Interpreting Mythology

A Definition of Myth: A myth is a telling of a traditional tale, in which the teller shapes the traditional material in response to his context and audience, and in which aspects of the culture's models of the world are selected or rejected by the teller in his crafting of the story according to his view of the significant tensions and issues involved with the narrative.

"The story is not mine, but my mother's... " - fragment from Euripides' Melanippe

TELLING:

• Who is telling the myth?
• To whom is the teller telling it?
• What are the circumstances of the telling?

TRADITION:

• transformative transmission – the tale remains dynamic in the process of retelling
• polyvalence – traditional symbols carry a complex set of resonances

TALE:

• persuasive imagery – memorable crystallizations of ideas
• narrative structure – chronological relations to illustrate logical relations

- from a letter of Charles L. Dodgson (better known as Lewis Carroll) to his younger siblings, describing his experience as a tutor, conveying knowledge to his pupils

I sit at the further end of the room; outside the door (which is shut) sits the scout; outside the outer door (which is also shut) sits the sub-scout; half-way down the stairs sits the sub-sub-scout; and down in the yard sits the pupil.

The questions are shouted from one to the other, and the answers come back in the same way - it is rather confusing till you are well used to it. The lecture goes on something like this:

TUTOR: What is twice three?

SCOUT: What's a rice tree?

SUB-SCOUT: When is rice free?

SUB-SUB-SCOUT: What's a nice fee?

PUPIL (timidly): Half a guinea!

SUB-SUB-SCOUT: Can't forge any!

SUB-SCOUT: Ho for Jinny!

SCOUT: Don't be a ninny!

TUTOR (looks offended, but tries another question): Divide a hundred by twelve!

SCOUT: Provide wonderful bells!

SUB-SCOUT: Go ride it under yourself!

SUB-SUB-SCOUT: Deride the dunderheaded elf!

PUPIL (surprised): Who do you mean?

SUB-SUB-SCOUT: Doings between!

SUB-SCOUT: Blue is the screen.

SCOUT: Soup-tureen!

And so the lecture proceeds.

Such is life.

COMPREHENDING MYTH

• The Components of the Tale – Analysis of a Myth
• The Variants of the Tale – Synthesis of a Myth
• The Meanings of the Tale – Interpretations of a Myth

MYTH AND MEANING

meaning for us vs. meaning for original audience (and subsequent audiences)

classicizing vs. historicizing interpretation

"The story is not mine, but my mother's... " - fragment from Euripides' Melanippe

Tell me now, Muses dwelling in Olympian homes - for you are goddesses, you are there, and you know everything, while we only hear report, but we know nothing - who were the leaders and rulers of the Danaans. I could not recount or name their full number, not if I had ten tongues or ten mouths, a voice unbroken or a bronze heart within, not unless the Olympian Muses, daughters of aegis-bearing Zeus, recall the many who came up to the walls of Ilion. (Homer, Iliad 2.484-93)

These are the ones who one day taught Hesiod beautiful song while he was tending his sheep at the foot of sacred Helikon; these are the very first words the goddesses, the Olympian Muses, daughters of aegis-bearing Zeus, said to me: "Shepherds dwelling in the fields, base cowards, mere bellies; we know how to say many false things that resemble real things; and we know also, whenever we are willing, how to say true things." Thus spoke the daughters of great Zeus, they who words are exactly fitted, and they gave me a scepter, a wondrous branch of luxuriant laurel, having plucked it; then they breathed into me divine song so that I may celebrate the things that will be and the things that have been... (Hesiod, Theogony 22-32)

But whence each of these gods came into existence, or whether they were for ever, and what kind of shape they had were not known until the day before yesterday, if I may use the expression; for I believe that Homer and Hesiod were four hundred years before my own time - and no more than that. It is they who created for the Greeks their theogony; it is they who gave to the gods the special names for their descent from their ancestors and divided among them their honors, their arts, and their shapes. (Herodotus 2.53)

Well, all these stories and others still more remarkable have their source in one and the same event, but in the lapse of ages some of them have been lost and others are told in fragmentary and disconnected fashion. But no one has told the event which is the cause of them all. (Plato, Statesman 269a)

There was a time when the life of men was unordered, bestial and the slave of force, when there was no reward for the virtuous and no punishment for the wicked. Then, I think, men devised retributory laws, in order that Justice might be dictator and have arrogance as its slave, and if anyone sinned, he was punished. Then, when the laws forbade them to commit open crimes of violence, and they began to do them in secret, a wise and clever man invented fear (of the gods) for mortals, that there might be some means of frightening the wicked, even if they do anything or say or think it in secret. Hence he introduced the Divine (religion), saying that there is a God flourishing with immortal life, hearing and seeing with his mind, and thinking of everything and caring about these things, and having divine nature, who will hear everything said among mortals, and will be able to see all that is done. And even if you plan anything evil in secret, you will not escape the gods in this; for they have surpassing intelligence. (Critias fr. 25 DK)

A tradition has been handed down by the ancient thinkers of very early times, and bequeathed to posterity in the form of a myth, to the effect that these heavenly bodies are gods, and that the Divine pervades the whole of nature. The rest of their tradition has been added later in a mythological form to influence the vulgar and as a constitutional and utilitarian expedient; they say that these gods are human in shape or are like certain other animals, and make other statements consequent upon and similar to those which we have mentioned. Now if we separate these statements and accept only the first, that they supposed the primary substances to be gods, we must regard it as an inspired saying and reflect that whereas every art and philosophy has probably been repeatedly developed to the utmost and has perished again, these beliefs of theirs have been preserved as a relic of former knowledge. To this extent only, then, are the views of our forefathers and of the earliest thinkers intelligible to us. (Aristotle, Metaphysics 1074b)

It is through wonder that men now begin and originally began to philosophize; wondering in the first place at obvious perplexities, and then by gradual progression raising questions about the greater matters too, e.g. about the changes of the moon and of the sun, about the stars and about the origin of the universe.Now he who wonders and is perplexed feels that he is ignorant (thus the myth-lover is in a sense a philosopher, since myths are composed of wonders); therefore if it was to escape ignorance that men studied philosophy, it is obvious that they pursued science for the sake of knowledge, and not for any practical utility. The actual course of events bears witness to this; for speculation of this kind began with a view to recreation and pastime, at a time when practically all the necessities of life were already supplied. Clearly then it is for no extrinsic advantage that we seek this knowledge; for just as we call a man independent who exists for himself and not for another, so we call this the only independent science, since it alone exists for itself. (Aristotle, Metaphysics 982b)

Indeed the writings of Herodotus could be put into verse and yet would still be a kind of history, whether written in metre or not. The real difference is this, that one tells what happened and the other what might happen. For this reason poetry is something more scientific and serious than history, because poetry tends to give general truths while history gives particular facts.

By a "general truth" I mean the sort of thing that a certain type of man will do or say either probably or necessarily. That is what poetry aims at in giving names to the characters. A "particular fact" is what Alcibiades did or what was done to him. In the case of comedy this has now become obvious, for comedians construct their plots out of probable incidents and then put in any names that occur to them. They do not, like the iambic satirists, write about individuals. In tragedy, on the other hand, they keep to real names. The reason is that what is possible carries conviction. If a thing has not happened, we do not yet believe in its possibility, but what has happened is obviously possible. Had it been impossible, it would not have happened. It is true that in some tragedies one or two of the names are familiar and the rest invented; indeed in some they are all invented, as for instance in Agathon's Antheus, where both the incidents and the names are invented and yet it is none the less a favourite. One need not therefore endeavor invariably to keep to the traditional stories with which our tragedies deal. Indeed it would be absurd to do that, seeing that the familiar themes are familiar only to a few and yet please all.

It is clear, then, from what we have said that the poet must be a "maker" not of verses but of stories (mythoi), since he is a poet in virtue of his "representation," and what he represents is action. Even supposing he represents what has actually happened, he is none the less a poet, for there is nothing to prevent some actual occurrences being the sort of thing that would probably or inevitably happen, and it is in virtue of that that he is their "maker." (Aristotle, Poetics 1451b)