Ways of Interpreting Myth:
Star Wars and the Greeks
Ancient Vs. Modern
Modern Interpretations of Myth
Two modern meanings of “mythology”:
• a system or set of myths
• the methodological analysis of myths
A monolithic theory of myth vs. the multifunctionalism of myth
The autonomy of myth
See: Some Theories of Myth
Externalist Theories: Myths as Products of the Environment
Internalist Theories: Myths as Products of the Mind
Externalist Theories:
Myths as Products of the Environment
Myths as Aetiology
Comparative Mythology
Nature Myths
Myths as Rituals
Charter Myths
Myths as Aetiology
myth as explanation of the origin of things
myth as primitive science
myth as primitive science
Aetiology in Greek Myth
Europa (eponymous hero)
Creation myths
Arachne
Athena and Arachne in Ovid’s Metamorphoses
Aetiology in Star Wars?
F. Max Müller
Nature Myths
Founder of the social scientific study of religion
Comparative approach:
Study of Vedic peoples of ancient India applied
to myths of other cultures (Greece and Rome)
Max Müller
1823-1900)
For Müller, the culture of the Vedic
peoples represented a form of nature
worship, an idea clearly influenced by
Romanticism
The Comparative Method and
Nature Myths in Star Wars?
The Force
The Force is what gives a Jedi his power. It's an energy field
created by all living things. It surrounds us and penetrates us. It
binds the galaxy together.
Myths as Ritual
Sir James Frazer’ The Golden Bough (18901915)
myths as byproducts of ritual enactments
stories to explain religious ceremonies
The Golden Bough On-Line:
http://www.bartleby.com/196/
Myths as Ritual in Star Wars?
Charter Myths
belief-systems set up to authorize
and validate current social customs
and institutions.
Bronsilaw
Malinowski
(1884-1942)
Selected Bibliography:
http://www.vanderbilt.edu/An
S/Anthro/Anth206/malinowski
.htm
Charter Myths in Star Wars?
Structuralism
Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908-)
Jean-Paul Vernant
Pierre Vidal-Naquet
Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908-)
•myth reflect the mind's binary organization
•humans tend to see world as reflection of their own physical and
cerebral structure ( two hands, eyes, legs, etc.)
•Left/right, raw,/cooked, pleasure/pain
•Myth deals with the perception and reconciliation of these
opposites
• mediation of contradictions
Is there mediation of contradictions in Star Wars?
For more on Levi-Strauss see
http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/information/biography/klmno/levi
-strauss_claude.html
Mediating Contradictions
in Star Wars
EWOKS
DROIDS
simple
HUMANS
complex
nature
technology
FORCE
DARK SIDE
Narratology
Vlaimir Propp (1895-1970)
Propp argued that all fairy tales were constructed of
certain plot elements, which he called functions, and that
these elements consistently occurred in a uniform
sequence. Based on a study of one hundred folk tales,
Propp devised a list of thirty-one generic functions,
proposing that they encompassed all of the plot
components from which fairy tales were constructed.
More on Propp:
http://library.marist.edu/diglib/english/theorists/propp.htm
Narratology in Star Wars?
Feminist Approaches to Myth
Marija Gimbutas (1921-1994)
Marija Gimbutas was an archaeologist with a
scholarly background in folklore and linguistics,
making her uniquely qualified to synthesize
information from science and myth into a
controversial theory of a Goddess-based culture in
prehistoric Europe. Joseph Campbell said that, if her
work had been available to him, he would have held
very different views about the archetypes of the
female Divine in world mythology.
Primacy of Matriarchy
Feminist Approach to Star Wars?
Myths as Products of the Mind
Individual Mind
Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)
id / ego / superego
dream world of the individual
Does Star Wars appeal to our individual
dream world?
Myths as Products of the Mind
Collective Mind
Carl Jung (1875-1961)
dream world of society
collective unconscious
archetypes: recurring myths characters, situations and
events
archetype as primal form or pattern from which all other
versions are derived
Does Star Wars appeal to our collective unconscious?
Mircea Eliade
(1907-1986)
Eliade's analysis of religion assumes the existence of "the
sacred" as the object of worship of religious humanity.
Myths reflect a creative era, a sacred time, a vanished epoch of
unique holiness.
Is Star Wars functioning in a creative era, a sacred time?
More on Eliade: http://www.angelfire.com/electronic/bodhidharma/mircea.html
Joseph Campbell
1904-1987
Hero's rite of passage
journey of maturation
Growth into true selfhood (Jung's individuation)
More on Campbell: http://www.jcf.org/about_jc.php
Tragedy and Comedy in the
Monomyth
– “The universal tragedy of man”
– “The happy ending of the fairy tale, the myth,
and the divine comedy of the soul, is to be read
, not as a contradiction, but as a transcendence
of the universal tragedy of man.” (pg. 28)
– It is the business of mythology proper, and of
the fairy tale, to reveal the specific dangers and
techniques of the dark interior way from
tragedy to comedy. (pg. 29)
– Is Tantalus part of the Monomyth?
The World Navel
The world navel is ubiquitous. And since it is the source of all
existence, it yields the world’s plentitude of both good and evil.”
(Campbell, Pg. 44)
The omphalos
The effect of the
successful adventure of
the hero is the unlocking
and release again of the
flow of life into the body
Delphi, the navel of the Greek world
of the world.
(Campbell, pg. 40)
Is there a world navel in Star Wars?
The Star Wars Navel?