The nature, functions, and types of myth

An example of an allegorical interpretation would be that given by an ancient commentator for the Iliad, book 20, verse 67. Referring to an episode in which the gods fight each other, the commentator cites critics who have explained the hostilities between the gods allegorically as an opposition between elements—dry against wet, hot against cold, light against heavy. Thus, the gods Apollo, Helios, and Hephaestus represent fire, and the god Poseidon and the river Scamander represent water. Similarly, the goddess Athena is interpreted as wisdom/sense, the god Ares as the absence of that quality, the goddess Aphrodite as desire, and the god Hermes as reason. An allegorical interpretation of a myth could be said to posit a one-to-one correspondence between mythical “clothing” and the ideas being so clothed. This approach tends to limit the meaning of a myth, whereas that meaning may in reality be multiple, operating on several levels.

Romantic

In the late 18th century artists and intellectuals came increasingly to emphasize the role of the emotions in human life and, correspondingly, to play down the importance of reason (which had been regarded as supremely important by thinkers of the Enlightenment). Those involved in the new movement were known as Romantics. The Romantic movement had profound implications for the study of myth. Myths—both the stories from Greek and Roman antiquity and contemporary folktales—were regarded by the Romantics as repositories of experience far more vital and powerful than those obtainable from what was felt to be the artificial art and poetry of the aristocratic civilization of contemporary Europe.

This new attitude is illustrated in a work of the German critic and philosopher Johann Gottfried von Herder entitled “Auszug aus einem Briefwechsel über Ossian und die Lieder alter Völker” (1773; “Extract from a Correspondence on Ossian and the Songs of Ancient Peoples”). Ossian is the name of an Irish warrior-poet whose Gaelic songs were supposedly translated and presented to the world by James Macpherson in the 1760s. Although largely the work of Macpherson himself, these songs made a colossal impact when they were published. Herder believed that the more “savage,” that is, the more “alive” and “freedom-loving” a people (ein Volk) was, the more alive and free its songs would be. In opposition to the culture of the educated, Herder exalted the Kultur des Volkes (“culture of the people”). In 1769 Herder abandoned his job as a schoolteacher and took a boat from Riga, on the Baltic, to Nantes, on the Atlantic coast of France. In Journal meiner Reise im Jahre 1769 (1769; Journal of My Travels in the Year 1769), a description of the experience, he wrote:

In everything [on board ship] there is experience to illuminate the original era of the myths. Then [i.e., in antiquity] every man, ignorant of nature, listened for signs and had to listen for them.…Then, Jupiter’s lightning was terrifying—as indeed it is [i.e., now] on the Ocean.…There are a thousand new and more natural explanations of mythology…if one reads, say, Orpheus, Homer, Pindar…on board ship.

In other words, for Herder ancient myths were the natural expressions of the concerns that would have confronted the ancients; and those concerns were the very ones that, according to Herder, still confronted the Volk—e.g., ordinary sailors—in Herder’s own day.

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Comparative

Since the Romantic movement, all study of myth has been comparative, although comparative attempts were made earlier. The prevalence of the comparative approach has meant that since the 19th century even the most specialized studies have made generalizations about more than one tradition or at the very least have had to take comparative works by others into account. Indeed, for there to be any philosophical inquiry into the nature and function of myth at all, there must exist a body of data about myths across a range of societies. Such data would not exist without a comparative approach.

Folkloric

The classic folklore approach is that of Wilhelm Mannhardt, a German scholar, who attempted to collect data on the “lower mythology,” which he considered to be more or less homogeneous in ancient and popular peasant traditions and basic to all formation of myth. Mannhardt saw sufficient analogies and similarities between the ancient and modern data to permit use of the latter in interpreting the former. Like Herder, he saw the source of mythology in the traditions passed on among the Volk. He collected information not only about popular stories but also about popular customs. He interpreted ancient Greek rituals by relating them to customs of the agricultural peoples of northern Europe, proposing this link in his book Antike Wald- und Feldkulte (1877; “Ancient Wood and Field Cults”). Other people who examined myth from the folklore standpoint included Sir James Frazer, the British anthropologist, the brothers Grimm (Jacob, who influenced Mannhardt, and Wilhelm), who are well-known for their collections of folklore, and Stith Thompson, who is notable for his classification of folk literature, particularly his massive Motif-Index of Folk-Literature (1955). The Grimms shared Herder’s passion for the poetry and stories of the Volk. Their importance stems in part from the academic diligence and meticulousness that they brought to the recording and study of popular tradition. In addition to their collection of Märchen (“tales”), they published volumes of Deutsche Sagen (“German Legends”). These were tales that purported to record actual events and that were ostensibly set in a specific place and period, as opposed to the “once-upon-a-time-in-the-forest” setting characteristic of the Märchen. Collecting and classifying mythological themes have remained the principal activities of the folklore approach.

Functionalist

One of the leading exponents of the functionalist approach to myth was the French sociologist Marcel Mauss, who used the phrase “total social facts” in reference to religious symbols and myths and their irreducibility in terms of other functions. In his Essai sur le don (1925; The Gift), Mauss referred to a system of gift giving to be found in traditional, preindustrial societies. Observing that there was a mass of complex data on the subject, Mauss continued: in these “early” societies, social phenomena

are not discrete; each phenomenon contains all the threads of which the social fabric is composed. In these total social phenomena, as we propose to call them, all kinds of institutions find simultaneous expression: religious, legal, moral, and economic.

In his introduction to the English edition Edward Evans-Pritchard commented on that passage:

“Total” is the key word of the Essay. The exchanges of archaic societies which he examines are total social movements or activities. They are at the same time economic, juridical, moral, aesthetic, religious, mythological…phenomena.…Their meaning can therefore only be grasped if they are viewed as a complex concrete reality.

Functionalism is primarily associated with the anthropologists Bronisław Malinowski and A.R. Radcliffe-Brown, however. Both ask not what the origin of any given social behavior may be but how it contributes to maintaining the system of which it is a part. In this view, in all types of society, every aspect of life—every custom, belief, or idea—makes its own special contribution to the continued effective working of the whole society. Functionalism has had a wide appeal to anthropologists in Britain and the United States, especially as an interpretation of myth as integrated with other aspects of society and as supporting existing social relationships.

Structuralist

Structuralist approaches to myth are based on the analogy of myth to language. Just as a language is composed of significant oppositions (e.g., between phonemes, the constituent sounds of the language), so myths are formed out of significant oppositions between certain terms and categories. Structuralist analysis aims at uncovering what it sees as the logic of myth. It is argued that supposedly primitive thought is logically consistent but that the terms of this logic are not those with which modern Western culture is familiar. Instead they are terms related to items of the everyday world in which the “primitive” culture exists. This logic is usually based on empirical categories (e.g., raw/cooked, upstream/downstream, bush/village) or empirical objects (e.g., buffalo, river, gold, eagle). Some structuralists, such as the French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss, have emphasized the presence of the same logical patterns in myths throughout the world.

In earlier anthropology, “primitive mentality” was characterized by the inability to make distinctions, by a sense of “mystic participation” or identity between human beings, the cosmos, and all other beings. Beginning with complex kinship systems and later exploring other taxonomies, structuralists argue to the opposite conclusion: the supposedly primitive human beings are, if anything, obsessed with the making of distinctions; their taxonomies reveal a complexity and sophistication that rival those of modern humanity.

Formalist

In contrast to the structuralists’ search for the underlying structure of myths, the 20th-century Russian folklorist Vladimir Propp investigated folktales by dividing the surface of their narratives into a number of basic elements. These elements correspond to different types of action that, in Propp’s analysis, always occur in the same sequence. Examples of the types of action isolated by Propp are “An interdiction is addressed to the hero”; “The interdiction is violated”; “The false hero or villain is exposed”; and “The hero is married and ascends the throne.”

An important development of Propp’s approach was made in the late 20th century by the German historian of religion Walter Burkert. Burkert detected certain recurrent patterns in the actions described in Greek myths, and he related these patterns (and their counterparts in Greek ritual) to basic biologic or cultural “programs of action.” An example of this relation is given in Burkert’s Structure and History in Greek Mythology and Ritual (1979). Burkert shows how certain Greek myths have a recurring pattern that he calls “the girl’s tragedy.” According to this pattern, a girl first leaves home; after a period of seclusion, she is raped by a god; there follows a time of tribulation, during which she is threatened by parents or relatives; eventually, having given birth to a baby boy, the girl is rescued, and the boy’s glorious future is assured. The reason for the frequency and persistence of this pattern is, in Burkert’s view, the fact that it reflects a basic biologic sequence or “program of action”; puberty, defloration, pregnancy, delivery. Another pattern Burkert explains in a similar way is found in myths about the driving out of the scapegoat. This pattern, Burkert argues, stems from a real situation that must often have occurred in early human or primate history; a group of humans, or a group of apes, when pursued by carnivores, were able to save themselves through the sacrifice of one member of the group. The persistence of these patterns through time is explained, according to Burkert, by the fact that they are grounded in basic human needs—above all, the need to survive.