Gene Phillips's Blog, page 92

PLACEHOLDER POST

Here's a factoid I meant to post on another blog.  I couldn't do so thanks to a cyber-format glitch, but since I copied it first, why waste the typing-effort.

" I don't rememeber the source, but I recall reading that doves were also sacred sacrificial vehicles for the Sumerian Tiamat as well. The unremembered source described a ritual in which a dove was sliced in half, in imitation of the way Marduk cleaves Tiamat's body in order to make the world."

MYTHINKINGS PT. 7

In Part 6 I wrote:

But if one continues to define the "myth-essence" in terms of inspiring "excessive or quasi-religious awe or admiration," then I would say that it appears irrespective of overt fantasy-material.

My use of the word "define" overstates the case a little, since by the end of that essay I'm not depending *solely* on an affective demonstration to define the essentialist version of myth.  What I asserted there might be considered a combinatio...

MYTHINKINGS PT. 6

“It is the charm of mythic narrative that it cannot tell one thing without telling a hundred others. The symbols are an endless inter-marrying family. They give life to what, stated in general terms, appears only a cold truism, by hinting how the apparent simplicity of the statement is due to an artificial isolation of a fragment, which, in its natural place, is connected with all the infinity of truths by living fibres.”-- William Butler Yeats.

Though in Part 5 I allowed that there were attra...

MYTHINKINGS, PT. 5

Once more, that useful Wiktionary definiton of "myth:"

a person or thing held in excessive or quasi-religious awe or admiration based on popular legend
 

I've connected the idea of an "essentialist" defintion of myth-- one that can extend across the whole of art, religion and literature-- with this state of "awe or admiration."  But the definition by itself is vague.  As individuals we're all aware of physical experiences (like food) or emotional ties (as with family) th...

MYTHINKINGS PT. 4

To address the context of the quote cited at the end of Part 3:

“They’re very important, these comic book movies, because they’re our modern myths.”—Bryan Singer, SUPERMAN RETURNS: THE COMPLETE SHOOTING SCRIPT.
 

It goes without saying that when Singer made this statement, he certainly didn't mean it in any functionalist sense.  Not even the most jaded Hollywood hypester would claim that a fictional character like Superman had ever served any of the purposes of myth cite...

MYTHINKINGS PT. 3

As it happens Shannon Knight's comment here coincide with what I'm getting at in defining the "essentialist" meaning of the word "myth."

Shannon says, in part:

It's frustrating to read a myth theory and figure it could just as well apply to an episode of a TV series as to an ancient myth.
 

I will agree with her this far: no FORMAL theory of myth should make myth inseparable from literature.  The two forms are very different in terms of the ways they function in soci...

MYTHINKINGS, PT. 2

Here's another remark I made on Shannon Knight's blog that I felt I should expand upon:

“Myth” is a many-sided affair, but there are some consistencies. For one thing, “myth” can be defined in a purely literary context– as stories told only in support of religious concepts– or in a more essential sense, as something that extends throughout many forms, which is the way I take it that Lucente uses his term.
 

Shannon mentioned that she thought an all-inclusive definition of myth was unte...

MYTHINKINGS PT. 1

In a response to Shannon Knight's post on "Labeling Science Fiction and Fantasy," I wrote:

I came across a remark in a lit-crit book, THE NARRATIVE OF REALISM AND MYTH, where author Greg Lucente argued that “myth” described worlds where time and space could be transcended, while “realism” described worlds where they could not be transcended. I’ve always felt that formula could have application to SF and fantasy, but others’ mileage may vary.
 

Lucente's use of the term "myth" in this lit-cr...

TOLKIEN'S "ON FAIRY STORIES": A DELVING, PT. 6

Tolkien's next consideration is "origins."  Here he finally breaks down and uses the term "folklore" as a wider phylum that embraces his more restrictive category of "fairy stories."  However, he never defines this term adequately, either in his own terms or in those of some respected academic.  He also makes his first references to the academic concept of "myth," and for the same essential purpose:" to show that academics have attempted to restrict the raw material of both sub...

TOLKIEN'S "ON FAIRY STORIES": A DELVING, PT. 5

Finishing up the section in which Tolkien discusses the types of stories that he doesn't deem "fairy stories..."

There's not a great deal to add with respect to Tolkien's exclusion of "any story that uses the machinery of Dream, the dreaming of actual human sleep, to explain the apparent occurrence of its marvels."  The only example he gives is that of Lewis Carroll's two ALICE books, which probably were deemed "fairy tales" by some adults simply because they contained marvels (albeit rat...