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Ways of Interpreting Myths about Hercules
Modern Theories
Modern Interpretations of Myth
Externalist Theories: Myths as Products of the Environment
Internalist Theories: Myths as Products of the Mind
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 mythThe autonomy of mythSee: Some Theories of Myth
Externalist Theories:Myths as Products of the Environment
Myths as Aetiology Comparative MythologyNature MythsMyths as RitualsCharter Myths
Myths as Aetiology
myth as explanation of the origin of things
myth as primitive science myth as primitive science
"The Origin of the Milky Way” (c.1575)Jacopo Tintoretto (1518-94)National Gallery, London
F. Max MüllerNature Myths
Max Müller1823-1900)
For Müller, the culture of the Vedic peoples represented a form of nature worship, an idea clearly influenced by Romanticism
Comparative approach: Study of Vedic peoples of ancient India applied to myths of other cultures (Greece and Rome)
Founder of the social scientific study of religion
Zeus as the Sky
• Dyaus pitr Sanskrit– Dyaus = “he who shines”– pitr = father
• Zeus pater Greek• Jupiter Latin• Tiu Vater Teutonic
(German)
Indo-European
Herakles (Heracles)Hercle
HerculesAmerican
RomanItalian RenaissanceEtruscan
Greek
Hercules and
Nature Myths
http://www.constellationsofwords.com/Constellations/Hercules.html
Myths as RitualSir James Frazer’ The Golden Bough (1890-1915)
Comparative mythology
myths as by products of ritual enactments
stories to explain religious ceremonies
The Golden Bough On-Line:http://www.bartleby.com/196/
Turner’s “Golden Bough”
http://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/ViewWork?cgroupid=999999996&workid=14718
Joseph M. W. Turner (1775-1851) The Golden Bough 1834Tate Gallery, London
Hercules and Ritual
Diodorus Siculusbook 2.42 - To reluctantly meet with Herakles, Zeus killed a ram and used the ram’s head as a mask when he spoke to his son; for that reason, the Egyptians portray Zeus with the head of a ram
Frazer. The Golden Bough. Chapter 52. Killing the Divine Animal
Coin from Cyrene showing Zeus Ammon (Kunsthistorisches Museum,Vienna)
Jupiter (as Ammon with Horns) Seducing Olympias (mother of Alexander) by Giulio Romano (Orbetto; 1499-1546)
Charter Myths
Bronsilaw Malinowski (1884-1942)
Selected Bibliography:http://www.vanderbilt.edu/AnS/Anthro/Anth206/malinowski.htm
Does the myth of Hercules validate social customs and institutions?
belief-systems set up to authorize and validate current social customs and institutions.
Hercules, Admetus and AlcestisXenia (Guestfriendship)
Hercules Fighting Death to Save Alcestis by Frederic Lord Leighton (1869-71).
Hercules Restoring Alcestis. Pietro Benvenuti (1769 - 1844)
Structuralism
Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908-)
Jean-Paul Vernant
Pierre Vidal-Naquet
Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908-)
• myth reflect the mind's binary organization• diachronic vs. synchronic reading of myth• 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
For more on Levi-Strauss see http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/information/biography/klmno/levi-strauss_claude.html
How does Hercules mediate contradictions?
Hercules Mediating Contradictions
Human Animal (Lion Skin)Human DivineVirtue Vice
The Drunken Hercules c. 1611Peter Paul RubensGemäldegalerie, Dresden, Germany
Hercules and Centaurs
NessusPholusChiron
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.
What narrative functions are in the myth of Hercules?
Johann Jakob Bachofen (1815 – 1887)
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
What about Hercules? (Glory of Hera)
Myths as Products of the Mind
Individual Mind
Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)id / ego / superego
dream world of the individual
Does Hercules 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 Hercules appeal to our collective unconscious?
Students of Jung Ernst Cassirer (1874-1975)
Mircea Eliade (1907-1986)
Victor Turner (1920-1983)
Joseph Campbell (1904-1987)
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 Hercules living in a vanished epoch?
More on Eliade: http://www.angelfire.com/electronic/bodhidharma/mircea.html
Joseph Campbell1904-1987
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
Myth and Dream
Myths as Products of the MIND
The Monomyth (James Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake)
Hercules’ Rite of Passageseparation—initiation--return
(See Hero Pg. 30)
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.
– Is Hercules part of the Monomyth?