Mythological Tradition Research Articles

Packaging as Vehicle for Mythologizing the Brand

The theoretical contribution of this article lies in the domain of marketplace mythology. By examining stories printed on the food packages that make use of a popular claim of naturalness, we offer a conceptual framework showing how corporations attempt to graft new myths onto old archetypes. We propose that by revisiting traditional mythology, contemporary commercial storytellers collectively create a grand postmodern marketplace myth—that of an empowered and ennobled consumer. We treat packaging narratives as cultural productions and explore them as vehicles for mythologizing the brand. Our findings reveal mythical themes exploited by companies in their packaging stories and messages they convey.

Meteorite records in the ancient Greek and Latin literature: between history and myth

Abstract A catalogue of citations related to possible meteorites has been assembled by searching the ancient Greek and Latin literature up to the end of the West Roman Empire ( ad 476). The catalogue illustrates the attitude of ancient populations towards the fall of meteorites and extends the record of meteorite falls back in time. The citations are arranged in the catalogue as: i) ‘meteorite falls’, when both the locality and the date of the fall are, at least approximately, indicated; ii) ‘worshipped stones’, when the written and archaeological sources suggest the actual existence of a stone as an object of worship, but the information about the locality and the date of the fall are missing or vague; iii) ‘myths’, when the connexion between an object said to have fallen from the heaven and the fall of a meteorite is weak or obscured by mythological traditions.

"Elves (and Hobbits) always refer to the Sun as She": Some Notes on a Note in Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings

“Elves (and Hobbits) always refer to the Sun as She”:Some Notes on a Note in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings Yvette L. Kisor (bio) In Chapter Nine of the first book of The Fellowship of the Ring, "At the Sign of the Prancing Pony," Frodo sings a song recounting the Man of the Moon's adventures at an inn, what T. A. Shippey might refer to as an asterisk-song,1 a reconstructed original of which the English nursery rhyme The Cat and the Fiddle2 is a surviving fragment.3 In the last stanza of Frodo's song the Sun is referred to as female, and Tolkien provides a note of explanation: "Elves (and Hobbits) always refer to the Sun as She" (FR, I, ix, 172).4 This note tells us something about Elvish (and Hobbitish) practice, but it also reveals much more, functioning as a key to Tolkien's creative process, his sources, and the way philology informs his myth-making. The note is necessary, of course, because the reference to the sun as female is surprising, at least to the modern reader. In the western world the sun is usually conceived of as masculine—it is the moon that is more commonly seen as feminine, and this association goes back a long way. The Romans associated Apollo with the sun and his sister Diana (Artemis in the Greek pantheon) with the moon, and in the classical tradition the other deities associated with sun and moon similarly fall along gender lines: the male gods Helios and Sol with the sun; the female goddesses Luna and Selene with the moon. The association of sun with male and moon with female is a strong one in the western tradition. Tolkien was well aware of this tradition and his subversion of it, hinted at in FR, is given a larger explanation in The Silmarillion. Chapter Eleven of the Quenta Silmarillion, "Of the Sun and Moon and the Hiding of Valinor," explains how the sun and moon were created after the destruction of the Two Trees. In response to Yavanna's singing, Telperion bore one final flower of silver and Laurelin one last fruit of gold before they died, and for these Aulë fashioned vessels to be guided by two Maiar: a maiden Arien for the Sun and the youth Tilion for the Moon. Arien, a spirit of fire, had tended the gardens of golden flowers and Tilion had been a hunter with a silver bow (S 98-102). The switch of gender in these guardians of the sun and moon is all the more noticeable because otherwise Tolkien keeps to familiar [End Page 212] tradition—Tilion is a hunter associated with the bow just as is Diana/Artemis, and the supremacy of the sun is clear. While Arien is chosen by the Valar, Tilion must beg for the task of guiding the moon, and "Arien the maiden was mightier than he" (100); Morgoth assails Tilion but dares not attack Arien (101). Tilion is not only weaker but has other qualities normally associated with the "feminine" moon, particularly changeableness; further he is drawn towards Arien: "But Tilion was wayward and uncertain in speed, and held not to his appointed path; and he sought to come near to Arien, being drawn by her splendour . . . Tilion went with uncertain pace, as yet he goes, and was still drawn towards Arien, as he shall ever be" (100, 101). Thus Tolkien maintains the essential qualities familiar from classical western tradition: the guardian of the moon is a hunter, lesser and more wayward than the guardian of the sun, being drawn towards the sun; the guardian of the sun is fiery and strong: "she was as a naked flame, terrible in the fullness of her splendour" (100). The main associations of sun and moon, largely a function of the innate characteristics of the astronomical bodies themselves (the brightness of the sun, the phases of the moon, etc.), remain intact but the traditional gender binary opposition is reversed.5 But Tolkien is working not only with a mythological tradition, he is working with a philological one, and as is so often the case with Tolkien...

Medicines of symbolical action in cultural experience

Modern methodology offers theoretical toolkit which allows us to investigate the culturally - significant constants in the inter- nal experience of the person. Here belong the concepts of experience, medical experience, archetypes of the collective unconscious, the vital world. The address to the mythological tradition, the vital world of the person of traditional culture allows us to single out the steady structures, to find out the universal medical archetypes in medicinal sphere, and thus to investigate, a phenomenon of «medicines of symbolical action» (M. Foucault).

Body experience in the east-slavonic culture tradition

In the modern science, the body is an object of interest not only to the natural science and medicine, but also the humanities. Of special interest, in particular, for the medical discourse, is the ethnic body experience. The paper reveals features of the body experience in the east-slavonic culture from the analysis of the mythological tradition. This experience is characterized by the pronounced interest and ambivalent attitude to the body’s life, natural body standards; and emotional intensity. The experience of the social body is of highest priority in the culture.

Cicely under the Skin: Female Narrative and America's Historical Unconscious in Northern Exposure

Generic rules have changed and the dissident political voices of feminism and civil rights challenge white male authority to speak about the West. This contribution considers how women invert traditional western mythology, and give voice to an alternative and/or hidden history of the American frontier, to create new myths, new memories. Appearing at a moment when revisionist histographies speak of the Old West as about divergent historical realities, multiple frontiers and subsumed experiences, Northern Exposure contributing to challenging conventional wisdoms about gender segregation and frontier history. Policing the frontier and its history emerges as an important issue as does how women operate as stewards of frontier history, culture and tradition, to give voice to an alternative and repressed (female) history of the West.

The Oxford companion to world mythology

Cave paintings at Lascaux, France and Altamira, Spain, fraught with expression thousands of years later; point to an early human desire to form a cultural identity. In the Oxford Companion to World Mythology, David Leeming explores the role of mythology, or myth-logic, in history and determines that the dreams of specific cultures add up to a larger collective story of humanity. Stopping short of attempting to be all-inclusive, this fascinating volume will nonetheless be comprehensive, opening with an introduction exploring the nature and dimensions of myth and proposing a definition as a universal language. Briefly dipping into the ways our understanding of myth has changed from Aristotle and Plato to modern scholars such as Joseph Campbell, the introduction loosely places the concept in its present context and precedes articles on influential mythologists and mythological approaches that appear later in the Companion. The main body of Leeming's work consists of A-Z entries covering all aspects of mythology, including substantial essays on the world's major mythological traditions (Greek, Native American, Indian, Japanese, Sumerian, Egyptian), mythological types and motifs (Descent to the Underworld, the Hero, the Trickster, Creation, the Quest), mythological figures (Odysseus, Zeus, Osiris, Spider Woman, and Inanna) as well as numerous interrelated subjects such as fairy tales and legends. The Companion also locates myth in our lives today, relating it to language patterns, psychology, religion, politics, art, and gender attitudes. Many of the better-known and more significant myths are vividly retold in this volume that will be illustrated with maps, more than 70 black and white images, and eight pages of color highlighting the central role art has often played in the transmission and perpetuation of myth. Following the entries, a rich section of appendices will include family trees of the major pantheons, equivalency charts for the gods of Greece and Rome, Babylon and Sumer, as well as other traditions, an extensive bibliography, and an index.

Neoanalysis, Orality, and Intertextuality: An Examination of Homeric Motif Transference

Neoanalysis, Orality, and Intertextuality: An Examination of Homeric Motif Transference Jonathan Burgess University of Toronto As with other schools of thought in Homeric research, neoanalysis has experienced experimentation and change. 1 Neoanalysts have slowly become aware of points of contact between their methodology and an oralist approach, and recently some oralists have enthusiastically accepted the compatibility of the two schools of thought. Intertextual theory can also provide much insight into the phenomena uncovered by neoanalysis, particularly motif transference. A central concept in neoanalyst methodology, motif transference involves the use of non-Homeric motifs within Homeric poetry. Neoanalysts have persuasively identified examples of motif transference, but their explanation of its mechanics and significance has been lacking. An oralist perspective modifies our understanding of how motif transference is produced and received, and intertextual theory can help explain the possible significance of Homeric reflection of non-Homeric material. Three levels of narrative are posited for this examination: A) cyclic myth, B) cyclic epic, and C) Homeric epic. Level B (cyclic epic) is an epic version of Level A (cyclic myth). 2 Level C (Homeric epic) exists as a self-conscious [End Page 148] extension of Level A (cyclic myth) and Level B (cyclic epic). Levels B/C (cyclic/Homeric epic) are both manifestations of level A (mythological traditions) that share the same form (long narrative in dactylic hexameter), but Level C (Homeric epic) is a more complex manifestation. While Level B (cyclic epic) presents the narrative in Level A (cylic myth) directly, Level C (Homeric epic) plays off "cyclic" myth and epic in an allusive manner. In the sense that Level C (Homeric epic) employs Level A (mythological traditions) and Level B (cyclic epic) in order to implement its full meaning, we might say that Homeric epic is "metacyclic." 3 Homeric poetry is commonly portrayed as an overwhelming replacement of pre-Homeric tradition, but it is instead a respectful and dependent outgrowth of earlier myth and epic. The traditions from which the Iliad and Odyssey stem are both assumed and appreciated by Homeric poetics. Motif transference is the transposition of motifs from elsewhere into a Homeric context; the Homeric manifestation of the motif should be recognizably derivative and therefore considered secondary. In my analysis motif transference is not a passive accumulation of influences but an active narratological tool that evokes Trojan war material. Correspondence between Trojan war motifs and their secondary manifestations within the Homeric poems will therefore have implications in terms of meaning. For an audience informed about traditional Greek myth, the secondary Homeric motif will evoke the non-Homeric context, functioning as a subtle yet powerful allusive device. Motif transference so defined would appear to be a distinctive aspect of Homeric poetics. But it is not unrelated to typology and repetition in oral poetry, and it is comparable to such poetic phenomena as mythological exempla, or paradigms. Homeric motif transference is therefore an example of how Homeric technique extends oral poetics yet is not independent of it. [End Page 149] Neoanalysis Neoanalysis is a methodology that employs analyst technique in pursuit of a unitarian interpretation of the Iliad. It assumes the influence of pre-Homeric material on Homeric poetry and attempts to discover indications of this influence within Homeric poetry. Trojan war episodes that fall outside the narrative boundaries of the Homeric poems have usually interested neoanalysts, especially material concerning the death of Achilles. The Iliad and Odyssey directly refer to many events in course of the war, but it is the inexplicit reflection of these events that has been explored in neoanalysis. As a source for the pre-Homeric tradition of the Trojan war, neoanalysts have primarily used the Epic Cycle. Though the poems of the Cycle are now lost, what we know of them provides important information about the tradition of the Trojan war. Reconstruction of the cyclic tradition can be difficult, and using it as an indication of the pre-Homeric tradition has been controversial. But it is revealing that early Greek artists reflected...

̒Open̓ and ̒Closed̓ Models of the Human Body in Indian Medical and Yogic Traditions

Most Indian and western commentators and scholars, following the Yoga Sūtras of Patañjali (c. third century CE), have assumed the Hindu yogic body to be a closed, self-contained system. However, a significant volume of data from a variety of sources—ranging from the classical Upaniṣads down through the Tantras (and including passages from the Yoga Sūtras themselves)—indicate that an 'open' model of the yogic body has also been operative in Hindu philosophical, medical, and mythological traditions. In these open models, the mind-body complex is linked, often via 'solar rays', to the sun and moon of the macrocosm, as well as to other mind-body complexes, which yogins are capable of entering through their practice.

Mythological Tradition in the Folk Narrative of Bohinj

Razprava je posvecena bajnim bitjem v knjigi Nas voca so vcas zapodval [Cvetek 1993], kjer je bohinjsko folklorno pripovednistvo zapisano v bohinjskih govorih. Poleg te zbirke povedk je v razpravo pritegnjen se bohinjski literarni opus pisatelja Janeza Mencingerja. Vanj je bohinjski rojak vtkal folklorne pripovedi, za katere trdi, da jih ni bilo potrebno »kaj dosti piliti ali prenarejati«. Te povedke se danes živijo v bohinjskem folklornem izrocilu, nekatere od njih so se seveda že izgubile. Izgubila ali spremenila so se tudi nekatera bajna bitja iz Mencingerjevih del. Nekaj neobjavljenih terenskih zapiskov se dodatno prispeva k osvetlitvi te tematike. V omenjenem gradivu spoznavamo trdoživo bohinjsko bajeslovno dediscino, odnos do nje v Mencingerjevem pisanju in casu in tudi danasnji razmislek o davnih verovanjih nasih prednikov. The treatise deals with the mythological beings depicted in the book titled Nas voca so vcas zapodval (Our Father Used to Tell Us, Cvetek 1993). The book is a collection of folk narratives from Bohinj, written in the local dialects. It also contains writer Janez Mencinger’s literary work focusing on this area. In his work, Mencinger included folk narratives that, according to him, “did not need much polishing or alteration.” With the exception of some that had long been forgotten, many of these stories are still alive in the folklore tradition of the Bohinj area. Some of the mythical beings from Mencinger’s work have likewise disappeared or have been transformed. The treatise also contains some of the so far unpublished fieldwork notes on the subject. The narratives aptly portray the headstrong nature of the mythological heritage of Bohinj, Mencinger’s attitude toward the subject, and contain reflections on the ancient beliefs of our forefathers.

Myth and thepolisin Bacchylides' Eleventh Ode

AbstractBacchylides' eleventh epinician ends not with renewed praise of the victor but with an extension to the ode's main myth which forges a link between the Arcadian cult of Artemis founded by Proetus and his daughters and the foundation of the victor's home city of Metapontum by Achaean colonists identified with the heroic captors of Troy. The culmination of the ode in praise of a successful colonial foundation, it is argued, is the key to the principles on which Bacchylides has selected and moulded the mythological elements that he deploys in the rest of the ode. Proetus' foundation of Tiryns resolves the civil strife which threatened to destroy Argos and commends colonization as a means of social and political progress; while the cult of Artemis at Lousoi, founded to expiate the Proetids' offence against Hera, emphasizes the role of marriage in maintaining the strength and solidarity of the community. The emphasis in both these myths on the divine intervention which rectifies human error links them to the experience of the victor and to the theme of the proper cultivation of the gods that is emphasized in the ode's conclusion. In constructing mythical narratives that are exemplary for the victor and his community, Bacchylides departs from mythological tradition in significant respects and in ways which suggest that the ode's argument reflects both the victor's status in the community and perhaps also the circumstances of its own performance.

Contemporary Legends from the Slovene Karst in Comparison with Fairylore and Belief Traditions<br>Sodobne zgodbe s slovenskega krasa na Notranjskem v primerjavi z lokalnim bajčnim izročilom in tradicionalnim pripovedništvom</br>

The paper presents narratives collected in the last decade in the Karst region in southwest Slovenia, more precisely in Lož Valley with its Snežnik Castle and its forests, in the vicinity of Cerknica Lake, and in the region of Pivka. Although most of these stories can be defined as contemporary legends they do have much in common with traditional folk tales and with local mythology. The analyzed legends mention ghosts, witches, fairies, and other mythological creatures from Slovene traditional mythology; their content has been changed considerably, and they are usually narrated as personal experience, which is a characteristic of contemporary legends. On the basis of exact comparison and the study of context the author tries to outline the changes in contemporary folk narrative and the social function of both genres of narration according to the circumstances in which they have been recounted.

Phantasmagorias of Power: Hebbel's Drama Gyges und sein Ring

1 Friedrich Hebbel wrote his play Gyges und sein Ring between 1853 and 1854, hence only a few years after the March Revolution of 1848. He prefaced the play with a brief note that he apparently found necessary for the reader's orientation. "The action," he indicated, "is pre-historical and mythic; it takes place within a temporal span of twice twenty-four hours."1 This sentence offers information about the temporal dimensions of Gyges from two perspectives, although the sentence's parts, aligned in peaceful parataxis, stand in nearly comical incongruity with each other. On the one hand, there are the technical specifications of the length of action: "twice twenty-four hours" tied to a tacit concession that Hebbel's most classical play in this way lacks one of the basic requirements of classical drama, temporal unity. This fact is not trivial, for the catastrophe of Gyges takes place in, as it were, the temporal fold between the two days of dramatic action. And it does so in a locus removed from the audience's view: the royal bed-chamber. However great the nocturnal intrigue's theatrical potential—a peculiar ménage à trois involving a loving king, his naked wife, and a voyeur [End Page 539] ordered to the scene—it nevertheless takes place beyond the stage. In this manner the theme of visibility and invisibility that determines the play's action is mirrored on the level of its performance. Where the days are measured here in miniature, almost chronometrically, the sentence's first part occupies a completely different temporal order. Hebbel's dramaturgical note locates the play—in which thresholds, transition-points, borders, and the transgression of them are hugely important—before history, hence in a sphere outside any positively measurable time. One might even say that he wishes to have the action unfold on the edge of time. According to the author's own interpretation, what needs forty-eight hours to reach its tragic end is a myth to which no assignment of date applies. In this use of the attribute "mythic," Hebbel is to a certain degree in harmony with the antique transmitters of his dramatic material.2 The most important classical sources that Hebbel could have used are Plato and Herodotus. In the second book of the Republic, Plato has one of the interlocutors introduce the example of the shepherd Gyges, who lures the wife of the Lydian king Kandaules into adultery with the help of a magic ring and then kills the king to gain possession of wife and crown. Through this violence, Gyges becomes the "ancestor of the Lydians."3 Herodotus says nothing about a ring and has King Kandaules himself take the initiative and force his bodyguard Gyges to hide as a voyeur in the royal bedroom; the queen, however, learns of this dishonorable action and forces Gyges to assassinate her husband.4 Kandaules, remarks Herodotus, was the last Lydian ruler who could trace his ancestry back to the half-god Heracles: with his death, the Heracleidan race was extinguished.5 Antiquity thus situates the episode at precisely the point where myth and history touch: Kandaules, the last descendent of the mythic hero Heracles, dies as a result of an intrigue; wife and office fall to Gyges, a shepherd or bodyguard without pedigree mentioned at the [End Page 540] start of Herodotus's historical account of Lydia. With closer scrutiny, one sees that Hebbel follows the antique model in this respect as well: the drama's opening scene already contradicts the assertion of inherent obedience to mythic temporal form, the ruling king announcing his determination to break with mythological tradition. He autocratically suspends rituals practiced from time immemorial, elevating himself over his people—they still cling to superstition—with the intent of leading them to enlightenment. Consequently, Kandaules is here represented as a figure on a threshold, seeking an escape from mythic bonds...

Raden Istigno Kartodidjojo (1921-1999). À la recherche d'un sublime (adiluhung) javanais

Pierre Labrousse, Institut national des Langues et Civilisation orientales, Paris Raden Istigno Kartodidjojo (1921-1999). À la recherche d'un sublime (adïluhung) javanais This Javanese painter, whose life (1921-1999) spanned the major part of the 20th century, has left a relatively small production. In his paintings, a profuse nature and overloaded background clearly point at Balinese influence, but the themes, elaborated in wayang style, are drawn from Javanese mythological tradition. Although it misleadingly looks like decorative art, and behind even the veiled animism stressed by the almost oppressive importance of nature, the scenes elected by the painter and interpreted in complex compositions have an immediate political significance that must be understood in the light of an ancestral philosophy.

The Essential Guide to Werewolf Literature

Essential Guide to Werewolf Literature Brian J. Frost. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2003. Brian J. Frost's book provides a comprehensive overview of fiction and nonfiction, from ancient Roman writers such as Virgil and Ovid through what Frost calls boom years of the 1990s. breadth of Frost's coverage is impressive, making this book an essential reference guide for those interested in the literary pedigree of the werewolf. Although the term werewolf itself is Anglo-Saxon in origin, Frost notes that stories of human beings who transform themselves into wolves (or other kinds of animals) are common in world mythology, folklore, and literature. task Frost then establishes for himself is a formidable one: to catalogue most (if not all) of the known appearances of the in Western literature. He does so in workmanlike fashion, annotating the references as he sees fit. end result is a book that is somewhat inconsistent in the amount of detail given in the story synopses, and the depth of its commentary on the literary significance of the werewolf. However, the book cannot be faulted for its exhaustive listings and lengthy concluding bibliography. bibliography alone makes this volume indispensable for scholars with an interest in the subject. Chapter one, The Werewolf Phenomenon, situates the legends of England, France, Spain, Greece, Sweden, and other northern European countries within the larger mythological tradition of hybrid monsters. Based on such legends, Frost profiles the physical appearance of the the duration of the transformation, and the methods (either voluntarily or involuntarily) by which one becomes a werewolf. Frost then makes a crucial distinction between the terms lycanthrope and werewolf, the former referring to a person who believes that he or she is a wolf, and the latter referring to an actual shapeshifter. Frost points out that occult belief in werewolves as literal shape-shifters or psychic projections of inner savagery continued through the nineteenth century and into the twentieth. Frost also summarizes the Freudian and Jungian psychological explanations of the as symbolic manifestation of unspeakable internal desires. Chapter two is entitled A Survey of Reference Works. Frost observes that most reference works on the subject address the ontology of the tradition and/or the literal existence of werewolves; until recently, few works have catalogued the in fiction. works cited in this chapter approach the legend from a variety of perspectives, including occult, theological, anthropological, and psychoanalytic. Frost identifies the most important studies as originating in the sixteenth century. Within the larger context of a belief in witchcraft and demonology, these works tend to conclude that so-called werewolves are mentally ill people under the satanic delusion that they have been transformed into beasts. Not until the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, however, did several noted reference works bring the to popular attention. Some of the more recognizable twentieth-century authors (and a host of more obscure ones) cited by Frost include Montague Summers, Ernest Jones, and Robert Eisler. Toward the end of the chapter, while noting the contribution of writers such as Basil Copper and Stephen King, Frost states the purpose of his own work: to fill a void in the cataloguing and literary criticism of fictional tales. In chapter three, The Werewolf Enters Fiction, Frost embarks upon this primary mission. He points out the earliest known literary occurrences of the theme in works by Virgil, Petronius, and Marie de France. After the end of the medieval period, Frost says, the rarely appears in fiction again until the nineteenth century. Frost displays his impressive knowledge by pointing out such disparate moments as the first novel to have a as a central character (George W. …

Christa Wolfs Kurze Reise in Den Mythos(Verpasste) Chancen Des Kassandra-Projekts

Christa Wolf's Cassandra Project – her story Cassandraand the series of lectures entitled Voraussetzungen einer Erzahlung: Kassandra (Frankfurter Poetik-Vorlesungen) – has tended to be viewed in the scientific debate in the context of contemporary discourse theories and to be described as a ‘mythical (counter-)model’ which, seen from a specifically female angle, yields a critical perspective on mythical traditions informed by male ideologies. According to academic consensus, the Cassandra Project undermines mythological traditions and is itself anything but a myth – it is a new discourse. However, this article endeavours to show that the Cassandra Project – especially when primarily read in the light of the implications of the Voraussetzungen – succeeds to a certain extent in linking the critical position of a female subject to remythicisation. As a result, even Wolf's literary language transcends the level of a discourse. In accordance with her aesthetic, anthropological and ultimately social goals, experiences and perceptions (during her journey to Greece) play a crucial part in this remythicisation. Here she fundamentally parts company with post-structuralist doctrine, in which linguistic discourses predominate, ruling out myth and remythicisation. At the same time, however, in allowing the Cassandra Project to be dominated by the ‘conditioning of suffering’, which corresponds to the dominant (male) Western discourse and history of ‘learning through suffering’, Wolf has let slip an important opportunity. Her manner of remythicisation ultimately fails to make use of the potential – actually referred to in the Voraussetzungen – of the forgotten/repressed myth, discourse and reality of the peaceful, happy and highly female-oriented Minoan culture of ancient Crete, the first ‘cradle of Europe’.

From Olympus to Camelot: the world of European mythology

This book will treat the great mythological tradition of the European continent in a historical, cultural, and comparative context. The subject has particular appeal not only because of the tumultuous history of European tribal warfare which continues to this day, but because of the current attempt of many Europeans to see themselves as a single-albeit multicultural-entity.

Orfismo en el <i>Corpus Philostrateum</i>

We search through the Corpus Philostrateum for the presence of connections between this literary production and Orphismus – its system of beliefs, its peculiar interpretation of the traditional Greek mythology, its proposal for a particular way of life. Also, we try to determine the relation, that we can find in this corpus between the ideology and customs that the Pythagoreans and Orphics supported.

Modernism and the Initiation of Ruben Dario's Centaurs

de los centauros enables Dario to integrate ancient themes from Leconte de Lisle with fashionable esoteric doctrines from Schurd for three aims germane to worldwide modernism: to subordinate tradition to novelty, to reconcile science and religion, and to elevate cultural creativity to a religion. or decades, Hispanists conceived modernism as the preciosity and imitation of Ruben Dario in Prosasprofanas (1896). Yet current criticism contextualizes Hispanic modern- ism within world modernism. Modernism signifies not a literary movement, but an outlook on all spheres of culture, including architecture, music, painting, and every genre of literature. On five continents, modernism denotes a mindset of cultural creativity which (1) appre- ciates innovation over static tradition, with tradition subordinated to the desire to be modem; (2) springs from the economic and post-Darwinian cognitive crisis of the mid-nineteenth-century, tending to liberalize religion; and (3), given this religious instability, it elevates to a religion creative effort in all endeavors (Gamache 33, Orringer 29). Dario shows this mindset even in Prosasprofanas. The purpose of the present study is to show that the most ambitious poem of that anthology, Coloquio de los centauros (henceforth CC), incorporating motives visible in other poems of the same collection, illustrates modernism as here defined. Dario pits his creativity against that of French Pamassian Leconte de Lisle. He employs Greek mythological tradition to serve his new purpose: to find a tentative poetic solution to the cultural crisis of science versus religion. That solution is an esoteric religion of poetic creation. Dario integrates ideas from Edouard Schure's book Les Grands Inities (1889) with elements from Leconte de Lisle's poem Khir6n in harmony with the worldwide modernist sensitivity. The learned Arturo Marasso Roca (13) long ago noted Schure's presence throughout Dario's poetry. He observed isolated borrowings in CC, though without detecting Dario's modifi- cations of Schurd and without making a total interpretation of that poem. Moreover, Marasso showed some reluctance to acknowledge Leconte de Lisle's sustained influence. Scholars after Marasso sporadically refer to Schure (Skyrme, Jensen), yet a concentrated study of his and Leconte de Lisle's contributions to CC still remains to be made. First, I summarize Schur6's thinking on Orphism and Pythagoreanism. Next, I show how Dario strives for greater depth than Leconte de Lisle by introducing Pythagorean doctrines into CC. Finally, I point out Dario's alteration of those doctrines by integrating them with a sensual estheticism germane to Orphism as described by Schur6 (cf. Jensen 10). The poetic result exemplifies modernism as here conceived. Les Grands Initids has the main aim of reconciling religion and science, whose conflict, the greatest evil of Schur6's times, has shaken civilization to its roots. The Church privileges faith over reason, while science, agnostic and materialistic, overlooks spirit. Philosophy, powerless and skeptical, has opened a fissure in individual souls and in society (ix-x). Schur6 laments that literature and art have lost the sense of the divine. Literary materialism calls itself naturalism, thereby debasing nature. Positivists like Comte and Spencer conceive truth as the accumulation of facts. But Schur6 thirsts for a superior, total, eternal truth. He finds Europe a collective Hamlet, undecided whether to be or not to be (xxvi). The solution lies in esoteric knowledge. A

Post-Hellenistic Philosophy: A Study of Its Development from the Stoics to Origen

This book traces, for the first time, a revolution in philosophy which took place during the early centuries of our era. It reconstructs the philosophical basis of the Stoics' theory that fragments of an ancient and divine wisdom could be reconstructed from mythological traditions, and shows that Platonism was founded on an argument that Plato had himself achieved a full reconstruction of this wisdom, and that subsequent philosophies had only regressed once again in their attempts to 'improve' on his achievement. The significance of this development is highlighted through parallel studies of the Hellenistic debate over the status of Jewish culture; and of the philosophical beginnings of Christianity, where the notions of 'orthodoxy' and 'heresy' in particular are shown to be tools in the construction of a unified history of Christian philosophy stretching back to primitive antiquity.