Myth and Method
In the wake of the elegant master theories of Joseph Campbell, Mircea Eliade, Georges Dumezil, and Claude Levi-Strauss, how are mythology and the comparative study of religion to be understood? In Myth and Method, a leading team of scholars assesses the current state of the study of myth and explores the possibilities for charting a methodological middle course between the comparative and the contextual issues raised in the last ten years. In confronting these tension, they provide an outline of the most troubling questions in the field and offer a variety of responses to them.
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Laurie L. Patton is Assistant Professor of Early Indian Religions at Emory University. In addition to journal articles on the topics of early Indian religions, comparative mythology, and theory in the study of religion, she is the author of Myth as Argument: The Mrhaddevata as Canonical Commentary. Wendy Doniger is Mircea Eliade Professor of History of Religions at the University of Chicago. She is the author of several books on Indian mythology and the comparative study of mythology, including The Origin of Evil in Hindu Mythology; Dreams, Illusion, and Other Realities; and Other Peoples' Myths.
Introduction
Part I / Bricolage in a New Key: Myth, Method, and Intellectual History
Children Consumed and Child Cannibals: Robertson Smith's Attack on the Science of Mythology
The Rise of Ritual and the Hegemony of Myth: Sylvain Lévi, the Durkheimians, and Max Müller
Does Myth Have a Future?
Part II // The Dilemma of the Two-Headed Scholar: Myth and Comparison
Minimyths and Maximyths and Political Points of View
Dumézil, the Indo-Europeans, and the Third Function
Madness in Method, plus a Plea for Projective Inversion in Myth
Part III / A History Without Structure and a Structure Without History: Myth and Cultural Traditions
Mythic Narrative and Cultural Diversity in American Society
Archetypes of Selves: A Study of the Chinese Mytho-Historical Consciousness
Myth and Money: The Exchange of Words and Wealth in Vedic Commentary
Part IV / Continuities and Interruptions: Myth, Art, and Literature
Sancho Panza and Nemi's Priest: Reflections on the Relationship of Literature and Myth
The Gilgamesh Epic: Myth and Meaning
Picasso's Guernica as Mythic Iconoclasm: An Eliadean Interpretation of the Myth of Modern Art
Harnessing the Dragon: A Mythos Transformed in Medieval Jewish Literature and Art
Afterword
Contributors
Index
