Deriving Meaning From Myths
What do myths mean? Why do their appear to be so many similarities among myths from different times and parts of the world? Why do some myths endure over time, being retold for centuries and even millennia?
Scholars use different "theoretical lenses" to derive meaning or insights from myths. Each provides a particular way of looking at a myth - often, multiple lens can be applied to the same myth to glean different insights. Introduction to Mythology offers the following breakdown of the types of insights to be obtained from myths (p.13). I have also correlated those insights with some theoretical lens that we will use in this class.
Scholars use different "theoretical lenses" to derive meaning or insights from myths. Each provides a particular way of looking at a myth - often, multiple lens can be applied to the same myth to glean different insights. Introduction to Mythology offers the following breakdown of the types of insights to be obtained from myths (p.13). I have also correlated those insights with some theoretical lens that we will use in this class.
Introductory Guide to Critical Theory |
A great website with sections on Marxism, Gender and Sex, Narratology, New Historicism, Postmodernism, and Psychoanalysis.
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Types of Insights
Historical InsightsAnthropological InsightsMetaphysical InsightsCosmological InsightsAetiological InsightsSociological InsightsPsychological Insights |
Verifiable historical events reflected in mythical stories Culture - the values and principles of a society
What it means to be human - typical characteristics and limitations of humans; their relationship to a larger reality or principle
the universe as understood by the best science available at the time explaining the origin or cause of a custom or a fact of the physical universe
Groups that people belong to or participate in - values about group behavior; standards for admission The struggles of individuals to become mature human beings and useful members of society. |
Some Interpretive Lenses, or Ways to Extract Meaning from Myths
*This is by no means a comprehensive list!
NarratologyStructuralism |
Vladimir Propp - Traditional myths employ distinctive, universal patterns.
See also Introduction to Mythology, Part 6 Chapter 35: "Theory: The Morphology of a Folktale" and Chapter 36: "Applying Theory: A Proppian Analysis of the Wizard of Oz". Claude Levi-Strauss: Myths reflect the mind's binary organization. Humans project a binary significance onto experience, dividing everything into polar opposites. Myth deals with and reconciles these opposites.
See Introduction to Mythology, Part 3 Chapter 17: "Applying Theory: A Levi-Straussian Analysis of the Epic of Gilgamesh. |
Nature-Myth TheoryRitual Theory |
Myth is a reaction to the awe-inspiring powers of physical nature as they affect human experiences - the cycles of day and night, summer and winter, plant life and death. Often the gods personify mythological forces and astronomical functions or objects.
Myths are stories invented to explain rituals and ceremonies.
See Introduction to Mythology, Part 4 Introduction and Chapter 27: "Theory: The Forest of Symbols." |
Freud |
Freud emphasized the psychological character of myth - like dreams, myths allow humans to violate taboos safely through displacement, as a form of wish fulfillment.
Freud's Oedipus Complex See also Classical Mythology: A Very Short Introduction Chapter |
Jung |
Jung, a student of Freud's, developed the theory of Archetypes: myths, like dreams, contain universal archetypes that spring from the collective unconscious. The collective unconscious is a pool of memories, mental images, cognitive patterns, symbols, and basic assumptions shared by all members of a given society or even the human race. An archetype is the primal form or original pattern of which all things of the same kind (characters, situations, events) are representations or copies.
See also Introduction to Mythology, Part 5: "Dreams and Myth" |
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