Myths Everyone Should Know

Introducing people of all ages to mythology... in pre-college educational curricula, youth orgs, the media, etc. Share your knowledge, stories, unit and lesson plans, techniques, and more.

Moderators: Clemsy, Martin_Weyers, Cindy B.

Clemsy
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Joined: Thu Apr 04, 2002 6:00 am
Location: The forest... somewhere north of Albany
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Post by Clemsy »

Hi Jupiter!

Welcome to the JCF Fora! Make yourself comfortable!

Good to know there's another educator hanging around. I look forward to your contributions.

If you need any assistance, let me know as I am...

At your service,
Clemsy
Give me stories before I go mad! ~Andreas

Ercan2121
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Location: Istanbul

Post by Ercan2121 »

I'd suggest James G. Frazer's Golden Bough.
Joseph Campbell praises the work as 'great and justly celebrated' [p.12, Myths to Live By, The Impact of Science on Myth] and adds: 'He saw the basis of myth in magic, and of magic in psychology. Frazer's explanation of magic was that because things are associated in the mind, they are believed to be associated in fact [Ibid, p.13].
Frazer was far from being the first to study religions dispassionately, as a cultural phenomenon rather than from within theology. He was, though, the first to detail the relations between myths and rituals.
His theories of totemism were superseded by Claude Lévi-Strauss and his vision of the annual sacrifice of the Year King has not been borne out by field studies. His generation's choice of Darwinian evolution as a social paradigm, interpreted by Frazer as three rising stages of human progress -- magic giving rise to religion, then culminating in science -- has not proved valid. 
Yet The Golden Bough, his study of ancient cults, rites, and myths, including their parallels with early Christianity, arguably his greatest work, is still rifled by modern mythographers for its detailed information. The work's influence spilled well over the conventional bounds of academia, however; the symbolic cycle of life, death and rebirth which Frazer divined behind myths of all pedigrees captivated a whole generation of artists and poets.
Perhaps the most notable product of this fascination is T. S. Eliot's poem The Waste Land (1922). More recently it was an influence on the ending of Francis Ford Coppola's film Apocalypse Now (a copy of The Golden Bough figures in one of the final shots).
[Wikipedia]

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