Myths have intrigued scholars throughout history. 'Twentieth Century Mythologies' traces the study of myth over the last century, presenting the key theories of mythology and critiquing traditional definitions of myth. The volume presents the work of influential scholars in mythology: the noted Indo-Europeanist Georges Dumezil, the structuralist anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss, and the historian of religions Mircea Eliade. 'Twentieth Century Mythologies' is an indispensable resource for scholars of religion and myth and for all those interested in the history of ideas.
Myths have intrigued scholars throughout history. 'Twentieth Century Mythologies' traces the study of myth over the last century, presenting the key theories of mythology and critiquing traditional definitions of myth. The volume presents the work of influential scholars in mythology: the noted Indo-Europeanist Georges Dumezil, the structuralist anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss, and the historian of religions Mircea Eliade. 'Twentieth Century Mythologies' is an indispensable resource for scholars of religion and myth and for all those interested in the history of ideas.
Regarded as the second most important book to come out of Nazi Germany, Alfred Rosenberg's Der Mythus des zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts is a philosophical and political map which outlines the ideological background to the Nazi Party and maps out how that party viewed society, other races, social ordering, religion, art, aesthetics and the structure of the state. The "Mythus" to which Rosenberg (who was also editor of the Nazi Party newspaper) refers was the concept of blood, which, according to the preface, "unchains the racial world-revolution." Rosenberg's no-hold barred depiction of the history of Christianity earned it the accusation that it was anti-Christian, and that unjustified controversy overshadowed the most interesting sections of the book which deal with the world racial situation and the demand for racially homogenous states as the only method to preserve individual world cultures. Rosenberg was hanged at Nuremberg on charges of "waging wars of aggression" even though he had never served in the military, and it is likely that he was hanged purely because of this book. Contents Preface Book One: The Conflict of Values Chapter I. Race and Race Soul Chapter II. Love and Honour Chapter III. Mysticism and Action Book Two: Nature of Germanic Art Chapter I. Racial Aesthetics Chapter II. Will And Instinct Chapter III. Personality And Style Chapter IV. The Aesthetic Will Book Three: The Coming Reich Chapter I. Myth And Type Chapter II. The State And The Sexes Chapter III. Folk And State Chapter IV. Nordic German Law Chapter V. Church And School Chapter VI. A New System Of State Chapter VII. The Essential Unit
More than a hundred years ago, Freud made a new mythology by revising an old one: Oedipus, in Sophocles' tragedy the legendary perpetrator of shocking crimes, was an Everyman whose story of incest and parricide represented the fulfilment of universal and long forgotten childhood wishes. The Oedipus complex - child, mother, father - suited the nuclear families of the mid-twentieth century. But a century after the arrival of the psychoanalytic Oedipus, it might seem that modern lives are very much changed. Typical family formations and norms of sexual attachment are changing, while the conditions of sexual difference, both biologically and socially, have undergone far-reaching modifications. Today, it is possible to choose and live subjective stories that the first psychoanalytic patients could only dream of. Different troubles and enjoyments are speakable and unspeakable; different selves are rejected, discovered, or sought. Many kinds of hitherto unrepresented or unrepresentable identity have entered into the ordinary surrounding stories through which children and adults find their bearings in the world, while others have become obsolete. Biographical narratives that would previously have seemed unthinkable or incredible—'a likely story!'—have acquired the straightforward plausibility of a likely story. This book takes two Freudian routes to think about some of the present entanglements of identity. First, it follows Freud in returning to Greek tragedies - Oedipus and others - which may now appear strikingly different in the light of today's issues of family and sexuality. And second, it re-examines Freud's own theories from these newer perspectives, drawing out different strands of his stories of how children develop and how people change (or don't). Both kinds of mythology, the classical and the theoretical, may now, in their difference, illuminate some of the forming stories of our contemporary world of serial families, multiple sexualities, and new reproductive technologies.
A variety of thinkers used the concept of myth to articulate their anxieties about modernity. By telling the story of mythic thinking in Britain from its origins in Victorian social anthropology to its postwar cultural mainstreaming, this book reveals a yearning for transcendence in an age long assumed to be disenchanted.
If you told a woman her sex had a shared, long-lived history with weasels, she might deck you. But those familiar with mythology know better: that the connection between women and weasels is an ancient and favorable one, based in the Greek myth of a midwife who tricked the gods to ease Heracles’s birth—and was turned into a weasel by Hera as punishment. Following this story as it is retold over centuries in literature and art, Women and Weasels takes us on a journey through mythology and ancient belief, revising our understanding of myth, heroism, and the status of women and animals in Western culture. Maurizio Bettini recounts and analyzes a variety of key literary and visual moments that highlight the weasel’s many attributes. We learn of its legendary sexual and childbearing habits and symbolic association with witchcraft and midwifery, its role as a domestic pet favored by women, and its ability to slip in and out of tight spaces. The weasel, Bettini reveals, is present at many unexpected moments in human history, assisting women in labor and thwarting enemies who might plot their ruin. With a parade of symbolic associations between weasels and women—witches, prostitutes, midwives, sisters-in-law, brides, mothers, and heroes—Bettini brings to life one of the most venerable and enduring myths of Western culture.
