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?