Download or read book The Meaning of Myth in World Cultures written by Michael Buonanno and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2018-12-06 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mythology--circulated in sacred stories (myths) and their reenactments (rituals)--is the basis of any society's religion, and religion is an essential key to identity. Mythology's meaning depends on the elaboration of identity in cultural metaphors that are at the same time ecological (arising from a society's environmental exploitation), sociological (based on indigenous social relations) and ideological (couched in terms of a society's worldview). But tellingly, these metaphors are embodied in anthropomorphic spirits, fostering a deep sense of identification with those spirits as well as with individuals who share in one's spiritual devotions. This study examines mythology from a global perspective, citing case studies in cultural traditions from Africa, Europe, Oceania, Native America and elsewhere.
Download or read book The Meaning of Myth in World Cultures written by Michael Buonanno and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2018-12-06 with total page 323 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mythology—circulated in sacred stories (myths) and their reenactments (rituals)—is the basis of any society’s religion, and religion is an essential key to identity. Mythology’s meaning depends on the elaboration of identity in cultural metaphors that are at the same time ecological (arising from a society’s environmental exploitation), sociological (based on indigenous social relations) and ideological (couched in terms of a society’s worldview). But tellingly, these metaphors are embodied in anthropomorphic spirits, fostering a deep sense of identification with those spirits as well as with individuals who share in one’s spiritual devotions. This study examines mythology from a global perspective, citing case studies in cultural traditions from Africa, Europe, Oceania, Native America and elsewhere.
Download or read book Myth written by G. S. Kirk and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2023-09-01 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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, 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. Sociologists and folklorists may find it, from their specialized viewpoints, a little simplistic in places; and a few classical colleagues will not forgive me for straying far beyond Greek myths, even though these can hardly be understood in isolation or solely in the light of studies in cult and ritual. Others may find it less easy than anthropologists, sociologists, historians of thought or students of French and English literature to accept the relevance of Levi-Strauss to some of these matters; but his theory contains the one important new idea in this field since Freud, it is complicated and largely untested, and it demands careful attention from anyone attempting a broad understanding of the subject. The beliefs of Freud and Jung, on the other hand, are a more familiar element in the situation and have given rise to an enormous secondary literature, much of it arbitrary and some of it absurd. The author has tried to isolate the crucial ideas and subject them to a pointed, if too brief, critique; so too with those of Ernst Cassirer.
Download or read book Transformations of Myth Through Time written by Joseph Campbell and published by Harper Perennial. This book was released on 1990-02-28 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The renowned master of mythology is at his warm, accessible, and brilliant best in this illustrated collection of thirteen lectures covering mythological development around the world.
Download or read book Myth and Meaning written by Claude Lévi-Strauss and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2003-09-02 with total page 40 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In addresses written for a wide general audience, one of the twentieth century's most prominent thinkers, Claude Lévi-Strauss, here offers the insights of a lifetime on the crucial questions of human existence. Responding to questions as varied as 'Can there be meaning in chaos?', 'What can science learn from myth?' and 'What is structuralism?', Lévi-Strauss presents, in clear, precise language, essential guidance for those who want to learn more about the potential of the human mind.
Download or read book Myth written by Robert Alan Segal and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2015 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Where do myths come from? What is their function and what do they mean? In this Very Short Introduction Robert Segal introduces the array of approaches used to understand the study of myth. These approaches hail from disciplines as varied as anthropology, sociology, psychology, literary criticism, philosophy, science, and religious studies. Including ideas from theorists as varied as Sigmund Freud, Claude Levi-Strauss, Albert Camus, and Roland Barthes, Segal uses the famous ancient myth of Adonis to analyse their individual approaches and theories. In this new edition, he not only considers the future study of myth, but also considers the interactions of myth theory with cognitive science, the implications of the myth of Gaia, and the differences between story-telling and myth. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.
Download or read book A Dictionary of Creation Myths written by David Adams Leeming and published by . This book was released on 1994 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Myth Meaning and Performance written by Ronald Eyerman and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-12-03 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The cultural and performative turns in social theory have enlivened sociology. For the first time these new developments are fully integrated into new approaches to the sociology of the arts in this important new book. Building on the established research into art worlds, what is interesting for the new sociology of the arts, understood in the broad sense to include popular culture as well the classical focus on music, painting, and literature, is the relationship between art works and meaning, myth, and performance. Also reflected in these rich essays, which range from Beethoven to John Lennon to Chinese avant garde artists, is the lived experience of the artist and its impact on the process of creation and innovation.
Download or read book A Dictionary of World Mythology written by Arthur Cotterell and published by . This book was released on 1979 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Myth in the Modern World written by David Whitt and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2014-04-04 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ubiquitous and enduring, myths are an inherent part of culture. These 10 essays explore the role of myth in the modern world, delving not only into science fiction and fantasy, but also into sport, terrorist rhetoric and television. Contributors contemplate the changing face of the hero in Breaking Bad, Justified and the Japanese film trilogy 20th Century Boys; explore ideology in George R.R. Martin's A Song of Fire and Ice novels and the HBO series Game of Thrones, Showtime's The L Word, and The Day the Earth Stood Still; and examine Al Qaeda's use of myth to justify its violent actions. Other essays consider the hero ideal in sport, the wolf myth in Twilight and the comic persona of Hercules in the Travel Channel series Man v. Food. The power of myth, this volume reveals, extends beyond ancient stories of gods and heroes to express the hopes, fears and reality of everyday life.
Download or read book Myth written by G. S. Kirk and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1973-06-08 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book, developed out of the 1969 Sather lectures at Berkeley, California, confronts a wide range of problems concerning the nature, meaning and functions of myths. Professor Kirk's aim is to introduce a degree of coherence and of critical awareness into a subject that arouses profound interest today, but which for too long has been the target of excessive theorizing and interdisciplinary confusion between anthropologists, sociologists, classicists, philosophers and psychologists. Professor Kirk begins by discussing the relation of myths to rituals and folktales, and the weakness of universalist theories of function. He then subjects Lévi-Strauss's structuralist theory to an extended exposition and criticism; he considers the character and meaning of ancient Near Eastern myths, their influence on Greece, and the special forms with rational modes of thought, and finally, he assesses the status of myths as expressions of the unconscious, as elements of dreams, universal symbols, as accidents along the way to some narrative objective. The result is a significant critical venture into the history and philosophy of thought, imagination, symbol and society.--From publisher description.
Download or read book The Cry for Myth written by Rollo May and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 1991-05-01 with total page 323 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Here are case studies in which myths have helped Dr. May's patients make sense out of an often senseless world. It happens almost daily in a therapist's office. A patient, recalling a person, an event, an emotion, quite unexpectedly supplies a link from a life in the present to one of the durable myths of our culture. In this moment, the myth becomes a mirror, revealing to the patient the source of disturbance and pain in a pattern of behavior that often stretches a year or longer. The healing process begins. The myth, "eternity breaking into time" in Rollo Mays's words, becomes the focal point of recovery. Through tracing myths – whether from classical Greece and Dante's Middle Ages, European legend (Faust and the prototype of Sleeping Beauty), or contemporary American life (Jay Gatsby) -- and relating them to the dreams and associations he encounters in his own practice, Dr. May provides meaning and structure for all who seek direction in a morally confusing world. In this, perhaps the finest achievement of a great therapist, Rollo May writes with "the grace, wit, and style: for which he recently received the Gold Medal of the American Psychological Society.
Download or read book Mythologies written by Roland Barthes and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2013-03-12 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This new edition of MYTHOLOGIES is the first complete, authoritative English version of the French classic, Roland Barthes's most emblematic work"--
Download or read book The World of Myth written by David Adams Leeming and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1992-02-27 with total page 379 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hercules, Zeus, Thor, Gilgamesh--these are the figures that leap to mind when we think of myth. But to David Leeming, myths are more than stories of deities and fantastic beings from non-Christian cultures. Myth is at once the most particular and the most universal feature of civilization, representing common concerns that each society voices in its own idiom. Whether an Egyptian story of creation or the big-bang theory of modern physics, myth is metaphor, mirroring our deepest sense of ourselves in relation to existence itself. Now, in The World of Myth, Leeming provides a sweeping anthology of myths, ranging from ancient Egypt and Greece to the Polynesian islands and modern science. We read stories of great floods from the ancient Babylonians, Hebrews, Chinese, and Mayans; tales of apocalypse from India, the Norse, Christianity, and modern science; myths of the mother goddess from Native American Hopi culture and James Lovelock's Gaia. Leeming has culled myths from Aztec, Greek, African, Australian Aboriginal, Japanese, Moslem, Hittite, Celtic, Chinese, and Persian cultures, offering one of the most wide-ranging collections of what he calls the collective dreams of humanity. More important, he has organized these myths according to a number of themes, comparing and contrasting how various societies have addressed similar concerns, or have told similar stories. In the section on dying gods, for example, both Odin and Jesus sacrifice themselves to renew the world, each dying on a tree. Such traditions, he proposes, may have their roots in societies of the distant past, which would ritually sacrifice their kings to renew the tribe. In The World of Myth, David Leeming takes us on a journey "not through a maze of falsehood but through a marvellous world of metaphor," metaphor for "the story of the relationship between the known and the unknown, both around us and within us." Fantastic, tragic, bizarre, sometimes funny, the myths he presents speak of the most fundamental human experience, a part of what Joseph Campbell called "the wonderful song of the soul's high adventure."
Download or read book Living Myths written by J. F. Bierlein and published by Wellspring/Ballantine. This book was released on 1999 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reveals how key myths of the world present timeless truths that enrich our understanding of the world and the role humans play today.
Download or read book The Modern Myths written by Philip Ball and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2022-10-17 with total page 437 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With The Modern Myths, brilliant science communicator Philip Ball spins a new yarn. From novels and comic books to B-movies, it is an epic exploration of literature, new media and technology, the nature of storytelling, and the making and meaning of our most important tales. Myths are usually seen as stories from the depths of time—fun and fantastical, but no longer believed by anyone. Yet, as Philip Ball shows, we are still writing them—and still living them—today. From Robinson Crusoe and Frankenstein to Batman, many stories written in the past few centuries are commonly, perhaps glibly, called “modern myths.” But Ball argues that we should take that idea seriously. Our stories of Dracula, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and Sherlock Holmes are doing the kind of cultural work that the ancient myths once did. Through the medium of narratives that all of us know in their basic outline and which have no clear moral or resolution, these modern myths explore some of our deepest fears, dreams, and anxieties. We keep returning to these tales, reinventing them endlessly for new uses. But what are they really about, and why do we need them? What myths are still taking shape today? And what makes a story become a modern myth? In The Modern Myths, Ball takes us on a wide-ranging tour of our collective imagination, asking what some of its most popular stories reveal about the nature of being human in the modern age.
