Contents
Preface: A ReadMe File for the User
Acknowledgments
Part 1. Access To Tools and Definitions
Chapter 1. Myth Around the Clock: From Mama Myth to Mythographic Analysis
Myth the Mother
Positive and Negative Uses of “Myth”
The Myth- Terms of Our Analyses
Hermeneutics and Interpretation
The Range of Definitions
Chapter 2. The Nature of the Mythical Beast: A Comprehensive, Polyphasic Working Definition (Part 1)
(1) Network of Myths
(2) Culturally Important
(3) Imaginal
(4) Stories
(5) Metaphoric and Symbolic Diction
(6) Graphic Imagery
(7) Emotional Conviction and Participation
(8) The Primal, Foundational Accounts
(9) The Real, Experienced World
(10) Humankind’s Roles and Relative Statuses
Chapter 3. Maieutic, Creative Myth: Conveying Values and Systems of Interpreting Reality (Definition, Part 2)
(11) Convey Political and Moral Values
(12) Systems of Interpretation
(13) Individual Experience within Universal Perspectives
(14) Intervention of Suprahuman Entities
(15) Aspects of the Natural and Cultural Orders
(16) Rituals, Ceremonials, and Dramas
(17) Secondary Elaborations
Chapter 4. The “Noble White Man”: Why Myths Seem Déclassé in Today’s Glitz Culture
Those Primitive Savages Lacked Scienti¤c Truth
Myths, Science, and Truth(s)
Phenomenologically Existential Mythicity
The Greeks Are Still Very Much With Us
Myth and/versus Biblical History
The Smart and the Proper: When Do We Do What We Say We Do?
Part 2. Mythography: Historical Schools and Issues
Chapter 5. Comparativism and the Functional Contexts of Myths and Rituals
Sociofunctionalism: Myth as “Cement” and as “Charter”
How Myths Serve Society
Levels of Operational Vitality
Functional Contexts of Myths and Rituals
Reducing Anxiety and Communicating: Two German Functionalists
Polyfunctional and Polysemantic Meanings
Chapter 6. Myth on the Psychoanalytical Couch: Freud and Beyond
Sigmund’s Mythology
Manifest Contents Versus Latent Contents
The Primal Horde, Civilization, and Religion
A Mythological Reading of Freud
Etiological Bias
Mythological Interpretation
Post-Freudian Mythography
Psychosociology
Psychoanthropology
Chapter 7. The Imaginal, Archetypal Turn: Jung, Hillman, and Further Beyond
Jungian Archetypes and Ampli¤cations
Archetypal Myth
The Animated Mythological Terrain of James Hillman
Other Semi-/Hemi-/Neo-Jungian Myth Studies
Psychologically Affective Myths and Rituals
Chapter 8. Mything Links: Mythlitcrit and Cultural Studies Analyses (Marx Was a Smoothie)
The Literary Importance of The Golden Bough
Myth-and-Ritual Criticism
Mythicosymbolism and Monomythicism
Northrop Frye’s Myth
Mythic Figures in Literature
Mythicity and the Modern/Postmodern
Gould’s Intentions of Mythicity
Cultural Studies of Cultural Studies
Chapter 9. The Enframing Prime-time Context Is All: Structuralisms, Semiotics, and Cultural History
Structuralism and the Concepts of “Structure”
Protostructuralist Structuralists
Lévi-Strauss: The Myth and the Mythed
Sequential and Semiotic Structuralists
The New French Cultural History
Bonnefoy/Doniger’s Encyclopedia
Biogentic Structuralism
Part 3. Embodiments, Rites, and Ceremonials
Chapter 10. The Cosmological/Symbological Human/Social Body
Joseph Campbell’s Mythography
The Local and the Universal
Ethological Questions
The Cosmological Human Body
Biogenetic Colors
Mythologically Attuned Bodies
The Human Social Experience
Bliss at the Mother's Breast
Gender Differentiation
The Family and the Clan
Dualities, Polarities, and Their Mediation
Chapter 11. Yesterday’s World Wide Web? : Ritual as Culture’s Symbolic Nexus
The Historical Ritual-Dominant (Myth-and-Ritual) School
Emphasis upon the Priority of Ritual
Victor Turner’s Ritual Studies
The Means of Analysis
Rituals Reflect Social Structures
Rituals Influence Social Relationships
The Trickster and the Liminal / Liminoid
Turner Updated
Chapter 12. Sacrificial Scapegoating the Origin of Myth/Religion? : Ritualizations as Necessary Gestures toward Being Human
Definitions and Attitudes and Functions
Girard: Violence, the Sacred, and the Sacrificial Scapegoat
Rene Girard
The Theory: A Compressed Version
Tracing the Theory's Heritage and Future
Girard's NATURAL BORN KILLERS
Developing Girardian Mythographies
Contemporary Antiritualism and the Postmodern
How Rituals Serve Society
Ludic Liminality
Part 4. Mythified Existence
Chapter 13. Making Do in a Decentered Cosmos: Signs of Our Myths and Tales
Social and Cultural Semiotics
Transformation and Transmission of Mythic Materials
Universalizing Fairy Tales and Myths
Chapter 14. Don’t Myth (with) the Boat: Our Deconstructed, Fictive-Mythic Universe
From Realism on Down
The Sacred as Fictive Mythicity
Mythographic Moralities
Furbishing The Creative Mythographer’s Toolkit
i. Glossary
ii. Questions to Address to Mythic Texts
iii. The New Mythical Iconography
iv. Myth on the Internet
1. General Introductions to the Study of Mythology
2. The Historical Development of Mythographic Perspectives
4. On Defining Myth and Ritual
6. Ritual Studies Materials
8. Psychological Perspectives
9. Philosophical Perspectives
11. Archetypal Criticism and Myth Analysis of Literature
12. Linguistic-Narratological-Semiotic Structuralism
13. Transmission and Themes of Myths and Folklore
14. Feminist/Gender-Studies Aspects
15. Modern Appropriations of Myth; Contemporary Culture Analysis
18. Advanced and Specialized Studies
19. Anthologies, Monographs, and Collections of Essays
21. Dictionaries, Encyclopedias, Handbooks
22. Bibliographies
23. A Mythographer’s Basic Book List
Bibliography
Index
