Form Of Myth Research Articles

How Death Came to Mankind: Myths and Legends

An examination of anthropological data in the form of myths and legends from various less complex societies than our own, regarding the origin of death, reveals several major themes. In the forbidden fruit theme, disobedience to divine commandments results in the death of the offenders and their descendants. In the delayed or wrong message theme, God's message giving immortality to humanity is forgotten, garbled, or delayed by the messenger. In the molting theme, human beings never receive the property of shedding their skin as do some reptiles, thus losing immortality. In the moon theme, humans lose their ability to come back to life as does the new moon. Other themes on the origin of death focus on the banana, overpopulation, anger, greed and jealousy. In the various myths discussed, death is never discussed as a necessary natural condition for humankind. Nevertheless, for these primitive cultures, the myths account in a reasonable manner for death continuing on earth today.

Myths of Grantsmanship

A<i>grantsman</i>is usually considered to be a person who successfully writes grant applications. The term carries a connotation that the writer of the grant has some particular ability or inside track on the method needed to apply for and successfully acquire funds to support a project. There is also a negative aura that surrounds the term grantsmanship, which has been built up primarily by those unsuccessful in competing for funds. This negative connotation has been promulgated in the form of myths that are untrue stories without a base of reality. The purpose of this article is to dispel some of these misconceptions and untruths that are counterproductive in the preparation of a quality research grant application. In the preparation of this article, discussions have been held with a number of persons including grant applicants, former study section members, council members, and members of the National Institute of Neurological and

On Ritual Knowledge

The study of ritual forms of religious expression is, in many respects, still in its infancy. This is largely due to the greater attention given by religionists to the narrative and mythic forms of religious expression. Despite the pioneering work of Victor Turner and others much remains to be done in identifying the character and structure of ritual action. To this task many disciplines may contribute their own perspectives and lines of inquiry. My own field is that of Systematic Theology and it is precisely by way of this engagement and commitment that I have become interested in the study of ritual. In order to give an account of the nature and method of theological reflection, I found it necessary to give some account of the field of imaginative forms within which the data of theology (scripture, tradition, etc.) are to be located. While in my Introduction to Theology I concentrated most upon narrative forms of the religious imagination, it was clear then, and has become even more clear since, that ritual forms are also basic to theological reflection. This is especially the case if one acknowledges the unity of theology and ethics (as in the theology of Karl Barth) or of theory and praxis (as in liberation theology). Ritual is above all a pattern of action, and the more theology concerns itself with action (praxis, ethics) the more carefully it will have to attend to the patterns of action displayed in ritual. The danger in this move to a consideration of ritual forms is that these will be simply subsumed under the better known mythic or narrative forms so familiar to us through the study of literature, anthropology of religion, or biblical criticism. When this happens, ritual becomes simply an illustration of that which is known or manifested through myth. Such a move is formally analogous to the Reformation insistence on the priority of Word to Sacrament-a priority which may or may not be dogmatically appropriate but which ought not to be made the a priori basis for an understanding of ritual generally.

American Genesis: The American Indian and the Origins of Modern Man by Jeffrey Goodman

Reviews 335 In Concerning Western Poetry I sense the emergence of mythic form that is a tacit recognition that the poetry of the West is veering toward even more identifiable forms that will express the western setting. Why not? As shown in CWP, western poetry is the product of free sensibility rather than license. And surely that sensibility will achieve a more identifiable mythic context. As in the poetry of Wallace Stevens, the freedom of the imagination will produce the intrinsic forms of the imagination. This is partly borne out in Roethke’s poetry, as is explained in Susan R. Bowers’s article “The Explorer’s Rose: Theodore Roethke’s Mystical Sym­ bol.” “The western rose.” The phrase has charm and freshness — and com­ prises a contribution to mythic tradition. Perhaps, indeed, Roethke “moves outside the confines of the greenhouse to journey from his own geographical and spiritual beginnings to the wild, open edge of his own life and country” as so many other poets in our time should. We may soon learn who the real celebrities of the West are — that they do not produce kitsch, but write seriously, maturely about the human spirit. Lewis is to be congratulated for> CWP and the way it supports and complements due recognition for true celebrities represented in it. CLINTON LARSON, Brigham Young University American Genesis: The American Indian and the Origins of Modern Man. By Jeffrey Goodman. (New York: Summit Books, 1981. 285 pages, $11.95.) This book is a readable and often engrossing account of the prehistoric evolutionary transition from Neanderthal man to Cro-Magnon man, an account that radically differs from the view we were taught in school and which is still the most widely held one. Neanderthal man and Cro-Magnon man (the latter being the first European skeleton find that is indistinguishable from Modern man — ourselves) are physically similar enough to be classed as two subspecies of the same species, Homo sapiens. Neanderthal man lived from about 100,000 years ago until the appearance of Cro-Magnon man around 35,000 years ago. No one knows for sure where Cro-Magnon man came from or what happened to Neanderthal man, but it is thought unlikely that the latter evolved into the former. The generally accepted theory argues, then, that Cro-Magnon man was the first representative of all the human races on earth, and that humans spread out over the globe beginning about 35,000 years ago. At that time, however, it would have been impossible to migrate into North and South America by land, for the Bering “land bridge” would have been covered by 336 Western American Literature water. This “bridge” is the land under the present Bering straits, land that has periodically been uncovered when the sea level has gone down due to water being drawn up and retained in the polar ice-caps. The latest opening of the land bridge occurred around 12,000 years ago, so the current theory is that the Native Americans could only have come to this continent at that time or later. For some time there has been evidence of human habitation in the Americas prior to 12,000 years ago, but this evidence has usually been dis­ missed because it is inconceivable, if Cro-Magnon man only came into being about 35,000 years ago, that people could have been here either before then or between then and 12,000, when the land bridge was closed. On the basis of this evidence, however, plus much new research including his own dig at Flagstaff, Arizona, Jeffrey Goodman suggests that the final step of evolution into modern man took place in the Americas, probably in southern California, sometime between 70,000 and 500,000 years ago, and that bands of these people migrated back into Asia and Europe around 70,000 years ago, another moment when the Bering land bridge was known to be open. This is an exciting hypothesis, and Goodman gives it additional indirect support with many arguments about striking similarities between the tools and the art of both the early Native Americans and the cave artists of early Europe. The book proceeds in a logical way from...

Concerning Western Poetry ed. by Merrill Lewis

334 Western American Literature disappearing into the water, beyond which, on some secluded granite shelf curtained round by the falls, they were pasting together their little wads of debris. Nests.” These stories are finally concerned with no less than the dilemma of modem man: fragmentation, isolation, the need for grace, the idea of service, family, wholeness. And in the midst of this, the necessity for wit, humor, a sense of self-irony. If that sounds like a lot, it is. But Kerr’sstories, in beau­ tiful prose, are written with care and well deserve a careful reading. It is the least one can do for the short story these days. CYNTHIA A. CARLISLE, University of Colorado Concerning Western Poetry. Edited by Merrill Lewis. (Bellingham, WA: Western Washington University, 1980. 118 pages, $2.00.) In his preface to Concerning Western Poetry Merrill Lewis stipulates the impossibility of anthologizing modern or contemporary poetry of western America in such a way as to convey more than general impressions of the West’s literary history. What an editor can do is to publish or republish notable examples of the best poetry available to him. An editor, of course, suffers from fear of coming up far short of administering justice. Neverthe­ less, Lewis, as he should, courageously embarks upon the white water, doing his best, even with his considerable scholarly resources, to stay afloat. For example, he despairs as he reviews the poetry of Roethke: “How could we have missed such a ‘western’ poem?” And, with respect to the forthcoming 50 Western Writers he further despairs that only six western poets will be represented in the volume. I appreciate Lewis’s plight, and I sympathize with him. For I am sure he feels the great need somehow justifiably to present a poetry that seems to him to have considerable, even critical, importance. I went dipping into Lewis’s collection, but then found myself fairly awash in an amazingly fine collection. The clarity, the openness, and the freshness of the mythic West are in it. I read Stafford, Roethke, Wagoner, DeFrees, McPherson, Everson, and others, and the critical material attending selections, with zest and delight. What can I say? To do justice to Concerning Western Poetry would be to reproduce the volume and to use available mailing lists to redistribute it. Perhaps one could ferret out statements with which one could cavil. But I am thankful for the presence of the western spirit in this volume, and I would be overfine and hypercritical to work a disservice against it. I advo­ cate the volume, and I recommend that all readers of this review get a copy and read it immediately. Reviews 335 In Concerning Western Poetry I sense the emergence of mythic form that is a tacit recognition that the poetry of the West is veering toward even more identifiable forms that will express the western setting. Why not? As shown in CWP, western poetry is the product of free sensibility rather than license. And surely that sensibility will achieve a more identifiable mythic context. As in the poetry of Wallace Stevens, the freedom of the imagination will produce the intrinsic forms of the imagination. This is partly borne out in Roethke’s poetry, as is explained in Susan R. Bowers’s article “The Explorer’s Rose: Theodore Roethke’s Mystical Sym­ bol.” “The western rose.” The phrase has charm and freshness — and com­ prises a contribution to mythic tradition. Perhaps, indeed, Roethke “moves outside the confines of the greenhouse to journey from his own geographical and spiritual beginnings to the wild, open edge of his own life and country” as so many other poets in our time should. We may soon learn who the real celebrities of the West are — that they do not produce kitsch, but write seriously, maturely about the human spirit. Lewis is to be congratulated for> CWP and the way it supports and complements due recognition for true celebrities represented in it. CLINTON LARSON, Brigham Young University American Genesis: The American Indian and the Origins of Modern Man. By Jeffrey Goodman. (New York: Summit Books, 1981. 285 pages, $11.95.) This book is a readable and often engrossing account of the...

Condemned to Speak Excessively: Mythic Form and James Joyce's "Ulysses"

... we constantly drift between the object and its demystification, powerless to render its wholeness. For if we penetrate the object, we liberate it, but we destroy it; and if we acknowledge its full weight, we respect it, but we restore it to a state which is still mystified. It would seem that we are condemned for some time yet always to speak excessively about reality. Roland Barthes, Mythologies1

Divinity and Immortality in Aristotle: A “De-Mythologized Myth”?

DIVINITY AND IMMORTALITY IN ARISTOTLE: A " DE-MYTHOLOGIZED MYTH" ? IT HAS BEEN said that " the Olympian gods, though they were manifest in nature, had not made the universe and could not dispose of man as their creature with the same unquestioned right of ownership which the ancient Near Eastern gods exercised." 1 Knowing their gods as they did and believing that they themselves were also of divine origin, the Greeks were prompted to harbor feelings which bordered on disrespect and jealousy. It is in this mood that Pindar complains in his Sixth Nemean Ode that common ancestry with the gods does not translate itself into equal power and equal rights: Of one race, one only, are men and gods. Both of one mother's womb we draw our breath; but far asunder is all our power divided, and fences us apart; here there is nothingness, and there, in strength of bronze, a seat unshaken, eternal, abides the heaven. (After Cornford .) 2 Such a lack of awe for the deities was bound to have repercussions on Greek philosophy, the most important being perhaps the admirable serene and philosophical approach to death which characterized most of the Greek thinkers. One might even say that the basic premise of all Greek arguments concerning the immortality of the soul is based on their belief in its divinity, a belief which is found also at the root of their lack of awe. In this sense, the basic premise of the soul's divinity depends on the Orphic myths, as interpreted by the Hellenes, which was taken seriously by all Greek philosophers. The Frankforts' commentary goes like this: i H. and H. A. Frankfort, "The Emancipation of Thought from Myth," in The Intellectual Adventure of Ancient Man (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1967), p. 374. • Op. cit., p. 374. 217 ~18 FRANCISCO L. PECCORINI The initiate of the Orphic mysteries, for instance, not only hoped to be liberated from the 'wheel of births' but actually emerged as a god from his union with the mother-goddess, ' queen of the dead.' The Orphic myths contain speculations about the nature of man which are characteristically Greek in their tenor. It was said that the Titans had devoured Dionysus-Zagreus and were therefore destroyed by the lightning of Zeus, who made man from their ashes. Man, in so far as he consists of the substance of the Titans, is evil and ephemeral; but since the Titans had partaken of god's body, man contains a divine and immortal spark.8 I. De-mythologizing the Myth. Aware of the force of the Orphic myth in their culture, even the most dedicated philosophers would take seriously the myth of the Titans' destruction and recognize a necessary relation between an immortal substance and a sort of participation in the divine Being; this would be done by taking the explanatory nucleus of the myth and incorporating it into the description of those natures which are supposed to be immortal, such as the one of the" mind" or" Nous." The greatest representative of " empiricist " philosophy in Greece, the Stagirite, seems to guarantee with his authority the scholarly value of such a procedure; he writes in Bk. XII of his Metaphysfos the following confession on the occasion of his dealing with the first substances: Our forefathers in the most remote ages have handed down to their posterity a tradition, in the form of a myth, that these bodies are gods and that the divine encloses the whole nature. The rest of the tradition has been added later in mythical form with a view to the persuasion of the multitude and to its legal and utilitarian expediency ; they say these gods are in the form of men or like some of the other animals, and they say other things consequent on and similar to these which we have mentioned. But if one were to separate the first point from these additions and take it alonethat they thought the first substances to be gods-, one must regard this as an inspired utterance, and reflect that, while probably each art and each science has often been developed as far as possible and has again perished...

Shakespeare's Myth of Venus and Adonis

Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis—both in the specific way the myth is understood and, more important, in the poetic and conceptual forms in which it is cast—is rooted in the mythography of the sixteenth century. As in the attribute system of allegorical painting, the physical characteristics of Venus and Adonis reveal their histories and signify the alternately comic and serious qualities of love. The traditional plot has been scrapped, with sexual harmony replaced by strife and the poem turned into a continual debate over the nature of love. This debate is never resolved rationally. Instead, the multiple aspects of love are periodically condensed into unified images, which then generate further paradox: Venus versus Diana, freedom versus bondage, red versus white, fire versus water. This dialogue of images, a familiar iconographic technique, becomes a characteristically Shakespearean method of esthetic resolution, with conceptual relations to the primary forms of myth.

II. the other side of ecology in ancient Greece: Comments on Hughes

The classical roots of ecological sensibility lie not only in the “theatre of reason” (Greek nature philosophy and natural history), but also in religious mythology. More important than the world seen as the “theatre of the gods”, however, was the radically ecological view of death stated in mythic form by Empedocles and the Pythagoreans. The very emergence of the “theatre of reason” marked a significant stage of man's alienation from nature (and from himself), though the struggle between rationalistic anthropocentrism and a more ecological perspective reappeared within philosophy itself, so that the legacy of “the Philosopher” is a dual one.

Myths of the state in the West European Middle Ages

In the first centuries of the barbarian kingdoms the most striking feature is the gens, the tribe, as the principle of unity, even if the ethnic homogeneity often was missing. The myth of the Germanic State of the early Middle Ages was in the first place a myth of the common origin of the gens.These histories of tribal origins have some times been influenced by powerful Ancient literary patterns, especially the Trojan myth of Virgil. But the concern of presenting the origin of the gens in mythical form is no doubt Germanic. And it seems probable that the tribal origins are more ancient than the genealogies of royal families with alleged divine ancestors. The kingship among the Germanic tribes was secondary in relation to the tribe. The king was rex Francorum; the king of a certain country or geographic territory is a later conception. The power comes from below; the king is an exponent of the tribe. All the Germanic words for "king" are derivations from terms for "kin, people, tribe." The limitation of the power of the king is also indicated by institutions like the right to resistence, the possibility to depose the king, the participation by all free men in the judicial and criminal procedure through self-help and blood feud.

Myth and Mysticism: A Study of Objectification and Interiorization in Religious Thought

Previous articleNext article No AccessMyth and Mysticism: A Study of Objectification and Interiorization in Religious ThoughtHans JonasHans Jonas Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Journal of Religion Volume 49, Number 4Oct., 1969 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/486190 Views: 138Total views on this site Citations: 4Citations are reported from Crossref Copyright 1969 The University of ChicagoPDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Zhuo Job Chen, Janki Patel Spiritual Experiences in Soulmate Relationships: Qualitative and Network Analysis of the Mystical Bond, The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion 31, no.33 (Jul 2021): 176–188.https://doi.org/10.1080/10508619.2021.1899638Fabrizio Vecoli Différencier l’indifférencié: Culture et religion. Une réflexion appliquée au cas du monachisme primitif 1, Studies in Religion/Sciences Religieuses 47, no.44 (Nov 2018): 566–585.https://doi.org/10.1177/0008429818778881Malcolm Angelucci Not Enough of an Artist? Myth, Pedagogy and Rhetoric in Carlo Michelstaedter's Poem I Figli del Mare, Forum Italicum: A Journal of Italian Studies 46, no.22 (Sep 2012): 342–360.https://doi.org/10.1177/001458581204600204Robert A Segal Jung and Gnosticism, Religion 17, no.44 (Oct 1987): 301–336.https://doi.org/10.1016/0048-721X(87)90057-1

“Western” Themes and Western Films

J A M E S K. F O L S O M Yale University “ Western” Themes and Western Films Certainly one of the most notorious—if not exactly the most respected—American cultural effusions is the Western film. More­ over, Westerns, or “horse operas” as they are more familiarly known, are to be met with in nearly every part of the world. Indeed, a thriving market in reproducing Westerns now exists in both France and West Germany and, perhaps more surprisingly, in Japan. Yet a confessed addict soon learns that a taste for Western films is tolerated rather than rewarded. A rationale for enjoying Westerns might almost be said to be one of our more pressing minor social needs. Possibly a simple change in terminology is all that is re­ quired: Where drunks were once viewed with contempt, alcoholics are now regarded with sympathy, and the same motion picture palaces which were shunned for showing what used to be known as dirty movies are now patronized by respectable citizens who enjoy the same wares under the more socially acceptable rubric of art films. At present the sensitive Western viewer must hide his perverse taste behind the mask of scholarly research, and none but the most shameless can approach a box office to buy a ticket to a Western without experiencing a moment of irrational fear that some friend or employer may catch him, red-handed as it were, in the gratification of this illicit passion. The difficulty, of course, is that, considered realistically, West­ ern movies are silly, and most of the objections raised to them may well have more validity than the rather weak and sentimental argu­ 196 Western American Literature ments I can bring to their support. Westerns are an anachronism in the modern world and, though they may pretend to be sober history, they demonstrably are nothing of the kind; they tend to classify the complexities of human behavior into two mutually exclusive types of characters, good guys and bad guys; they are filled with improbabilities such as horses that never get tired and revolvers which never need reloading; and their language is stilted enough to have given rise to at least one recognizable American dialect which someone has aptly, if unkindly, named Hollywooden Indian. But every criminal, no matter how culpable, is entitled to a defense, even if learned counsel is, as in this case, almost certain that the jury will find against him. Probably the basic objection to Western films—usually put in terms of their being an “escape” from something or other which is doubtless more worth while—is that they are untrue to the facts of American western history. With the exception of an occa­ sional bandit biography of doubtful authenticity and a few rela­ tively rare cinematic treatments of particular historic events (such as They Died with Their Boots On, a romanticized version of the defeat of General Custer by Sitting Bull, or the various anachronistic “true” accounts of the notorious gun battle at the O. K. corral in Tombstone, Arizona), Western history is notable in Westerns pri­ marily because of its absence. Moreover, what meager historic content there may be in Westerns tends to be generalized as, for example, in The Sea of Grass, which is about the conflict between cattlemen and homesteaders in general rather than in some partic­ ular range war, or as in High Noon, where the sheriff and his outlaw opponents fight to the death in a world carefully isolated from any particular place. This objection may perhaps seem less compelling if one re­ members that the world of the Western film is true to a certain historic feeling, if not to particular historic facts. The Western mirrors a persistent nagging doubt in American life about whether the choice which America made to become a great, capitalist, in­ dustrial power was indeed a wise one. Not surprisingly, objections to modern American life have often taken the form of myths about alternative American destinies, destinies which at least for artistic purposes Americans like to think they positively chose against. “Western” Themes and Western Films 197 The Western, therefore, is not so much true to the facts of Amer...

An Outline of the Cosmology and Cult Organization of the Oyo Yoruba

Opening ParagraphThe structure of the Yoruba cosmos is broadly evident in their creation myth and can be discerned as presupposed behind many other myths, praise songs of the gods, and other symbolic utterances. These formulations help us, too, to construct a more detailed model of this cosmos than is available in any single mythical form. A model worked out from these sources is preferable methodologically to one derived from interrogating informants to get at their personal ideas and formulations, because these myths and liturgical expressions are relatively permanent features of Yoruba culture and are the materials for informants' constructs. Furthermore, it is not on intellectual grounds that myths survive and one must therefore beware of jockeying informants into making untypical intellectual abstractions from them and then using these abstractions as one's main primary source material. However interesting in themselves their own attempts at a generalized statement of the cosmos may be, informants can better be used to clarify over-condensed or allusive passages in myths and to check one's own interpretations, and again, to supply evidence for the details of the analysis through, for instance, their assertions about the locations of the various gods, spirits, and the ancestors.

Hugo's Pleine Mer and the “Great Eastern”

The poem Vingtième Siècle (Pleine Mer—Plein Ciel) forms the climax of the Légende des Siècles, and presents in mythical form a picture of man's ascent through science, out of a state of ignorance, slavery and hatred, into one of enlightenment, freedom and brotherly love. Hugo typifies the idyllic future by an air-ship, (Plein Ciel), the sombre past and present by the colossal steamship “Léviathan,” (Pleine Mer). The same idea, of the deliverance of man through science, had found expression in Le Satyre; but there locomotive, steamer, and airship were equally honored as factors and symbols of man's emancipation, one leading up to and merging into the other. The invention of the steamship was specifically celebrated in the lines:Qui sait si quelque jour, grandissant d'âge en âge,Il ne jettera pas son dragon à la nage,Et ne franchira pas les mers, la flamme au front! (ll. 611–613)

Itys and Aedon: a Panaitios Cylix

The cylix which is the subject of the following paper has a double claim on the interest of archaeologists; first, it presents a peculiar, and—so far as at present known—for art a unique form of a familiar myth, the slaying of Itys; second, it is inscribed with the love name Panaitios, and therefore is readily classed with an already familiar group.The vase in question is first reported by Dr. Helbig in the Bullettino, 1878, p. 204. It was found at Cervetri in the Boccanera excavations. It is now in the museum of Munich, and it is to the kindness of Professor Brunn that I owe the permission to publish the vase and the superintendence of the necessary drawings. A vase of so great interest could hardly have escaped publication but for the fact that it made its reappearance in the world saddled with what seems to me a mistaken interpretation. Dr. Helbig, without any hesitation, says (loc. cit.): ‘Una tazza … la quale nell’ interno rappresenta un mito molto raro cioè quello di Prokne ed Itys,' and cites as a parallel the well known Paris vase (Ann., 1863, tav. d'agg. C.) Dr. Klein, who had not seen the vase, describes from report (Meistersignaturen, p. 145): ‘Prokne im Begriffe dem auf einem Bette, u.s.w.’) My own view is that not Prokne, but her mythological prototype Aedon, the original nightingale, is represented, and that the vase-painter embodies the Homeric, not the later Attic form of the myth. The Munich cylix gives us the earlier (Aedon), the Paris cylix the later (Prokne) tradition. It is solely to draw attention to this point that the remarks that follow are addressed; the interesting question of the origin, development, and various transformations of the myth I reserve for a future occasion.