Myths

03 Nov 2009 09:56

As stories. Empirical evidence for archetypes (apparently all negative; see Kirk's Myth); for other "deep" meanings and interpretations. Cross-cultural patterns. Historical patterns.

Elizabeth Wayland Barber and Paul T. Barber, When They Severed Earth from Sky: How the Human Mind Shapes Myth [Blurb, first chapter; review by Michael Shermer]
Carlo Ginzburg, Clues, Myths and the Historical Method [Blurb. Some critical remarks under Historiography.]
G. Kirk, Myth: Its Meaning and Function in Ancient and Other Cultures
Bronislaw Malinowski, Magic, Science and Religion
Dan Sperber
- Rethinking Symbolism
- On Anthropological Knowledge
Ian Strenski, Four Theories of Myth in Twentieth-Century History: Cassirer, Eliade, Levi-Strauss and Malinowski

Stefan Arvidsson, Aryan Idols: Indo-European Mythology as Ideology and Science [Blurb]
Stephen T. Asma, On Monsters: An Unnatural History of Our Worst Fears [Review in Bookslut]
Hans Blumenberg, Work on Myth [Blurb]
Chiara Bottici, A Philosophy of Political Myth [Blurb]
Luc Brisson, How Philosophers Saved Myths: Allegorical Interpretation and Classical Mythology
Malcolm Bull, The Mirror of the Gods: How Renaissance Artists Rediscovered the Pagan Gods
Claude Calame, Myth and History in Ancient Greece: The Symbolic Creation of a Colony [Blurb]
Robert Ellwood, The Politics of Myth: A Study of C. G. Jung, Mircea Eliade, and Joseph Campbell
Dean A. Miller, The Epic Hero [Blurb]
Jaan Puhvel, Comparative Mythology
Timothy Taylor, The Buried Soul: How Humans Invented Death
Stith Thompson
- The Folktale
- Motif-Index of Folk-Literature: A Classification of Narrative Elements in Folktales, Ballads, Myths, Fables, Mediaeval Romances, Exempla, Fabliaux
P. Vidal-Naquet
Calvert Watkins, How to Kill a Dragon: Aspects of Indo-European Poetics
George S. Williamson, The Longing for Myth in Germany: Culture, Religion, and Politics from Romanticism to Nietzsche [Blurb]