So, while Odysseus is over there on the
island of Scharea, getting magnificent, wonderful, overwhelming hospitality from
the Phonecians. I thought you and I could take a half step
back and introduce the first of what I'm going to be calling our conceptual tools.
In this class, we're going to be spend lots of time looking at these great
stories, trying to get, get interested in them, find the details in them, show the
wonder that they are, just to enjoy them for what they are.
But also I want to spend some time lifting up the hood and tinkering with what's
underneath there, trying to figure. Or how these things work.
What is it that makes a myth a myth? In the early part of the course, we laid
down some ideas over a broad sweep of time.
And we did a real broad and quick survey of ideas on myth over time, talked about
some that existed in the classical period. Talked about functionalism and algorism,
in particular, and how those survived through the Middle Ages and into the
Renaissance. And then the different ideas that emerge
in the Renaissance from people like Fontenelle, who talk about myth as a kind
of proto-scientific mentality in an attempt to explain the world around us.
We talked about the Enlightenment and David Hume, who.
Thought about myth as kind of an earlier primitive mentality that, thank goodness
we scientific minded people have grown out of, and then we talked about Romantics and
their much more swelling view of myth as a repository for the most powerful truths
that humans might find. Fast forwarding ahead from the Romantic
period into the twentieth century we're going to pick out and focus on four
specific schools of thought that are going to give us some useful ways of tinkering
with the myths in front of us. A box of tools.
And when we run into things in myth that are strange or interesting we can pick out
one of the tools tinker with the myth, and see if we get a, something interesting.
The first one I want to talk about is functionalism.
The figure Bronisaw Malinowski is our important figure here.
His dates are 1884 to 1942. Malinowski, an important figure in the
human sciences made tremendous advances critical figure in anthropology.
And also interest, very interesting for people that study myths.
Malinowski studied the cultures nearby him, and noticed.
That they told stories and that these stories got repeated over and over, and
that they took place at certain kinds of critical times.
There were moments when mythic stories were turned to in the society and they had
a, a central role in the building of culture.
More importantly, Malinowski noticed that there was a specific way that these
stories were used by the cultures. Specifically, Malinowski said, that myths
and when cultures tell myths to [inaudible].
Sounds. What they're doing is legitimizing.
Certain kinds of underlying social and cultural norms that they hold dear.
So myths are myths because they serve a certain kind of function, and the function
they serve is that they legitimize. So myths are there and we, we enjoy
hearing them because they have this underlined kind of subterranean always
function to them. They serve a purpose.
They're not just there to delight and entertain us or to give us the versions or
teach us about the sort of universal structure of the Cosmos.
Instead they're there to reassure us that our cultural norms and our social values
are the right ones. Now the stories are told in such a way
that they have an underlying message that endorses our cultural views on the world.
So myths serve the function of legitimatizing.
Now a few things we can pull out, few notes we can make this, already this early
stage. You'll tell from the.
Lecture we just gave, that ideas of functionalism have already been a part of
the course, haven't they? I snuck one, I snuck a functionalist
reading into the prior lecture. When we started talking about Exenia, and
this cultural value of overwhelming hospitality, and the usefulness in Greek
culture of securing a means of trade, securing a kind of safe territory for
people to trade, the different cultures to trade among themselves.
And then we claimed that the story that we're being told with Odysseus and his
time on, on Scaria with the Phaeacians. We're being told that, that story.
Helps underline and legitimize the social and cultural value of Xenia.
We're being given a functionalist reading. You and I, as Greeks, love to hear this
story. And if someone asks us, why, well, we'll
just say, well, it's just a great story. We just love to hear it.
Well, now [inaudible] will just come along and say is, the reason that the Greeks
loved to hear this story is because it legitimized their investment in this
cultural value of Xenia and made it seem like it was a normal, natural thing.
What we're doing then is jumping into a functionalist reading.
Now our toolbox is gonna get full of a couple of other different tools.
We're gonna talk structuralism pretty soon, in fact we're gonna talk about
psycho-analysis and we're also gonna talk about another theory called myth and
ritual. Functionalism, structuralism,
psycho-analysis and myth and ritual, these will be the four main tools in our
toolbox, and when we have need of them and see usefulness in them, we'll take the
tool out, tinker with they myth and see what results we get.
Our tools are not all gonna get along with each other.
They have different ideas on myth. Some of them people who are adherents of
one are. [inaudible] Approach might eschew the
usefulness of another theoretical approach, but you and I are gonna be
friends with all these theoretical tools and we're gonna put them to use when
appropriate to try to understand our myths.
I think also you're gonna find them useful in your own reading of the myths.
I'm gonna. Put them to use in our class, and I'll
label them, whenever I, recognize myself using one of these theoretical tools.
But also, keep your own, eyes open and, maybe there'll be one or two times when
I'm, sneaking in a, functionalist reading or, once in a while I'll sneak in a
psychoanalytic reading or, one of the other, kinds of, approaches that we have
in the class. And you'll say to yourself, a-ha, Struck's
actually being a. Of, of.
Functionalist here and doesn't even realize it, that's great, that's exactly
the kind of thing you should be doing. And then start to realize yourself also
when you start to do certain kinds of intuitive readings [inaudible] when you
get into them. Well this one seems like it's actually
operating this way or it's operating another way, you'll be able to give some
names to the kinds of habits of mine that are probably already in place for you.
One or two small pieces of functionalism to close before you leave Malanawski
notice that when someone does a functionalist reading what they're
interested in is not the origin of a myth. We're not talking about when, when the
myth emerged or, where it came from. Instead we're interested in what culture
now is telling this myth to itself. And.
We're gonna propose that the reason a culture tells any myth to itself is
because that myth helps underline, legitimize and verify their social and
cultural norms and values. Okay.
So origin is not important when it comes to functionalism.
Instead, the use of the myth in the time the myth is being told, that's what the
functionalist is most interested in. Interested in function.
Thus the name. Myths according to a functionalist, also a
final note, are interested not in grand, universal unveiling of deep human truth.
Right? You can take a look at what a functionist
really is looking at and that's gonna be the specifics of individual culture.
So harping back to an earlier comment we made right at the very beginning of this
class, we talked about the different contemporary ideas of myths, and how some
people would claim that myths contain universal truths and other people would
claim that myths contain. Specific cultural truths the functions are
deathly on a specific culture side of that divide.
They look at this as a being a window into the particularities of a certain kind of
culture. Cultures value different things, we may
think it would be absolutely a, a second nature for us to value the kind of things
that we are about. For example hospitality or whatever it
might be. But in fact different cultures approach
these things in different ways. Some of the values that Greek culture
wants to underline. Legitimize and support are gonna seem
Absolutely straightforward to us. Others are going to seem really strange.
So, we'll keep our eye on both of those. So, watch out for the tools, we're gonna
add them to our toolbox every few weeks here for the next part of the course.
And soon enough, we'll have a, a box full of four different tools.
And we'll use them to tinker with our mess, and see what we can make out of them
as we advance in the course.