MYTH

Παρουσίαση

This book attempts to come to grips with a set of widely ranging but connected problems concerning myths: their relation to folktales on the one hand, to rituals on the other; the validity and scope of the structuralist theory of myth; the range of possible mythical functions; the effects of developed social institutions and literacy; the character and meaning of ancient Near-Eastern myths and their influence on Greece; the special forms taken by Greek myths and their involvement with rational modes of thought; the status of myths as expressions of the unconscious, as allied with dreams, as universal symbols, or as accidents of primarily narrative aims.
Almost none of these problems has been convincingly handled, even in a provisional way, up to the present, and this failure has vitiated not only such few general discussions as exist of the nature, meanings and functions of myths but also, in many cases, the detailed assessment of individual myths of different cultures.
The need for a coherent treatment of these and related problems, and one that is not concerned simply to propagate a particular universalistic theory (the very notion of which is in my opinion chimerical), seems undeniable. How far the present book will satisfactorily fill such a need remains to be seen. At least it makes a beginning, even if in doing so it risks the criticism of being neither fish nor fowl. [...] (From the publisher)

Περιεχόμενα

Preface
Abbreviations
I. Myth, Ritual and Folktale
II. Levi-Strauss and the Structural Approach
III. The Nature of Myths in Ancient Mesopotamia
IV. Nature and Culture: Gilgamesh, Centaurs, and Cyclopes
V. The Qualities of Greek Myths
VI. Tales, Dreams, Symbols: Towards a Fuller Understanding of Myths
Index