COMPARATIVE MYTHOLOGY en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_mythology Comparative mythology is the comparison of myths from different cultures in an attempt to identify shared themes and characteristics.[1] Comparative mythology has served a variety of academic purposes. For example, scholars have used the relationships between different myths to trace the development of religions and cultures, to propose common origins for myths from different cultures, and to support various psychological theories. COMPARATIVISTS VS PARTICULARISTS en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_mythology#Comparativists_versus_particularists The anthropologist C. Scott Littleton defined comparative mythology as the systematic comparison of myths and mythic themes drawn from a wide variety of cultures.[1] By comparing different cultures mythologies, scholars try to identify underlying similarities and/or to reconstruct a protomythology from which those mythologies developed.[1] To an extent, all theories about mythology follow a comparative approach: as the scholar of religion Robert Segal notes, by definition, all theorists [of myth] seek similarities among myths.[2] However, scholars of mythology can be roughly divided into particularists, who emphasize the differences between myths, and comparativists, who emphasize the similarities. Particularists tend to maintain that the similarities deciphered by comparativists are vague and superficial. While comparativists tend to contend that the differences etched by Particularists are trivial and incidental.[3] Comparative approaches to mythology held great popularity among eighteenth- and nineteenth-century scholars. Many of these scholars believed that all myths showed signs of having evolved from a single myth or mythical theme.[4] For example, the nineteenth-century philologist Friedrich Max Müller led a school of thought which interpreted nearly all myths as poetic descriptions of the suns behavior. According to this theory, these poetic descriptions had become distorted over time into seemingly diverse stories about gods and heroes.[4] However, modern-day scholars lean more toward particularism, feeling suspicious of broad statements about myths.[5] One exception to this trend is Joseph Campbells theory of the monomyth, which is discussed below. Another recent exception is the historical approach followed in E.J. Michael Witzels reconstruction of many subsequent layers of older mythologies [6] (discussed further below). Joseph Campbell in his many writings on what should constitute a total science of mythology describes the difference in the two approaches: For, as a broad view of the field [of mythology] immediately shows, in every well-established culture realm to which a new system of thought and civilization comes, it is received creatively, not inertly. A sensitive, complex process of selection, adaptation, and development brings the new forms into contact with their approximate analogues or homologues in the native inheritance, and in certain instances - notably in Egypt, Crete, the Indus valley, and a little later, the Far East - prodigious forces of indigenous productivity are released in native style, but on the level of the new stage. In other words, although its culture stage at any given period may be shown to have been derived, as an effect of alien influences, the particular style of each of the great domains can no less surely be shown to be indigenous. And so it is that a scholar largely concerned with native forms will tend to argue for local, stylistic originality, whereas one attentive rather to the broadly flung evidence of diffused techniques, artifacts, and mythological motifs will be inclined to lime out a single culture history of mankind, characterized by well-defined general stages, though rendered by way of no less well-defined local styles. It is one thing to analyze the genesis and subsequent diffusion of the fundamental heritage of all high civilizations whatsoever; another to mark the genesis, maturation, and demise of the several local mythological styles; and a third to measure the force of each local style in the context of the unitary history of mankind. A total science of mythology must give attention, as far as possible, to all three.[7] APPROACHES TO COMPARATIVE MYTHOLOGY en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_mythology#Approaches_to_comparative_mythology Comparative mythologists come from various fields, including folklore, anthropology, history, linguistics, and religious studies, and they have used a variety of methods to compare myths. These are some important approaches to comparative mythology. LINGUISTIC en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_mythology#Linguistic Some scholars look at the linguistic relationships between the myths of different cultures—for example, the similarities between the names of gods in different cultures. One particularly successful example of this approach is the study of Indo-European mythology. Scholars have found striking similarities between the mythological and religious terms used in different cultures of Europe and India. For example, the Greek sky-god Zeus Pater, the Roman sky-god Jupiter, and the Indian (Vedic) sky-god Dyauṣ Pitṛ have linguistically identical names. This suggests that the Greeks, Romans, and Indians originated from a common ancestral culture, and that the names Zeus, Jupiter, Dyaus and the Germanic Tiu (cf. English Tues-day) evolved from an older name, *Dyēus ph2ter, which referred to the sky-god—or, to give a perfect English cognate, the day-father—in a Proto-Indo-European religion.[8] STRUCTURAL en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_mythology#Structural Some scholars look for underlying structures shared by different myths. The folklorist Vladimir Propp proposed that many Russian fairy tales have a common plot structure, in which certain events happen in a predictable order.[9] In contrast, the anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss examined the structure of a myth in terms of the abstract relationships between its elements, rather than their order in the plot. In particular, Lévi-Strauss believed that the elements of a myth could be organized into binary oppositions (raw vs. cooked, nature vs. culture, etc.). He thought that the myths purpose was to mediate these oppositions, thereby resolving basic tensions or contradictions found in human life or culture.[10] PSYCHOLOGICAL en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_mythology#Psychological Some scholars propose that myths from different cultures reveal the same, or similar, psychological forces at work in those cultures. Some Freudian thinkers have identified stories similar to the Greek story of Oedipus in many different cultures. They argue that these stories reflect the different expressions of the Oedipus complex in those cultures.[11] Likewise, Jungians have identified images, themes, and patterns that appear in the myths of many different cultures. They believe that these similarities result from archetypes present in the unconscious levels of every persons mind.[12] HISTORICAL AND COMPARATIVE en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_mythology#Historical_and_comparative A new approach, which is both historical and comparative, has recently been proposed by E.J. Michael Witzel.[6] He compares collections of mythologies of various cultures, from Iceland and Egypt to the Mayas, and reconstructs increasingly older levels, parallel to but not necessarily dependent on language families (see above). The most prominent common feature is a story line that extends from the creation of the world and of humans to their end. This feature is found in the northern mythologies of Eurasia and the Americas (Laurasia) while it is missing in the southern mythologies of Subsaharan Africa, New Guinea and Australia (Gondwanaland). The latter is the older one, going back to the dispersal of Homo sapiens out of Africa, some 65,000 years ago. Based on these two reconstructions he offers some suggestions about the tales of the (genetic) African Eve. Close attention is paid to the largely parallel developments in archaeology, paleontology, genetics and linguistics. He also makes some suggestions about the persistence of these Stone Age myths in current religions.
Posted on: Sun, 03 Nov 2013 15:20:31 +0000
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