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Author: Michael Buonanno
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786497122
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 324
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Book Description
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.
Author: Michael Buonanno
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786497122
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 324
Get Book Here
Book Description
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.
Author: David Adams Leeming
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780195102758
Category : Creation
Languages : en
Pages : 342
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Book Description
Author: Claude Lévi-Strauss
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134522304
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 41
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Book Description
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.
Author: G. S. Kirk
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520342372
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 314
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Book Description
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.
Author: Joseph Campbell
Publisher: Harper Perennial
ISBN: 9780060964634
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 272
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Book Description
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.
Author: Roland Barthes
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 0809071940
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 296
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Book Description
"This new edition of MYTHOLOGIES is the first complete, authoritative English version of the French classic, Roland Barthes's most emblematic work"--
Author: Karen Armstrong
Publisher: Vintage Canada
ISBN: 0307367290
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 170
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Book Description
What are myths? How have they evolved? And why do we still so desperately need them? A history of myth is a history of humanity, Karen Armstrong argues in this insightful and eloquent book: our stories and beliefs, our curiosity and attempts to understand the world, link us to our ancestors and each other. This is a brilliant and thought-provoking introduction to myth in the broadest sense–from Palaeolithic times to the “Great Western Transformation” of the last 500 years–and why we dismiss it only at our peril.
Author: Neel Burton
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781913260163
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 222
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Book Description
Not just the stories, but what they mean. What is myth, and why does it have such a hold on the human mind? How does myth relate to near forms such as legend and fairy tale, and to other modes of understanding such as religion and science? What is a hero, what is a monster, and what function does magic serve? How has our relationship with myth and mythology changed over the centuries? And are there any modern myths? These are a few of the fascinating questions that psychiatrist and philosopher Neel Burton explores in the first part of this book. In the second part, he puts theory into practice to unravel 12 of the most captivating Greek myths, including Echo and Narcissus, Eros and Psyche, and Prometheus and Pandora. These myths have been haunting us for millennia, but are they really, as has been claimed, the repositories of deep wisdom and mystical secrets? Get your copy now to find out.
Author: David Adams Leeming
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019987896X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 607
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Book Description
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."
Author: J. F. Bierlein
Publisher: Wellspring/Ballantine
ISBN: 0345422074
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 257
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Book Description
Reveals how key myths of the world present timeless truths that enrich our understanding of the world and the role humans play today.
