Ways of Interpreting Myth
Modified by RL Elias from a presentation by T. Sienkewicz,
Monmouth College
Ancient Ways of Viewing Myth
Archaic 750-480 B.C.
Myth as Venerable Tradition
Questioning of Myths (Rationality)
Myths as Allegory
Classical 480-323 B.C.
Myths as Instructive Models
Myths as Inaccurate
Myths of Questionable Morality
Myths as Dangerous
Xenophanes
Heraclitus
Aeschylus
Euripides
Socrates
Plato
Hellenistic 323-146 B.C.
Gods as Deified Heroes and Kings
Euhemerus
Diodorus
Xenophanes of Colophon
c.570 B.C.
Questioned the Anthropomorphism of the Gods
#170 But mortals consider that the gods are born, and that
they have clothes and speech and bodies like their own.
#171 The Ethiopians say that their gods are snub- nosed
and black, the Thracians that theirs have light blue eyes
and red hair.
#172 But if cattle and horses or lions had hands, or were
able to draw with their hands and do the works that men
can do, horses would draw the forms of gods like horses,
and cattle like cattle, and they would make their bodies
such as they each had themselves.
Myths as Allegory
Theagenes of
Rhegium (525 B.C.)
Gods as symbols of
human qualities;
e.g., Athena =
wisdom
Anaxagoras of Clazomenae (c.500-428 B.C.)
The misdeeds of the gods are intended to illustrate
evil and teach virtue.
Myths as Instructive Models
Aeschylus (c.525-456 B.C.)
used myth to teach
Athenians about the gods
and the their role in the civic
life of Athens.
Orestes at trial with Apollo, Athena, and the
Erinyes The Erinyes of Clytaemnestra pursue
Orestes. Beside Athena, who presides the court,
sits Apollo.
Myths as Dangerous
Plato Banishes Poetry (=Myths) from his Ideal Republic
In Republic Book X Socrates banishes poets from the city as unwholesome and dangerous
because:
•The poets pretend to know all sorts of things, but they really know nothing at all. The things they
deal with cannot be known: they are images, far removed from what is most real. By presenting scenes
so far removed from the truth poets, pervert souls, turning them away from the most real toward the least.
•Worse, the images the poets portray do not imitate the good part of the soul. The rational part of
the soul is quiet, stable, and not easy to imitate or understand. Poets imitate the worst parts—the
inclinations that make characters easily excitable and colorful. Poetry naturally appeals to the worst parts
of souls and arouses, nourishes, and strengthens this base elements while diverting energy from the
rational part
•Poetry corrupts even the best souls. It deceives us into sympathizing with those who grieve
excessively, who lust inappropriately, who laugh at base things. It even goads us into feeling these
base emotions vicariously. We think there is no shame in indulging these emotions because we are
indulging them with respect to a fictional character and not with respect to our own lives.
Euhemerism
Euhemerus of Messene, late 4th c. BCE: The gods are
actually historical figures deified after death.
From Diodorus Siculus:
Now Euhemerus, who was a friend of King Cassander [of Macedonia (301 to 297
B.C.)] and was required by him to perform certain affairs of state and to make a
great journey abroad, says that he traveled southward as far as the [Indian] ocean;
for setting sail from Arabia he voyaged through the ocean for a considerable
number of days and was carried to the shore of some islands in the sea, one of
which bore the name of Panachaea. On this island he saw the Panachaeans who
dwell there, who excel in piety and honor the gods with the most magnificent
sacrifices and with remarkable votive offerings of silver and gold.... There is also
on the island, situated on an exceedingly high hill, a sanctuary of Zeus, which was
established by him during the time when he was king of all the inhabited world
and was still in the company of men. And in the temple there is a stele of gold on
which is inscribed in summary, in the writing employed by the Panchaeans, the
deeds of Ouranos and Kronos and Zeus.
Modern Interpretations of Myth
Externalist Theories:
Myths as products of the environment (social,
political, etc.) or as explanations of natural
phenomena.
Internalist Theories:
Myths as products of the mind or as reflections of
the structure of mind.
Externalist Theories:
Myths as Products of the
Environment
Myths as Aetiology
Nature Myths
Myths as Rituals
Charter Myths
Myths as Aetiology
myth as explanation of the
origin of things
myth as primitive science
Europa (eponymous hero)
Creation myths
Arachne
Apollo as source of plague
Athena and Arachne in Ovid’s Metamorphoses
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
Solar mythology
Zeus as the Sky
• Dyaus pitr
Sanskrit
– Dyaus = “he who shines”
– pitr = father
• Zeus pater
• Jupiter
• Tiu Vater
(German)
Indo-European
Greek
Latin
Teutonic
Myths as Ritual
Sir James Frazer’ The Golden Bough
(1890-1915)
myths as byproducts of ritual
enactments that survive after the
ritual is no longer practiced. A “decay
of language”
stories to explain religious
ceremonies
Charter Myths
Myths authorize and validate current social customs
and institutions.
Bronsilaw
Malinowski
(1884-1942)
Internalist Theories: Myths as Products of the Mind
Individual Mind
Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)
Laistner (1889) All monsters of myth
originated in nightmares.
Roheim (1952) disguised version of the
Oedipus complex
Collective Mind
Carl Jung (1875-1961)
Joseph Campbell (1904-1987)
Structuralism
Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908-2010)
Jean-Paul Vernant
Pierre Vidal-Naquet
Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908-2010)
myth reflects 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
Narratology
Vladimir Propp (1895-1970)
A formalist approach . . . concerned with HOW a
myth/folktale/etc. is put together
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.
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
Which theory is right?