THEORIES OF MYTH

HISTORIC RETROSPECTIVE:

Ancient criticism of mythology: 
- Xenophanes (VI B.C.) - Sceptic; monotheist. 
- Anaxagoras (V B.C.) - Nous - Mind; the rest = particles.
- Euhemerus (IV B.C.) - Euhemerism: gods once were humans.

Max Mu'ller (1823-1900): Indo-Europeanist. Solar mythology.

Cambridge Classical Anthropology: 
James George Frazer (1854-1941): The Golden Bough. 
(Cult of Diana of Aricia: Rex Nemorensis.) Ritualist theory. Jane Harrison; G. Murray; A. Lang, R. Graves .

MYTH & CULTURE: 
1. Myth and mentality: Lucien Levy-Bruhl (1857-1939) Primitive mind and "mystical participation'. 
2. Myth & society: Functionalism/ Positivism: Bronislaw Malinowski; A.R. Radcliffe-Brown; E. Durkheim; 
M. Mauss
. - Social functions of myth. Field study. 
3. Myth and language. Claude Le?vi-Strauss : Structuralism.
Binary oppositions. Paradigmatic and syntagmatic connections in myth. 
George Dume?zil : Tri-partite ideology: social classes 
of IE mythology: priests; warriors; tradesmen. 
Narratology: Vladimir Propp : structure of Fairy-tale 
and the rites of passage. A. Lord; M. Parry
narrative patterns of epic poetry. Formulaeic composition. 
4. Myth and history: Walter Burkert : Homo Necans , etc. 
5. Myth and psychology: 
Sigmund Freud (1856-1939): Myth & psychoanalysis. 
Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961): Myth and collective unconscious. Theory of archetypes.


Study of mythology - a fascinating field of knowledge.
Just as the phenomenon of myth belongs to the very core of human mind, so theoretical interpretations of mythology ultimately aim at explaining the essence of humanity. Study of mythology is at the crossroad of a multitude of scientific disciplines: history; archaeology; linguistics; psychology; anthropology; sociology; philosophy; arts and literature.

Ancient criticism of mythology:
Explaining myths presumes, of course, not believing in myths literally: -- an outside view of the culture. Even among ancient Greeks not everybody literally believed in myths: the best minds are always skeptical of popular beliefs:
Xenophanes (VI B.C.), the founder of Eleatic philosophy (Sicily), dismissed the stories of gods as a sheer immoral rubbish, which mirrors the human behavior. (Gods~human shapes --Ethiopians--; -- horses - ? horse-shape?) As opposed to polytheism of the popular religion, Xenophanes' own views appear to be monotheistic . (NB: the earliest = most iconoclastic!)
Anaxagoras (V B.C.) very candidly regarded the myths of divine transgressions, such as adultery, stealth, cruelty and deceit, as a sort of the negative example for the posterity, explaining exactly what one must not do. Anaxagoras worshipped the divine Mind (Nous ) as the unifying force of the universe and thought of everything else as a mixture of different particles. For this belief, Athenians brought him to the trial on the charge of impiety and publicly burnt his works.
The moral philosopher Socrates (469-399 B.C.) was condemned to death by Athenian court for no other crime than his moral and religious attitudes. He believed in daemons as guarding messengers, dictating the moral choices. His disciple Plato (427-347 B.C.) carried on the Socratic ambivalence towards popular religion, believing that gods must have been good and just, but -- it's the poets who entirely distorted the truth with their fictitious accounts. So, Plato banned Homeric poems from his ideal Republic (!)
Euhemerus (IV B.C.) offered a very sensible interpretion of gods as ancient kings and celebrities, worshipped post mortem. This coined the term Euhemerism - a view that reconciles the literal and critical approaches to traditional stories.

Max Mu'ller, IE and Solar mythology - a reconstructive approach:
Surveys of the modern studies of mythology traditionally begin with Max Mu'ller (1823-1900) - the student of Indo-European languages , extremely knowlegeable, very accomplished and, later, much ridiculed and disparaged scholar... For Max Mu'ller, myths reflect man's primary ideas of the divine forces of nature through the development of language. Sun was the first visible god (proto-monotheism ; he was a devout Christian). Mu'ller's views layed the foundation of the so-called solar mythology (sol ). -- The Moon and stars included, = astral mythology. Natural forces - thunder; rain; vegetation - were similarly deified and rendered through myths. Mythical stories, thus, = the allegories of natural phenomena; ~ ancient weathe-channel. (Already Theagenes of Region (VI B.C.) saw in myths the allegories of the natural forces.)
However, the theory of Max Mu'ller was far more intricate. His primary focus of was the development of language. Mythical stories originated through the growth of language, as the words changed their primary meanings: The confusion of meanings gave rise to mythic stories. -- Theory of the sickness of language ...! Give him his due...
For Max Mu'ller, the substance of myth is dictated entirely by its origin from some primary source - the IE proto-meaning. With all his naive tendencies and other shortcomings, we can appreciate the inquiry into the origin of meanings. (A Big Bang of mind...)
In a way, Max Mu'ller foreshadows the modern structuralist approach of Levi-Strauus : a linguistic theory of meanings and communication . In newer literary criticism - Northrop Frye : ~ nature's cycles and forces: myths of the summer; myths of the winter, etc... Also, IE: George Dume?zil.

Cambrige Classical Anthropology - comparative approach:
Max Mu'ller's search for the primary meanings of myths in some hypothetical pra-IE language was demolished by the end if the century with the rise of the so-called Cambrige Classical Anthropology : tremendously important, extremely influential and illuminating, and, of late, also much repudiated body of research. (Great!)
A group of the scholars of classics, with Sir James George Frazer (1854-1941) as their headmaster, included Jane Ellen Harrison; Gilbert Murray; Andrew Lang; A.B. Cook; F.M. Cornford ,et al., who incorporated the amassed ethnological information on the beliefs and ritual practices of pre-industrial (primitive) societies to the study of classical mythology. The data collected among African tribes; American Indians; Pacific islanders and Australian aboriginals, as well as the folk beliefs of old Europe, - nearly all of them having nothing to do with the classical world, - reveal striking parallels to the myths and rituals of ancient Greece and Rome, thus providing a clue to our understanding of the myths of classical antiquity.
This most fertile field of scholarship grew out ot the attempt of James Frazer to interpret a strange Latin cult of Diana of Aricia : The sacred grove, the King of the Grove (rex nemorensis ) = ritual consort of the virgin goddess Diana. He must be a fugitive slave; kill his predecessor in single combat and pluck the bough from the sacred tree. Frazer soon realized, - quite typically, - that in order to explain this ritual he must first understand a whole number of other rituals of classical antiquity, - only to find out, soon enough, that in order to do so he must have a sufficient understanding of every ritual of every corner of the world.
Thus his monumental volumes of the Golden Bough emerged. The major idea of Frazer is concerned with the institution of the primitive sacred kingship , where the person of the ritually selected divine king, often regarded as ceremonial consort of the goddess, embodied the productive forces of nature. At the first signs of physical dacay the king was sacrificed as an atonement for the group in order to propitiate the gods, and a new king succeeded to the office, to serve his term and later share the sacrificial path of his predecessor.
This school argues for the basic unity of the human mind and the basic way of its progress from the primitive and pre-literate stages to highly advanced, literate civilizations. The universal elements vs. particular meanings of the initial myths. -- Mu'ller vs. Frazer: For Mu'ller, the primary true picture is later distorted in consequent ramifications; for Frazer, the true picture is emerging through combined study of all variants. Primitive practices of pre-civilized societies survive in the collective memories of culture, which refines, reshapes and articulates them though myth, literature and art.

Ritualist theory.
Cambridge Classical Anthropology set the pattern of the ritualist theory of myth. - Theodor Gaster; Lord Raglan ; Robert Graves , et al. -- Mythic narrative is only the top of the iceberg, deeply imbedded in the non-verbal cultural practices - active representations, syncretism of art, worship, drama, social life. -- myth lives through periodic reenactment - calendric or personal rites.

MYTH AND CULTURE : -- the origins -? -- diachronic.
-- the function -? -- synchronic.

Myth and mentality - ? origins of mythical thinking:
Yet the ritualist theory still leaves open the basic question: why should the primitive mind work in so bizarre, yet universal ways? ...What is the benefit of killing an aging king?..
French ehnologist Lucien Le?vy-Bruhl (1857-1939) proposed the theory of the Primitive Mentality . This theory, brilliant, profound, and vehemently criticized by the modern scholars, opposed to the use of such words as primitive , has postulated the so-called pre-logical thinking (not to be confused with illogical!..) For Le?vy-Bruhl, the primitive man is a philosopher and a dreamer, and the primary feature of the emerging mind is its capacity for the mystical participation . (~Primitive syncretism - Veselovlsy : all aspects of experience are interconnected; life is not separated from art; art not divided into genres; experience=creativity...) Thus, primitive man (perhaps not unlike the modern man) through symbolic actions and myths reenacts, vicariously, the essential way of his own existence.

Myth and society - Functionalism (Positivism; Charter theory):
For his modern critics, Le?vy-Bruhl appears both to underestimate and overestimate the mental faculties of uncivilized folks. Later anthropology has found the modern tribesmen or remote cultures of Australia, Oceania, Africa or South America to be quite efficient and practical in their every-day ways of thinking and doing things. The so-called Positivist or Functionalist approach (= Charter theory ), represented by the works of Bronislaw Malinowski and A.R. Radcliffe-Brown; Emile Durkheim and M. Mauss , - a very influential, and - quite barren, if you ask for my opinion, trend, - interprets myths as a social institution which somehow helps to keep the society together. Whatever is the origin of myth, - and they could not care less about the origins, - its actual modern adaptation serves certain pragmatic purposes.

Myth and language .
Structuralism:
Another trend of research concentrated on studying myth as a phenomenon of language, or, simply, as a text. The most influential modern scholar, French linguist Claude Le?vi-Strauss is the leading authority of the so-called structuralism , extremely popular, influential, prolific, sometimes illuminating and oftentimes dissapointingly tedious venue of scholarship. The structuralist approach employs the theory of communication through defining semantic oppositions within a text. Myth is regarded as a textual message. Structuralism regards myth (and everything else, for that matter) as an instrument of defining and mediating between all kinds of binary oppositions , such as; cooked - raw; up - down; ours - alien. In most cases, the oppositions symbolize the conflict and mediation between the order and disorder; savagery and civilization.
Syntagmatic and paradigmatic connections : a very powerful observation.
Also, George Dume?zil : IE: tri-partite ideology/ social structure: priests; warriors; tradesmen.
Studies of narrative pattern:
A branch of scholarship focuses on the textual properties of traditional narrations: -- narratology , analysis of regularities and repeated elements within the text. -- Vladimir Propp . (I studied under Propp... He said: Who knows but one language, knows none; who knows but one culture, knows none. ) His neat early book Morphology of Fairy-tale , takes a closer look at the common moves of Russian folktales: what is, really, going on? He enumerates 31 function , or move, of the plot, in various combinations, yet in a general sequence, where a typical firy-tale hero is put to the task to fix a problem and has to go far away. On his way he faces additional challenges, finds the magical helpers, faces the antagonist, undergoes a stage of temporary death and, finally, fulfills the primary task, gains an additional bonus and wins the bride.
-- Written in the roaring twenties... Suddenly became popular. (It works!) Applied to other genres, such as heroic poems or myths. -- Propp's later Historical Roots of Fairy-tale , which remained by and large unknown outside of Russia, was first to explain the origins of the genre of fairy-tale from the rites of passage , enacted in tribal initiations of boys into the new status of manhood . Similarly, the fairy-tale of a girl put to difficult tasks, secluded and mistreated, who finally overcomes obstacles and finds a husband develops from the collective memories of pre-historic tribal initiations into womanhood. (A a work of high endowment!.. = historical approach...)
Modern historical interpretation of myth ~ primeval hunting; shamanism etc. - Walter Burkert , Homo Necans; Structure And History in Greek Mythology And Ritual.