the journal was acquired by John Chapman based at 142 the Strand, London, a publisher who originally had medical
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Giambattista Vico or Giovanni Battista Vico (June 23, 1668 – January 23, 1744) was an Italian philosopher, historian, and jurist. Born to a bookseller and the daughter of a carriage maker in Naples, Italy, Vico attended a series of grammar schools, but ill-health and
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Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling (January 27, 1775 – August 20, 1854), later von Schelling, was a German philosopher. Standard histories of philosophy make him the midpoint in the development of German Idealism, situating him between Fichte, his mentor prior to 1800,
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Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller (Marbach am Neckar, November 10, 1759 – May 9, 1805 in Weimar) was a German poet, philosopher, historian, and dramatist. During the last several years of his life (1788–1805), Schiller struck a productive, if complicated,
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Carl Gustav Jung
A recent edition of Jung's partially autobiographical work Memories, Dreams, Reflections.
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A recent edition of Jung's partially autobiographical work Memories, Dreams, Reflections.
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Sigmund Freud
Born May 6 1856
Freiberg, Moravia, now the Czech Republic
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Born May 6 1856
Freiberg, Moravia, now the Czech Republic
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Claude Lévi-Strauss (IPA pronunciation [klod levi stʁos]) (born November 28, 1908) is a French anthropologist who developed structuralism as a method of understanding human society and culture.
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Herman Northrop Frye, CC, MA (Oxon), DD, D.Litt., FRSC (July 14, 1912 – January 23, 1991), a Canadian, was one of the most distinguished literary critics and literary theorists of the twentieth century.
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The Cambridge Ritualists were a recognised group of classical scholars, mostly in Cambridge, England, including Jane Ellen Harrison, Gilbert Murray (who was actually from the University of Oxford), A. B. Cook, and others.
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The word tradition comes from the Latin word traditio which means "to hand down" or "to hand over." It is used in a number of ways in the English language:
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- Beliefs or customs taught by one generation to the next, often orally.
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Folklore is the body of expressive culture, including tales, music, dance, legends, oral history, proverbs, jokes, popular beliefs, customs, and so forth within a particular population comprising the traditions (including oral traditions) of that culture, subculture, or group.
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fairy tale or fairy story is a fictional story that usually features folkloric characters (such as fairies, goblins, elves, trolls, witches, giants, and talking animals) and enchantments, often involving a far-fetched sequence of events.
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Folkloristics is the formal academic study of folklore such as fairy tales and mythology in oral or non-literary traditions. It makes use of such methods as the Aarne-Thompson classification system or the morphology devised for Russian tales by Vladimir Propp.
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Secularism is generally the assertion that certain practices or institutions should exist separately from religion or religious belief. Alternatively, it is a principle of promoting secular ideas or values in either public or private settings.
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SACRED was a Cubesat built by the Student Satellite Program of the University of Arizona. It was the product of the work of about 50 students, ranging from college freshmen to Ph. D. students, over the course of several years.
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archetype is a generic, idealized model of a person, object, or concept from which similar instances are derived, copied, patterned, or emulated. In psychology, an archetype is a model of a person, personality, or behavior.
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truth extends from honesty, good faith, and sincerity in general, to agreement with fact or reality in particular.[1] The term has no single definition about which the majority of professional philosophers and scholars agree.
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John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
Tolkien in 1972, in his study at Merton Street, Oxford. Source: J. R. R. Tolkien: A Biography, by Humphrey Carpenter.
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Tolkien in 1972, in his study at Merton Street, Oxford. Source: J. R. R. Tolkien: A Biography, by Humphrey Carpenter.
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