Myth Without Mystery

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Myth Without Mystery: The Project of Robert Segal

Laurence Coupe
Religious Studies Review, 29: 1 (January 2003) pp. 3-14.

 

#THEORIZING ABOUT MYTH  By Robert A. Segal
(Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1999)
#THEORISTS OF MYTH SERIES
JOSEPH CAMPBELL:  AN INTRODUCTION
By Robert A. Segal
New York: Garland, 1987
THE MYTH AND RITUAL SCHOOL
By Robert Ackerman
New York: Garland, 1991
MARTIN BUBER ON MYTH:  AN INTRODUCTION
By Daniel S. Breslauer
New York:  Garland, 1990.
 JUNG AND THE JUNGIANS ON MYTH
By Steven F. Walker
New York:  Garland, 1995
MYTH AND RELIGION IN MIRCEA ELIADE
By Douglas Allen
New York: Garland, 1998
CASSIRER AND LANGER ON MYTH
By William Schultz
New York:  Garland, 1998
Paperback: New York: Routledge, 2000.
THE STRUCTURALISTS ON MYTH:  AN INTRODUCTION
By Roland A. Champagne
New York: Garland, 1992.
RENE GIRARD ON MYTH:  AN INTRODUCTION  
By Richard J. Golsan
New York:  Garland, 1996
NORTHROP FRYE ON MYTH
By Ford Russell
New York:  Garland, 1998
POLITICAL MYTH
By Christopher G. Flood
New York:  Garland, 1996
THE POETICS OF MYTH
By Eleazar M. Meletinsky
New York:  Garland, 1998

***

If it is hard enough to say what we mean by “myth”, then it might seem almost impossible to say what we mean by “theory of myth” – or “myth studies.” But its broad impulse is now being gradually realized in an interdisciplinary spirit by various scholars from across the humanities and social sciences. However, it is surely within the parameters of religious studies that its scope is being most effectively outlined. Once established, it will certainly owe a debt to Robert A. Segal, Professor of Theories of Religion at the University of Lancaster, England.

Of course, Segal is not alone. There have been several attempts to provide comprehensive works that might prove foundational for “theory of myth” or “myth studies.” Richard Chase began early with his somewhat romantic and literary Quest For Myth (1949), full of conjecture about the mystery of creativity. G. S. Kirk offered a more sceptical, but perhaps more authoritative, account of the subject in Myth: Its Meaning and Function in Ancient and Other Cultures (1970) – even though the author’s wariness of universalizing theory does not extend to Levi-Strauss, whose influence is felt throughout. William G Doty achieved a near-impossible task in Mythography: The Study Of Myths And Rituals (1986; repr. 2000), that of comprehending almost all modern and contemporary perspectives within a generous neo-liberalism – so that disparate theoretical voices find themselves in agreement, or at least agreement to differ. My own Myth (1997) set out to justify the relevance of myth to literary and cultural studies by advocating what I called “radical typology,” the principle by which narratives accumulate meaning through extension in time.

But none of these isolated works can compete with Segal’s systematic attempt, volume by volume, to define terms and lay down principles. In numerous books he has gathered together the fragmentary scholarship we have inherited, providing a framework within which to understand it.  I refer in particular to his editorship of the six-volume reference set Theories Of Myth (1996), of The Myth and Ritual Theory (1998), of Jung On Mythology (1998) — all of which gather key selections from modern theories — and of Hero Myths (2000) — which juxtaposes primary mythic texts with contemporary readings. And if one wishes to gain a fair idea of Segal’s distinct contribution, one should turn to Theorizing about Myth (1999), which brings together the more important of his own theoretical writings. But our main attention is on the series Segal has been editing since 1987, launched with his own volume, Joseph Campbell: an Introduction. Since then, Theorists of Myth has expanded to take in studies of a large number of significant thinkers. Originally published in hardback by Garland Press, the series is now published in paperback by Routledge (excepting the first volume, which is published by Penguin). It is expanding year by year, and various other volumes, including one on Freud, have been commissioned.

The present reviewer, coming to myth from literary and cultural studies, is all too aware of the limited understanding of the subject presently evident in that area. Too often, the word “myth” has been used there either so vaguely as to be meaningless, or else with a misleading specificity which has the same effect – as in the irritating over-use of the phrase “pioneer myth” in relation to North American literature, whereby The Last of the Mohicans, Huckleberry Finn and The Great Gatsby are rendered indistinguishable. Segal’s work has certainly helped me to gain a wider and deeper perspective, and to have more respect for the term itself. His approach is not incompatible with the insights of the more shrewd of modern literary critics. I think particularly of Kenneth Burke, who had much to say about myth in a long career that spanned most of the twentieth century. In what follows, I would like to draw upon Burke where appropriate, by way of “placing” Segal. Broadly, what I propose to do is firstly to assess Theorizing about Myth in so far as it represents Segal’s current thinking, and secondly to survey Theorists of Myth as an extension of that thinking – with Burke being brought in for purposes of perspective. Thereby I hope to comprehend “the project of Robert A. Segal.”

The gift to be (shrewdly) simple

Segal likes short sentences, prefers direct statement to circumlocution, and avoids elegant synonyms where the same word will make the point. His flair for succinct summary may surprise those who come to myth from literary studies – where, as I have intimated, the very use of the word “myth” is so often an excuse for mystification. But if one wants to know what the theory of myth involves, and how the various theorists match up to a clear paradigm of thought, Segal is an indispensable guide. Of course, a flair for synopsis is not always likely to lend one a reputation for scholarship. However, my own experience is that the best recent work done in myth studies combines both; nor can I be alone in finding that teaching a subject is the best way to understand it. The appeal of Theorizing about Myth is that it reads like the lectures you always wished you had at college, yet merits repeated scholarly reflection.

The essays in this volume comprise a comparative account of the development of modern myth theory. It is comparative because Segal believes that the best way to understand a particular theory is to juxtapose it with other theories. For example, we appreciate the significance of C. G. Jung if we see his emphasis on the symbolic meaning of myth as a necessary reaction against the literalism of an earlier theorist, Edward Tylor, rather than pondering his position in isolation. Making connections is a way of maintaining clarity. Nor can myth itself be isolated from the broader issues which are customarily addressed in the academy. The premise of the book is as follows: “Myth is an applied subject. Theories of myth are always theories of something broader that is applied to the case of myth. To compare theories of myth is inevitably to compare theories of the broader categories, themselves as varied as the physical world, the mind, society, culture, literature, and religion” (Segal 1999, 1). If this seems to imply an endless process of ramification, it comes as a relief to find that nearly all of Segal’s exposition can be reduced to a straightforward scheme.

The scheme itself comes down to the simple (but not simplistic) idea that there are three basic questions that myth theorists customarily ask about myth: “what is its origin, what is its function, and what is its subject matter?” (2). Even more gratifying is the proposal that the first and the second usually turn out to be complementary. A myth originates to fulfil a need; its function is the fulfilment of that need. Thus the triad may often be reduced to a dyad. All theorists of myth may be initially placed by discovering how they answer these questions, and the act of placing may well reveal their presuppositions. More importantly, he stresses that the theorists differ not only in the answers they give to these three basic questions but also in which one – or ones – they emphasize. Most theorists do not answer all three questions. For example, Rudolf Bultmann, in his account of the myth underlying the Gospels, limits himself to subject matter and says nothing about origin and function.

How, then, do various key theorists appear when placed in Segal’s framework? One nineteenth-century figure in whom he is particularly interested is Edward Tylor. Summarizing Segals’s summary, we may state the case as follows. Adopting a stance of scientific superiority to the primitive past, Tylor argues that the origin of myth is the human desire to account for the regularities observed in the natural world. The function is the explanation of natural phenomena, according to primitive logic. The subject matter is the literal, apparent one: the actions by gods to cause the physical events with which they are credited. As myth is for him an erroneous anticipation of science, it cannot survive in the modern world (7-18). Neutral as Segal’s exposition may seem, it would be no exaggeration to say that, for him, Tylor is the founding father of modern myth studies: not because his theory has continued to be accepted but because his challenge to the status of myth, and specifically his denial that myth is reconcilable with modernity, is the issue which all theorists since have felt obliged to confront. For Segal, to defend myth in the modern world is to defend it against Tylor.

James Frazer, coming soon after Tylor, is exceptional in more or less conceding his point. He, too, asserts the power of modern rationality, differing from his predecessor by considering primitive myth in relation to ritual, and so to practice rather than belief. This ritual, which takes the form of fertility ceremony, is for him a naïve kind of technology: the application to nature of that false science which we call magic. Thus, we have our three answers to our three questions. The subject matter of myth is the death and rebirth of the god, understood as an allegory of the vegetation cycle. The origin is the need for food. The function is the manipulation of nature in order to ensure survival (37-46).

In case this all too seems too schematic, it should be emphasised that Segal’s interest is ultimately in the subtle distinctions between Tylor and Frazer. First, though, we must note the main parallel. Segal matches Tylor and Frazer in so far as both see myth as the primitive counterpart to science. For both, the term “modern myth” is self-contradictory. On the other hand, Segal, ever intent on working out the distinctiveness of each theory he unravels, shows how myth for Frazer is less like scientific theory, as it is for Tylor, and more like applied science.  Myth may offer an explanation, as it does for Tylor, but it does so only as means to an end.  Moreover, where Tylor reads myth literally, Frazer, as Segal shows, reads myth symbolically: the death and rebirth of the god of vegetation is a symbol of the death and rebirth of vegetation itself.  Where for Tylor myth covers all natural phenomena, for Frazer it concentrates on the crops.  Where Tylor respects myth as logical but erroneous, Frazer disdains it as illogical as well as erroneous. (We might add that, according to Segal, Tylor focuses on the “how” as well as the “why” of origin but only on the “why” of function, whereas Frazer, linking myth to its enactment in ritual, focuses on the “how” of function as well as on the “how” of origin. But these technicalities are not essential to appreciation of Segal’s scheme.)

Keeping to chronology, we might consider Bronislaw Malinowski, who reacted strongly against Tylor and Frazer. Repudiating their philosophical approach, he insists on the social validity of myth, whenever or wherever it is found. Thus, for his own good reasons, he is primarily interested in answering the question regarding function, with the other aspects being subordinated to that. For Malinowski, the subject matter is the story of how social institutions came to be established (as in creation myth). The origin is the need to ensure cohesion in society. The function is the provision of a social charter. The three questions and answers may seem at first glance to be discrete, but it soon becomes obvious that the phrase “social charter” sums up the whole theoretical edifice (79-80, 150-1). Perhaps we should note that Segal stresses how far Malinowski breaks with Tylor and Frazer. Where for Tylor and Frazer myth deals with the physical world, for Malinowski it deals even more with the social world.  Where for Tylor and Frazer myth explains or effects, for Malinowski it justifies.  Where for Tylor and Frazer myth precludes science, for Malinowski it exists alongside science.  Where for Tylor and Frazer myth is exclusively primitive, for Malinowski it may be modern as well.

So far so good, and the reader will be grateful for the demonstration of how theorists make sense, once understood according to a neat, inclusive model. But Theorizing about Myth is not a neutral notebook, simply classifying various positions. This means that summation may overlap with evaluation. Once we have compared our theorists, we may want to make preferences. Certainly Segal would seem to have made his. I say “seems” because one of the intriguing things about reading this volume is that it constantly borders on the verge of discrimination but usually rests at the point of differentiation. Segal wishes to remain anonymous, as it were – working behind the scenes, organizing the material, rather than emerging as polemical protagonist. Indeed, his writing is so matter-of-fact that at times readers may find themselves yearning for a rhetorical flourish. But then one has to remind oneself that direct, uncomplicated address, particularly in the context of the self-conscious convolutions that chararacterize today’s academy, can only be tactical.  More must be being said, one concludes, than meets the eye.

Thus, to intuit his value judgments one must read in between the apparently neutral lines. Fortunately, one may take one’s bearings from Segal’s willingness, with typical disregard for intellectual fashion, to endorse that rationalism which identifies Tylor as a representative figure of modernity. True, he registers the controversial assumptions built into Tylor’s theory: that myth is no more than the primitive counterpart to natural science, that myth and science are incompatible as well as redundant, that myth is an explanation of only physical phenomena and not also social ones, that myth is nothing but explanation, that myth is to be read literally, that myth merely takes the form of a story but is at heart no more a story than a scientific hypothesis is.  But it is clear enough that Segal is not prepared to reject Tylor in order to reconcile myth with science and so to allow moderns to have both: rather, he is keen to work out what the acceptance of Tylor’s theory commits one to.  Above all, Segal stresses that Tylor’s view – and, for that matter, Frazer’s – commits one to the prediction of the eventual, if not imminent, demise of myth. But – and it is an important qualification –  for all his endorsement of Tylor, Segal recognizes the key difficulty that that endorsement raises.  Segal recognizes, that is, that one must account for the apparent continuation of myth in the modern world.

However, beyond there, Segal is inscrutable. For instance, it is by no means  obvious from his exposition of Freud and Jung which of them he favours. Freud’s answers to the three questions, as summarized, seem unexceptional, if one accepts the now dubious premises of early psychoanalysis. The subject matter of myth is, broadly, desire: specifically, it is that family romance which he has discovered at work in the course of his analysis of his patients. The origin is repression. The function is the fulfilment of the individual’s wishes, disguised because of the psychic censorship occasioned by repression (59-65, 67-97, 105-15). But when Segal turns to Jung, the reader may be hard placed to decide his preference. I am convinced one is implicit, because it is unlikely that both of them are equally successful in rising to the Tylorian challenge. But Segal says nothing, continuing with his exposition.

As summarised here, we may say that Carl Jung, rejecting the model of sexual neurosis, interprets myth in the perspective of the fully developed personality. (I am tempted to add: Freud looks back, Jung forward.) As with Freud, the subject matter is for Jung the projection of the inner mind onto the outer world, with all its promises as well as dangers. The world is thereby populated by gods and heroes: for Freud, their source is the idealization and demonization of parents; for Jung, it is the inherited images of the universal psyche. Indeed, the “collective unconscious” is for Jung the very origin of myth: more particularly the “archetypes” which emerge from it, waiting to find expression. The function is to reveal this realm, as part of the process of “individuation,” which is the move from fragmentary ego to integrated self. That may sound a more benign model of the psyche, and of myth, than Freud’s.  But we may note that when Segal’s summary edges towards critique, as he considers the basis of that model, he does so in terms that might be applied to Freud, if for the term “collective unconscious” one were to substitute “sexual neurosis:” “On the one hand Jung employs the collective unconscious to interpret myths. On the other hand he employs myths to interpret the collective unconscious. … Going further, Jung uses myths to establish the collective unconscious” (70). Both theorists are guilty of trying to have it both ways, so to speak. My own instinct is that Segal’s preference, unstated anywhere in this volume but occasionally implied, is that it is Freud who is the better equipped of the two thinkers to negotiate scientific modernity, if only because he accepts its premises. But I am by no means sure.

On the given evidence, then, no reader of Theorizing about Myth is going to come away convinced that Segal wishes to promote any post-Tylorian theorist rather than another. For Segal to be seen to actually follow one theorist would be to disable him from having an overview of the theoretical scene. He must display exemplary disinterestedness. However, the implicit question always is: how fully is the challenge faced?  Which of course tells us that Tylor is the favoured figure from the outset.  Moreover, it is worth registering that, where he appears to be most objective, there we will discern his own orientation and his own investment in the field of theory.

A good example of his polemical engagement appears early in the book, in a chapter entitled “Does Myth Have A Future?” where he declares: “Whether myth has a future depends on its capacity to meet the challenge posed by modern science: in particular, natural science, which claims to explain the origin and operation of the physical world” (19). At first this reads as a rather bland statement; on a second reading it may be recognized as the setting out of an agenda. Indeed, it is this agenda which forms the context of Segal’s subsequent concession to Jung. As we have seen, it is Tylor who declares myth redundant because he accepts the claims of science: he defines the former as an erroneous anticipation of the latter. But Segal is not concerned simply to repeat this position; rather, he wants to see how it is outmanoeuvred by other theorists, and with what success. Indeed, despite his implicit preference for Freud, he concedes that Jung manages to meet Tylor’s challenge effectively enough by offering his distinct justification of myth in the modern world by looking to it for a symbolic overture to the healing of a psychological problem, namely the alienation of the ego from the unconscious, which in turn is symptomatic of the alienation of both from a nature which now appears dead and mechanical (77-80). One is, of course, still left wondering: could this actually be a case, not of Segal merely giving credit where it is due, but rather advocating warmly the most extensive and important reply to Tylor made during the twentieth century? The tone is certainly as warm as Segal ever gets; but again, I would not like to say for certain.

Firmer ground may be gained if we recall that comparison and contrast are Segal’s own approved methods, so when we turn from Jung to his disciple Joseph Campbell we know exactly whom Segal prefers. For the conventional view of the latter as a legitimate Jungian is soon thrown into doubt by Segal’s summary. True, Campbell’s orientation is broadly psychological, moving easily as he does from myth to dream. But, being carried away by his enthusiasm for myth as an absolutely authoritative mode of dreaming, he makes larger – or rather, vaguer – claims than his mentor ever does. Whereas for Jung myth arises from the projection of the mind onto the world, and can only tell us about the mind, for Campbell myth comprehends the world also. Thus, again summarising Segal’s summary, we may say that for Campbell the subject matter of myth is both psychological and metaphysical: that is, it includes the mind of both humanity and cosmos. The origin is not only the human need for projection but also the urge t owards mystical union: the desire to transcend the ego. The function is to reveal the unconscious – not as a means to another enterprise, namely individuation, but as an end in itself – and to be at one with the cosmos. That is, the very experience of myth is deemed to effect a psychological equilibrium, a complete wisdom.

This claim, Segal reflects, is a betrayal of Jung’s influence. As he explains: “To interpret a myth, Campbell simply identifies the archetypes in it. An interpretation of the Odyssey, for example, would show how Odysseus’s life conforms to heroic patterns. Jung, by contrast, considers the identification of archetypes merely the first step in the interpretation of a myth. One must also determine the meaning of those archetypes in the specific myth in which they appear and the meaning of that myth in the life of the specific person who is stirred by it. One must analyze the person, not just the myth” (140). Campbell, then, goes too far by claiming that myth in itself is a cure-all, rather than just one aid to therapeutic recovery. Moreover, and again unlike Jung, he makes no allowance for variety in mythology, but insists on having intuited the one universal “monomyth” – an insistence which Segal queries at more length in his full-length study of Campbell (see below).

Thus, Segal’s message is clear enough here. The notion of myth as a kind of dream demands more not less interpretation, more not less subtlety. Certainly, it is no excuse for mystification. Indeed, that sentiment encapsulates Segal’s project: in reading myth, one may encounter mystery, but one must believe that it is possible to have one without the other.

Segal via Burke

It may be useful to place Segal in the context of Kenneth Burke, the great North American writer and thinker, noting similarities and allowing for differences. We have already noted that Segal’s procedure is comparative. He believes that one understands a theorist best when one places him or her in the company of those with whom s/he might partially agree or else disagree. Let us apply the same procedure to Segal himself. Let us understand Segal by way of Burke.

There is, of course, a possible objection to be made that, while the latter may be seen as a theorist of myth (amongst other roles), the former is a scholar of theories of myth, and so cannot be easily compared. However, as I hope to make clear, what distinguishes Burke from most other myth theorists is the fact that he makes the whole question of what is involved in striking a particular attitude, in adopting a particular interpretive strategy, central to his philosophy. In other words, Burke is as alert as any scholar of theory to the danger of imposing theory upon material in a procrustean manner.

Burke makes an interesting distinction between two kinds of methodology in the course of a brief comparison between Marx and Mannheim, first written at the end of the 1930s. The former, he says, “debunks” bourgeois motives, in the sense of “unmasking” them and revealing them to be deceptive and oppressive. The latter, in an attempt to be more sociologically detached, and convinced that any counter-debunking by representatives of the proletariat would stand in equal need of correction, seeks to attenuate the notion into the more “neutral” concept that Burke calls “discounting” or “making allowances for” (1973, 129). Though Burke elsewhere queries Mannheim’s own neutrality, he believes that the ideal holds good. It is always necessary to understand as far as possible the motivations behind a “symbolic act” – a myth, a ritual, a text, a word – but understanding is likely to be curtailed if one has decided its merits in advance. An earlier work of Burke’s commends what he calls “the comic frame,” which entails “the charitable attitude.” This he illustrates by his own judgement on the material documented by a well-known theorist of myth, even if the stance of the documenter might be categorized as “debunking.” Preferring to “discount” rather than “debunk,” in effect, he reflects on Frazer’s The Golden Bough as follows: “by showing us the rites of magical purification in primitive peoples, [it] gives us the necessary cue for the detection of similar processes in even the most practical and non-priestly of contemporary acts” (1984b, 172). The comic, discounting perspective, that is, “does not waste the world’s rich store of error, as those parochial-minded persons waste it who dismiss all thought before a certain date as ‘ignorance’ and ‘superstition.’ Instead, it cherishes the lore of so-called ‘error’ as a genuine aspect of the truth, with emphases valuable for the correcting of present emphases” (1984b, 172). As Burke puts it succinctly in another early work: “A way of seeing is also a way of not seeing” (1984a, 49).  To acknowledge one’s own capacity for error is to allow for further insight.

But just how far may Segal’s project be aligned with the Burkean enterprise? My aim is not to force a congruity on the scholar of theories and the theorist proper, but to demonstrate that there is nothing in Segal’s secular emphasis which is intrinsically hostile to religion, or myth, or ritual, or pre-scientific thinking. While Segal’s manner of expression might appear uncompromising, I would suggest that his emphasis is more compatible with “discounting” than it is with “debunking.” In other words, Segal’s aim is to establish a starting point for enquiry, not to conclude enquiry before it has begun.

That said, his secularizing perspective might well benefit from Burke’s kind of elaboration. But this is, I repeat, because they share some important premises. One of these is evident at the beginning of “Doing and Saying: Thoughts on Myth, Cult and Archetypes,” an article published in 1971. Here Burke queries the assumption that the interpreter of myth should begin “in a numinous awe of wonder.” He declares that he prefers a more “neutral” approach, which he finds in theories of “symbolism in general,” since whatever else myth is, it is by definition a form of human expression (1971, 100).

Burke goes on to address the relationship between the sacred and the profane, insisting that to emphasize either at the expense of the other is to risk distortion. The point is that both spheres overlap in the “definition of man” which he himself is proposing: that is, “the symbol-using animal” (1971, 101). Central to Burke’s approach is an idea of “origin” not as dim and distant beginning but as ever-present impulse – the past never really being available, whether by means of myth or by means of theory of myth. This anticipates Segal’s use of the term more or less exactly.

But let us take the statements in order:

  1. “[W]hen considering mythopoeia whether sacred or profane we note a basic analytical distinction between such material, pragmatic operations as planting a seed and the enacting of a rite (such as an appropriate ritual) that is felt to commemorate or complete the material operation.” Here Burke reminds us that myth-making has its roots in symbol-using, which is inseparable from human labour. Fertility myth and ritual, in their full form, presuppose agriculture. Segal shares this materialist premise, if not the interest in symbolic labour.
  2. “Though all men possess this mythopoeic susceptibility (the feeling that important moments in their lives are to be completed by a kind of symbolic doubling), some men are more expert in this realm than others. These we have called ‘myth-men’ … and in time their special prowess with symbols sets them apart, as also monarchs, magistrates, nobles become variously set apart. The set-apartness of the divine would not be identical with any such social set-apartness. But the two modes can become confused; hence there can be both religious mystery and social mystery, variously affecting each other.” Here Burke stresses the possibilities, both positive and negative, afforded by symbol-using: it allows for imaginative confirmation but it also allows for mystification. Segal too is a demystifier.
  3. “All mythic doubling has something of this virtue, which I would call ‘entelechial,’ but which is usually treated in terms of the ‘archetypal’ or ‘prototypical.’” Here Burke draws on Aristotle’s notion of that urge towards fulfillment of potential which is natural to all creatures. His point is that human beings have a particular tendency to “culmination” by virtue of being “symbol-using animals”: their words, myths, rituals, ideas all point beyond themselves to some final “perfection.” Segal may not make any such pronouncement, but he certainly subscribes to the view that myth-making is an ambitious project, which exceeds material labor even while being largely explained by it.
  4. “The culminative or entelechial aspect of myth is not temporal; rather it is a primitive way of classifying or defining, and of propounding fundamental principles which are in themselves non-temporal but which (since myth is essentially narrative) are endowed with a quasi-temporal nature, in terms of derivation from an absolute mythic past.” Here Burke offers a version of his definition of myth, made in his The Rhetoric of Religion, as “the temporizing of essence” (Burke 1961: 257). Concurring with Malinowski, he sees narratives which postulate a foundational moment of origin as idealizing the present order: “principals” are really “principles.” However, Burke goes beyond orthodox functionalism by identifying social function with linguistic form: that is, everything hinges on “symbol-using,” and in particular on the tendency of language towards “perfection,” which explains why myths work the way they do. Segal too is suspicious of the invocation of the distant past: for him, historical, one-time origin is a less reliable, and more dangerous, notion than recurrent origin – that is, the residual urge of society to renew its contract with nature, the cosmos, and above all itself. Again, though, he has less to say than Burke about the part played by language.

5.”In adapting the principle of fulfilment that is central to the genius of the Aristotelian ‘entelechy,’ I propose what I would call a ‘logological’ critique of the mythologists.” Here Burke uses a term that he expands upon in most of his later writings: “logology” (literally, “words about words”) is, amongst other things, his way of reminding us that “mythology” is a linguistic construct which, while appearing linear in form, is really the elaboration of an “essence” or “idea.” Confusion arises here because Burke in the particular sentence just quoted uses the word “mythologists,” not to refer to the archaic makers of myth but (in nineteenth-century usage) to refer to the modern interpreters of myth: we would rather say “mythographers.” His vocabulary will be clear, however, if we let him conclude: “This critique also involves my claim that the mythically tinged cult of the ‘archetype’ over-universalizes the nature of such symbolizing in human relations.” Segal makes a similar critique of most myth theorists, though without drawing on linguistic theory or symbolic evidence.

It is this last declaration of Burke’s which will allow us to move from the question of how myths are read to the question of how theories of myth are read. It is one thing to note that archaic narratives offer a “temporizing of essence,” involving the hypothesis of a foundational moment in the distant past. It is another thing for interpreters of myth to mimic this procedure, making wild generalizations about humanity in its supposedly authentic, pre-fallen, mythopoeic stage (“origin” in the misleading sense). Much of what once passed for literary “myth criticism” would prove to be guilty of this delusion; and, though Burke in his paper concurs with his earlier conviction that myth itself looks backward, he is suspicious of any theory of myth that itself claims to be able to do likewise. If myth itself involves mystification, much of myth theory amounts to a mystification of mystification. Mircea Eliade would be a perfect example, in that he not only documents the urge towards “eternal return” but also exemplifies it. He is nostalgic for myths which are nostalgic for paradise. Burke himself, by contrast, even while recognizing that archaic narratives may speak of origins (as in creation stories, or as in narratives associated with a cult), proposes that the myth theorist should attend rather to function. Not only that, but he wants to define function in terms of language: that is, in terms of terms, which he sees as “de-term-ining” the world projected. Thus, function turns out to be meaning: what is being examined is the capacity of the “symbol-using animal” to use myth and ritual for “entelechial” or culminative purposes. To adapt an aphorism of Burke’s own: no sooner does the human being begin to narrate a myth, than it jumps to its own conclusions. (The original version runs: “At the very start, one’s terms jump to conclusions” (Burke 1968: 266)). Mythology, regarded in the perspective of logology, is a demonstration of perfectionism. This drive is something that must be both explained in terms of human motivation; but that motivation is inseparable from the urge to meaning that is expressed in the act of symbolizing, and so cries out for interpretation.

To conclude this comparative overview, we may say that both Burke and Segal query the nostalgic or reactionary use of myth, especially where theory multiplies the existing mystery. Moreover, both insist that myth may be explained in secular terms, even if it is understood ultimately as a sacred phenomenon. However, it does seem that Burke’s is the more complete account of what is involved when myths get made, given his subtle interest in “symbolic action” and his speculations on “perfectionism” – the latter of which he discovers at work in both myth and in its interpretation. That said, my inference is that on balance Segal benefits from being read alongside Burke: the fact that he proves worthy of comparison is an index of his own shrewdness and comprehensiveness as a scholar of myth theories.

Ways of seeing

As space does not allow us to pursue our comparison in detail, I simply ask that readers bear Burke’s perspective in mind as we turn to the other main aspect of Segal’s project, namely his editorship of the Theorists of Myth series. Segal’s primary aim here is to open up the field of myth studies, to establish it, and to give it authority. This is certainly shared by all his contributors. His secondary aim is to ensure that key theorists are made accessible, and to alert students to the “matters arising” from their agendas. Obviously, he is not responsible for the specific contents of each volume, but I infer a certain consensus as to the nature of the enterprise. For the various volumes in the series do have two things in common: they seek to situate the chosen subjects rather than revere them; and, whether critical or sympathetic to the theorists under consideration, they make you look at them afresh. What might be interesting to note, though, out of sheer curiosity, is how far the series as a whole is characterized by what Burke calls “debunking,” how far by “discounting.” My own general impression is that, while it allows for a robust challenge to the given theorists’ own uses of myth,  the aim is to endorse a healthy diversity of perspectives. The rule seems to be that the motivation behind the theory of myth is always open to question, and it is in the act of questioning that one pays one’s subject the fullest compliment. Discounting wins the day over debunking, in other words.

At first glance, the first volume in the series, Segal’s own Joseph Campbell: An Introduction, may look like a purely debunking exercise. The author’s aim is to demonstrate that his subject’s apparent simplification of myth turns out to represent a pseudo-mythic naivety, itself a particularly insidious form of mystification. Campbell’s main error would seem to be the misappropriation of Jung’s ideas. Instead of taking the archetypal images of myth as clues to a meaning beyond themselves, he is content merely to identify them. That is, where Jung would begin, Campbell thinks his job is done. After a detailed survey of the complete works, in which outright contradictions are discovered (for example, where The Hero with a Thousand Faces stresses the unity of all myth, the four volumes of The Masks of God stress the differences), Segal proceeds to a general classification of Campbell’s mythography, which again reveals problems. He is essentially a “universalist” and “comparativist,” but offers no historical insight into the origin and function of myth, only a vague declaration of its “indispensability.” His case for a “monomyth” underlying all specific hero myths might seem helpful, but Segal’s objection is that enthusing over a selective sample of traditional stories which may be made to fit the pattern is not a sufficient achievement for a theorist of myth: “Campbell spends too much time revelling in myth and not enough time analyzing it” (Segal 1987,140).

My instinct, however, is that “debunk” is the wrong word for this volume, unless of course one subscribes without reserve to its subject’s facile equation of mythology and mysticism, and unless one is happy to see Jung appropriated for most un-Jungian ends. (Indeed, though Segal refrains from saying so, it might not be unjust to accuse Campbell of perpetrating that psychic error which Jung calls “inflation:” the solemn expansion of the ego in order to depose the proper function of the self, the pretence of comprehensive wisdom when all one really has to offer is the repeated retelling of certain narratives in the guise of magus.) More generally, we might reflect that, if Campbell’s sentimental and erratic approach to myth is so fundamentally at odds with the series’ assumptions, then a certain amount of clarification, no matter if it offends devotees, must be done to make way for a generally discounting enterprise.

This enterprise is well represented by another early contribution to Theorists of Myth. Judiciously and circumspectly, Robert Ackerman’s The Myth and Ritual School revises the conventional account of the history of mythography. If there is a tradition which associates myth and ritual, it is normally assumed to run from Frazer to Jane Harrison to Northrop Frye. Ackerman demonstrates that, as Frazer himself moved from ritualism towards the intellectualism of Tylor, so Harrison and the Cambridge “myth and ritual” school had to find other sources for their conviction that fertility ceremony was the origin of drama. They looked, then, to such diverse figures as Nietzsche, Bergson, Durkheim and Freud, who convinced them that myth, ritual and religion were fundamentally sociological and/or psychological in nature rather than intellectual. However, if ritualism was to make any headway in literary studies, it was not enough to keep referring drama back to the rite of the dying god (tragedy) and reviving god (comedy). Thus, Northrop Frye could only use the pattern by ignoring the whole question of the beginnings of drama and by concentrating on symbolic patterns. True, there are regrettable omissions here. For example, we are told little of the part played by Jessie L. Weston who, though marginal, was hugely influential by way of Eliot’s The Waste Land. (Segal himself redresses the balance in his foreword to the Princeton reprint of Weston’s From Ritual to Romance: an essay usefully included in Theorizing about Myth.) However, Ackerman succeeds in making us rethink our assumptions about both the source and the coherence of the most influential approach to myth of the twentieth century. And for me it indicates Burke’s shrewdness: there always must come a point where the quest for origins circles round upon itself, bringing us back (or forward) to the motives underlying symbolicity. “Origin” never refers to something far away and long ago, culturally speaking: it is a paradigm that is always being made and remade. Here, by the way, it seems to me appropriate to note how usefully Burke’s theory of myth can be applied within the scholarship of myth theories. Thus, when Harrison differs from Frazer, she is effectively changing the essence of myth by changing its origins: precisely Burke’s point.

Certainly, the theologian Martin Buber was less interested in the distant past than in the imminent future: to be more accurate, his mind always moved from beginnings to endings, from starting place to destination. Or rather, myth was for him a memory that was ineffective unless brought alive as a promise. S.Daniel Breslauer’s Martin Buber on Myth is a detailed exposition of his subject’s biblical mythography; but its special appeal lies in the fact that Buber’s theories have been so long neglected that a revival of interest has a creatively unsettling effect. Obviously, a good deal of attention has to be paid to the distinction between the “I-it” relationship and the “I-Thou” relationship, the latter being the dialogical encounter by which humans begin to comprehend God (“In each Thou we address the Eternal Thou,” as Buber has it). Powerful as this distinction is, Breslauer admits and demonstrates that it creates some confusion in the application. On the one hand, myth assumes the “I-It” form of third person narrative; on the other hand, it is meant to allow for a personal, “I-Thou” encounter with the human – and ultimately divine — other. Buber’s mediation of these two positions is seen to be awkward, but the book as a whole manages to redeem it by arguing that Buber’s main contribution to scriptural studies is to approach the Bible as a complete mythicization of history, to which narrative is essential. The radical nature of this affirmation, Breslauer explains, cannot be understood unless it is realized that in traditional biblical studies, myth is considered merely pagan while scripture itself is considered properly historical: Buber’s resolve to interpret the Bible, especially the Hebrew Bible, as myth is therefore radically significant.

Thus, the Torah initiated a newly ethical kind of myth, which Buber calls “prophetic myth.” More central than creation myth, or even than the shift from polytheism to monotheism, this is the means by which the historical event becomes a living hope, by which a cultural tradition is realized in the moment of individual choice. Thus, a mild discounting of Buber (some tentative querying of the “I-Thou” formulation) culminates in Breslauer’s affirmation of Buber’s conviction that “Myth must authenticate itself in man and not man in myth.” Thus, this volume justifies the quest for existential significance in myth, concurring with Buber in finding myth to be rooted in historical meaning, even if that history is not to be discovered simply by looking backward. As Burke might say, the motive is permanently present, and is to be understood in terms that are as much secular as religious. By the end of Breslauer’s volume, we realize that Buber’s idea of myth is a powerfully existential possibility for humankind: if it really can, despite the author’s reservations, fulfil the desire to live more fully and more freely, in openness to the divine, then it ceases to be a quaint narrative contained in a long-since closed book. By addressing modern man on his own terms – dialogue and encounter – Buber reveals the sacred potential in the secular realm. Breslauer, despite the initial appearance of neutrality, finally endorses Buber’s vision, justifying it as an available, if demanding, option in our age. Scholarship emerges into critical commendation — which is a persuasive sequence.

Another myth theorist who is commonly associated with a religious emphasis is Carl Jung. However, to most persons working in the field of religious studies, he more likely is held to be giving a psychological emphasis to spiritual concerns.  That is, he translates gods into “archetypes” of human need and human behaviour. Thus, he is not so far removed from the man he so dramatically broke with, namely Sigmund Freud – the latter having referred a great deal of psychic conflict to the terms of one mythic figure, Oedipus. While the word “debunking” might spring to mind when discussing Freud’s insistence on explaining the content of myth by way of childhood conflict and sexual anxiety, he is perhaps no more guilty than is Jung of interpreting it as primarily human expression. However, I cannot be alone in finding psychoanalysis rather meagre in its appreciation of the richness of mythology.  Surely it is Jung who, like Buber, demonstrates the existential power of certain inherited patterns of imagery and narrative which we call “myth.” Freud might be said to reduce mythology to one heavily interpreted (perhaps misinterpreted) story; Jung might be said to raise mythology’s status by finding infinite spiritual potential in the humblest detail of the most obscure tale. Put simply, with Jung as guide there is always more to say, whereas Freud, like the neurotics he treated, seemed condemned to repeat himself. (I speak as one who, working, in literary studies, encounters on a daily basis an exaggerated regard for the Freudian method: for example, the study of the nineteenth century novel seems wholly to rely on his dubious sexual reduction.)

Nevertheless, it should be pointed out that one interest of Steven F. Walker’s Jung and the Jungians on Myth is his insistence that his main subject focused more consistently on social function than his preoccupation with spiritual subject matter might suggest. Moreover, though Jung has the reputation of translating the linear material of narrative into the recurrent form of the archetype, his interest is not so much in the vague memory of an origin as in the revelation of meaning within a living situation. Walker demonstrates that the Jungian reading of narrative, whether myth or dream, is highly contextualized – the context being cultural, emotional, thematic, ethical, and so on. Again, we discover in this study a Jung who is alert to the history he is living through: hence his willingness to address and resist the Nazi appropriation of the myths of Wotan and Siegfried. One is reminded here of Burke’s insistence that mythic origin is more usually a matter of present function than those invoking that origin would like to admit. Jung and Burke would agree that mythopoeia is thoroughly pragmatic.

But there is also a general sociological position being delineated by Walker, as well as these occasional political insights. A key concept of Jung’s which Walker explores is “compensation:” that is, the idea that myth not only bears the cultural stamp of its age (a surprising notion in itself to those who have dismissed Jung as a pure mystic), but also seeks to redress the balance of the given culture. For example, in Metamorphoses, Ovid’s creative compendium of Graeco-Roman mythology, the celebration of love and magic compensates for the imperial obsession of his contemporary Romans with warfare and material gain. In modern literature, and specifically in the mythopoeic  impulse of modernist fiction, we have the same effect: it is Jung himself who points out that the very coolness and ironic detachment of Joyce’s rewriting of Homeric myth serves as a compensation for the sentimental nationalism taking over Irish culture at the time of its writing. These positive examples may also remind us that the abuse of myth by a Hitler or other tyrants cannot hold sway indefinitely, given the residual power of “compensation.” Hence the importance of Walker’s demonstration that Jung, so often accused of anti-semitism, is a shrewd analyst of the Nazi abuse of the archetypes of German mythology.

We also come across the term “archetype” intermittently in the work of Mircea Eliade. However, he uses it in a non-Jungian sense, keeping closer to the implication of the prefix, which is synonymous with “original.” Eliade, suspicious of psychology and in particular of the invocation of the unconscious, does not wish to confine origin, as Jung and Burke do, to present and pragmatic requirements. We have already noted the ambiguity of this term; but for Eliade it is to be used explicitly to refer to origins in the primordial sense. For him mythology is a universal need acknowledged by archaic humanity but denied, evaded or suppressed by modern humanity. Put as starkly as possible: its subject matter is “sacred time,” its origin is archaic humanity’s desire to dwell in “sacred time”; its function is to restore archaic humanity to “sacred time.”  Indeed he proposes, in the light of his study of mythology, that the “profane time” of our experience (life as intolerable chronology) was always found, prior to the emergence of modern humanity, with its fallacy of “progress,” to be radically unsatisfactory: hence the  need to be viewed under the aspect of “sacred time.” This is the moment of the very earliest days: in illo tempore is his exact phrase. It is Eliade who is credited with attributing to the archaic mind this desire for “eternal return,” the recovery of the moment when cosmos emerged out of chaos in the very beginning.

Douglas Allen’s Myth and Religion in Mircea Eliade is important for its careful revision of this model, this reputation. Crucially, it queries the notion that Eliade treats the sacred and the profane as opposed, mutually exclusive categories: rather, his interest is in the dialectic between them, so that what matters is that the sacred finds expression in the profane, which is its vehicle. The key, mediating term is “hierophany,” that is, the manifestation of the holy. This is made possible by virtue of a creative paradox: it is only by the sacred showing itself that the profane world is established, that the translation of chaos into cosmos is made possible. Thus, when a tree is identified by the archaic mind as the “tree of the world,” it is revealed as sacred – while remaining a tree. The sacred is incarnated; the profane is sacralized.

Thus, according to Allen, though Eliade himself refers to the archaic human being as homo religiosus, he really means homo symbolicus . “Eternal return” is as much about permanent needs, as expressed in the present, as it is about return to the moment of origin. Here is where Burke might step in again. The question he would ask is: allowing for the fact that the myths and rituals Eliade is interested in are those designed to release humanity from the burden of “profane time,” how far does he himself put forward a similar hypothesis in his own theory of myth? Allen, in a spirit of discounting, wishes to exempt Eliade from the charge (levelled by, amongst others, Segal himself) of fetishizing religion as a phenomenon rooted in the distant past. He argues that what Eliade is really documenting is a continuing cultural expression. However, it is clear that only so much leeway can be granted: Allen judiciously concedes that Eliade’s own description of the archaic ontology as that which prefers cosmos to history, and which seeks at all costs to convert profane time into sacred, is a fair description of Eliade’s own position. He is constructing his own myth, by way of resistance to the profane forces of modernity. The dangers that Jung discovers in the Nazi perversion of German mythology are manifest also in Eliade’s right-wing politics, with its condemnation of democratic progress and its defence of hierarchical mystery.

If Jung and Eliade both start from the idea of certain fundamental symbols which are inherited, differing in their assessment of their significance and the inferences they make about the present, they complement the work of Ernst Cassirer.  If anyone is associated with the identification of humanity with symbolicity, it is he. In William Schultz’s volume, Cassirer and Langer on Myth, we are given the full philosophical background to the theory of myth as “symbolic form.”  Schultz dwells in particular on Kant’s notion of the mental “categories” without which the world would make no sense to humans. What is striking in the light of our discussion of Allen’s volume is that Cassirer’s whole case for the indispensability of myth, as a primal integration of experience, owes no debt to religion. That in itself is a reminder of Eliade’s partiality, as a pure “religionist” (if I have the correct term): he does not concur with Cassirer’s defence of myth as a primal, expressive and integrative “world view.” Nor for that matter does Cassirer concur with Eliade politically: it is the latter who flirts with fascism, while it is the former who repudiates the systematic abuse of received myths perpetrated in the Third Reich, which he contrasts with the spontaneous urge to significance embodied in the earliest myths.

However, if Cassirer’s trust in an instinctive symbolizing, indicated by his definition of the human being as the “symbol-making animal,” needs to be dissociated from Eliade’s superficially similar position, it might be worth pointing out that it is also to be contrasted with Burke’s “symbol-using animal.” Burke thinks that the fact of symbolicity tells us as much about the way humans act in the world as about how they perceive and conceive the world; for him, a Kantian defence of myth as shaping structure is limited by virtue of being confined to epistemology. Of course, it is not Schultz’s task to compare Cassirer with Eliade or Burke; but it is an index of his accessibility as expositor that one feels confident enough to make such comparisons.  This is particularly encouraged by the fact that his volume also discusses the work of Suzanne Langer, who applies the model of “symbolic form” in her defence of art as a valid formalization of myth, and as the stimulus to a remythologization of the modern world (with due attention paid to the dangers exemplified by Nazism). Reading this section, however, I could not decide what was distinctive about the use of Cassirer made by Langer. Though Schultz does make clear that, where the former begins with the mind and metaphysics, the latter begins with the nervous system and biology, the two theories still seem effectively similar. That said, this volume demonstrates how deep and how wide are the implications of Cassirer’s work. For too long it has been regarded as an arid exercise in philosophical speculation, concerned to treat myth as a self-contained curiosity: Schultz makes a good case for its centrality to our understanding of what makes us human.

Hidden structures

In this respect, Cassirer’s approach anticipates structuralism. It is no coincidence that this kind of theory might also be dismissed as an arid exercise: that is, the attempt to abstract from myths themselves a universal grammar or logic. However, Levi-Strauss’s procrustean analysis of the Oedipus legend in terms of the resolution of binary opposition, which is usually taken to be representative, hardly conveys the richness and variety of this mythographic movement. Much of Roland A. Champagne’s Structuralists on Myth is taken up with an account of the Gernet Centre, founded by Pierre Vernant. The centre’s starting point is not Levi-Strauss’s usual, formal demonstration of hidden logic, but his essay on the Pacific myth of Asdiwal, written as a response to Paul Ricoeur’s accusation that Levi-Strauss prefers structure to meaning, semiotics to semantics. This reading of myth makes a point of referring the narrative to a particular culture, economy, geography, and climate.  In proper anthropological fashion Levi-Strauss here sees a myth in its particular context rather than, in a fashion reminiscent of Tylor, abstracting the thinking implicit in the myth into universal categories.

The Gernet mythographers – Marcel Detienne, Pierry Vidal-Naquet, Nicole Loraux — extend this kind of historical approach, Vernant in particular favouring a new “realism,” as demonstrated in his own Myth and Society in Ancient Greece. The aim is the specific engagement with myth in the context of its production, rather than general hypothesis or abstract assertion. Given that the field of enquiry is limited to two hundred years or so of ancient civilization, a period well documented by other specialists, the charge cannot be levelled that a moment of origin is being summoned up out of an unknowable, archaic past. Indeed, in concentrating on the sixth and fifth centuries BCE, the opportunity is there to demonstrate the inextricability of origin and function. For both turn out to be ideological. The inference made by Vernant from his observations on ancient Greece is that, on the one hand, myth originates in, and serves, the impulse to bolster social norms, and on the other, myth originates in, and serves, the impulse to challenge social norms. Where for Malinowski myth bolsters rather than challenges, for Vernant it does both: this tension defines it. In a manner reminiscent of the anthropologist Clifford Geertz, culture becomes a text to be interpreted, meriting a “thick description” of its local features, which might afford clues as to the workings of its myths. In the case of ancient Greece, one should be alert to the “cunning intelligence” evident in the narratives: the ability of the collective mind to negotiate pressing issues of the time (the new concern with reason, the rise of democracy, and so forth). Above all, though the reader cannot help but ponder what is revealed about the nature of myth generally — its paradoxes, inversions, ambiguities – this approach to myth remains resolutely specific and refuses to make grandiose claims for itself.  In bringing such work to our attention, and in demonstrating that structuralism amounts to more than is commonly assumed by those who identify it with Levi-Strauss’s analysis of Oedipus, Champagne indicates that the Vernant school has discovered a dialectic between structure and history, between universality and locality, between permanence and change. In this context, it is worth noting that that last pair of terms gives us the title of an early book by Burke (Permanence and Change), and that Burke is one of the major influences on Geertz, whose approach accords so well with Vernant’s (though the latter has not acknowledged any affinity, as far as I know).

Burke has also frequently been cited by the myth theorist who is the subject of  Richard J. Golsan’s Rene Girard and Myth. Indeed, though it is Girard who is credited with articulating the violent, sacrificial connotations of myth, he himself has acknowledged that Burke did the pioneering work. However, they differ somewhat in emphasis, as we shall see shortly. Let us first make sure we have understood Girard correctly, as expounded in this volume. Golsan’s lucid account makes clear that his subject’s main contribution to myth has been the insight that myth is a narrative which suppresses the violence from which it originates. Two complementary principles are involved. Firstly there is “mimetic desire,” which makes one human being wish for what another has, precisely because s/he has it.  Secondly, there is the “scapegoat mechanism:” in the wider social realm, imitative competition leads to chronic violence, which Girard labels “impure”; as a consequence, an act of “pure,” decisive violence is required for cultural cleansing. The principles are linked because mimetic desire leads to trying to take what the other has. Because mimetic desire is for Girard innate in humans, violence is endemic in society. Ritual is rooted in aggression, with an innocent but marginal figure – the scapegoat – being chosen to bear the burden of the tribe. Myth, which derives from the violent ritual, manages to disguise the founding act of violence. Girard hereby offers a new twist to the myth-ritualist theory of Frazer and his followers. He also reinvigorates religious studies. For, when we come to consider biblical myth, we find it to be the riposte to the process of victimization, the “scapegoat mechanism,” since its final hero, Jesus Christ, is the victim who dies in order to put an end to persecution.

Golsan summarises this argument, which Girard has developed gradually over a decade or so, with admirable clarity. He shows that myth, rather than depicting the killing of the victim, as in Frazer’s account, actually covers up the killing. He indicates how this view of founding violence both parallels and contradicts Freud’s “primal crime,” for example. Golsan repeatedly shows how Girard takes on Freud. He also discusses how Girard’s theory relates to, on the one hand, structuralism (he is closer to Vernant’s “realism” than to Levi-Strauss’s “logic”), and on the other hand, deconstruction (he sees narrative as fuelled by the factor which it cannot admit, but does not accept Derrida’s wilder conclusions about indeterminacy of meaning). Appended to the book is a lengthy interview with Girard, in the course of which Golsan encourages his subject to illustrate his thesis and to counter various objections. This interview is a useful exercise in its own right, conducted as it is in a laudably discounting spirit, but it might perhaps have the effect of making the earlier account seem incomplete.

All I would add to Golsan’s exposition is that, if we concede Burke’s importance as a theorist of scapegoating, then we might understand Girard better by noting how the two perspectives differ. Girard starts from an originating event, the selection of an innocent victim in order that the community be purged of guilt. Having postulated this origin, he then generalizes from the “mechanism” which it illustrates: violence is ubiquitous, and victimization is a universal problem. Burke might agree with this last point, but if so he gets to it from a different route. His starting point is not a hypothetical past, but the nature of language. Language brings the negative into the world, for there are only positives in nature. The negative which is decisive in the formation of the human character is the “hortatory” negative: that is, the instruction “Thou shalt not,” which all cultures seem to arrive at in some form or other. Inability to obey this commandment leads to disorder, which in turn leads to guilt, and guilt is then relieved by what he calls “victimage” (1961, 187-95). I am paraphrasing drastically, but it should be evident that by stressing the primacy of the word rather than the deed – or, rather, the primacy of the word as deed – Burke is linking the scapegoat to that urge which characterizes the “symbol-using animal,” namely perfectionism. No sooner do we use a word than it jumps to its own conclusions. Both myth and ritual exemplify this urge, and it can only be modified by the ability of the symbol-user to observe and check the drive of symbolicity to disastrous culmination. The Christian myth itself, whatever its merits and subtleties, is evidence of such culmination, based on the model of vicarious atonement by the divine Son to the divine Father, of the ultimate redemption by the ultimate payment. Golsan’s exposition might have been helped by some consideration of Burke, who, alas, is nowhere cited, despite Girard’s own frequent acknowledgements that his and Burke’s theories merit comparison.

Ford Russell’s Northrop Frye on Myth exploits comparison with other theorists to the full. Taking his subject to be a theorist of myth rather than a literary critic, Russell indeed devotes much of the volume to situating his subject in the context of previous theorists of myth, notably, Frazer, Spengler, and Jung. Surprising as it may seem, these kinds of connection have not been made systematically before in accounts of Frye, so this labour is in itself illuminating. Taking his cue from Ackerman, Russell demonstrates how Frazer’s seasonal paradigm, based on vegetation ceremony, manages to find its way into orthodox literary criticism: Frye, unlike the Cambridge ritualists, ignores the question of whether drama derived from this ritual, and audaciously translates it into a literary convention. Similarly, myth itself becomes, neither the origin (in the sense of early source) nor the content of literature, but its form or “soul.” Again, despite his usage of the word “archetype,” Frye is clearly distinguished from Jung. Jung regards this structuring pattern as mental and innate, even though its images are manifested within specific cultural situations; Frye considers this structuring pattern to be thoroughly cultural, representing the power of the human imagination to subsume, translate and transform nature, after the manner of the apocalypse. Such comparisons are deployed skilfully by Russell in substantiating his own case for Frye as not only a theorist of myth but also a maker of myth – Frye’s totalizing narrative being the secular equivalent of the sacred history recounted in the Bible. This ambitious plot centres on the “ideal reader,” the hero making his or her way in an “intertextual universe.” The task of this figure is to reach the still centre of the “order of words” that is literature: therein is the moment of revelation.

Russell’s is an ingenious, if somewhat tortuous, exposition, which takes in a good deal of theology, but it is worth the effort. Once again, we see familiar material in a new light; and once again, there are large-scale implications for myth studies. We might note in particular that, if Russell has vindicated Frye, he has also vindicated the idea that, as for Burke, myth is primarily verbal and symbolic, and that, as again for Burke, it testifies to a human need for imaginative fulfilment. One minor qualm is that Russell fails to consider the possibility that, no matter how sophisticated it might seem, Frye’s pattern is really only his version – albeit more sophisticated, more speculative and more satisfying — of Campbell’s universalizing “monomyth.” There again, it is no crime to discover broad patterns of plot underlying various ancient narratives: the Frazerian theorist, Lord Raglan, did exactly that, and I suspect that his example proved influential on both Campbell and Frye. The point is, perhaps, to distinguish the former’s uncritical enlistment of stories that suit his model from the latter’s rich, sophisticated exercise in what Paul Ricoeur has called “narrative understanding.”

Politics and poetics: wider contexts

The ambitious nature of Frye’s work inevitably opens up more general issues in myth studies. We have just referred to his own apocalyptic vision.  For some readers, such as Fredric Jameson, this might have political implications, Frye’s pattern being analogous with the Marxist view of history as a quest structure culminating in the victory of the proletariat. But Frye himself goes to some pains to make clear that his narrative project, his imaginative totalization, is incapable of material realization in any possible society. His apocalypse is all in the mind, which for him, being apolitical, is the safest place for it to be. However, we have already heeded Jung’s warning about the dangers of letting mythology be exploited for the purpose of totalitarianism. Burke, too, has his contribution to make here. In a celebrated essay on Hitler’s Mein Kampf, originally written during the period of the consolidation of the Third Reich, Burke analyses the way religious myth is adapted by Hitler to justify the scapegoating of the Jews. The Jews constitute the “perfect enemy” of the supposedly “perfect race”; their sacrifice is deemed necessary in order that Aryan blood be cleansed and the German people be reborn (1973, 191-220). Interestingly, another volume in Segal’s series, Christopher G. Flood’s Political Myth, includes both an interpretation of Nazi mythology and a brief discussion of Burke, without bringing the two together. (The overlooking of Burke’s contribution in this field seems to result from a preoccupation with Cassirer’s.) This, however, is the only weakness in an otherwise persuasive book. For it addresses the vexed issue of the relationship between myth and ideology with a coherence and cogency that is rare whenever the two terms are used in proximity.

Flood helpfully sets up a tripartite division, to help us understand the relations involved. On the one side we have “sacred myth,” by which he means myth as traditionally understood, in close proximity to religion. On the other side we have “political ideology,” which at first sight seems quite distinct. However, in between, and mediating between the two apparent extremes, is “political myth.” It is narrative by virtue of being myth; it is ideological by virtue of being political. Like sacred myth, it consolidates a group and validates a particular version of reality by providing a temporal account of either origin or destination. Like ideology, it is taken for granted, and virtually invisible. Thus, myth and ideology are congruent, but are not identical. One thing they have in common is that they are indispensable: Flood insists that it is highly unlikely that any society could do without either. This is a Burkean insight, which certainly redeems this volume from the minor sin of omission to which I have referred.

Beyond his flair for definition, Flood also persuades us that the term “myth” should not be limited to traditionally transmitted stories. Mythmaking is a necessary function of modern, secular societies, and he argues that this capacity should be understood as fully as possible. This argument is echoed in the last book we will consider, The Poetics of Myth. Originally written in Russian by Eleazar Meletinksy in 1976, it was translated for Segal’s series in 1998. As an admirer of Burke’s, I find the title attractive, since it promises to relate mythology to language, symbol, and form. It is, indeed, an ambitious work which seeks to encompass various modern approaches to both myth and literature, most traditional types of myth, and most of the important developments in “mythification” in twentieth-century literature.

The book’s two main proposals are as follows. Firstly, literature derives from a universal mytho-poetic basis – an assertion that bears comparison with Frye’s position. Secondly, myth always survives as a form of thought, before it takes on any other form – an assertion that bears comparison with Levi-Strauss’s position. The reader’s inference might be that the book is all about universal, timeless patterns. But Meletinsky’s perspective is thoroughly Marxist, focusing on material, social practice as far as possible. Thus, the link between the book’s two main proposals is the author’s commitment to the notion of myth as rooted in collective need. Specifically, Meletinsky argues in the light of this second proposal that in archaic societies myth is primarily semantic: the signifiers which constitute it are tied to one main signified, which is the society itself. By contrast, in modern societies myth is primarily semiotic, with the signifiers having more scope for metaphorical play: thought is relatively free. Society remains the ultimate referent, of course, but is a less explicit framework.

Thus, we see that though literature may hark back to the semantic function of archaic societies, as in nineteenth-century realist fiction, the impulse of “mythification,” the desire to revitalize the collective imagination, will in turn make itself felt, as in twentieth-century modernist fiction. Meletinsky concentrates in particular on the work of Joyce and Kafka. The former revises traditional myths as if they were a ready-made fictional language. The latter creates a more original kind of narrative by estranging familiar objects, creatures, and kinds of people by attributing mythic status to them in a symbolic universe. I should stress again that this celebration of “mythification” is rooted in a materialist account of myth, which ties it firmly to society, demonstrating its capacity to articulate – indeed, embody — social thought and practice. Thus, for Meletinsky it is not enough to recognize that modernist literature is mythopoeic: one has to understand that both Kafka’s creation and Joyce’s recreation of myth are responses to their cultural environments. Nor, having mentioned origin and function, should we fail to note that the complexity of subject matter is thoroughly examined in this book: indeed, about a third of the book is devoted to documenting the various contents of the various categories of archaic narrative – these contents and categories acquiring new significance by way of the modern “mythification” already mentioned. Again, it meticulously charts the progress of those modern theories which have sought to illuminate them. This volume is not, then, a mere exposition of an approach to myth but also an assessment of many other approaches, including many of those covered in Segal’s series. Beyond this, The Poetics of Myth merits attention for its claim that myth is always expanding: that stories told may always be retold, that a mythology received may also be renewed, that symbolic world-making is never quite complete.

There are, nevertheless, some reservations to be made, which may be stated simply. Perhaps the influence of Levi-Strauss ultimately limits the argument. Perhaps, too, the book’s defence of mythopoeia is less persuasive than Frye’s literary myth, lacking as it does the range, elegance and sheer imaginative audacity of his vision. Moreover, a good deal of Meletinsky’s social analysis derives from Malinowski rather than Marx, with the idea of myth as “social charter,” as validation of the given order, tending to overshadow at times the more complex Marxist view (inherited by Vernant, for example ) of myth as both ideological reflection (bolster) and ideological resistance (challenge).  Finally, as with some of the other volumes in the series, Burke goes unmentioned: as his is the most comprehensive attempt to chart a “poetics of myth” hitherto, this absence is an important deficit. However, Meletinsky’s is still an impressive volume which represents the series in its concern to put both myth and its theorists in new perspectives. Indeed, the very invitation to consider Levi-Strauss and Malinowski under the sign of Marxist materialism may turn out to be one of its major contributions.

We have moved from the case against mystification to the case for “mythification.” Perhaps the distance is not that great. Certainly, studying myth in the company of Segal opens more doors than it closes. His instinct is that, even if the origin and function of myth are taken to be material and secular, the subject matter is by no means diminished. That is, he neither explains away nor elevates myth: he simply looks to myth theory for the fullest possible account of what it involves. Thus, his most recent work, including his inaugural lecture at Lancaster University, is an attempt to work out the possible applications of D. W. Winnicott’s theory of play to the nature of myth. Moreover, if this series can be counted as central to Segal’s theoretical project, he should certainly be regarded as someone engaged in what we have called a “discounting” enterprise. For example, we may recall that Allen’s account of Eliade is admirably fair, giving credit where it is due to his subject’s dialectic of sacred and profane, even while recognizing the reactionary impetus behind the apparently neutral conjecture about the workings of the archaic mind. All in all, having just used a Burkean term, I would stress the Burkean implications of Segal’s project. True, Segal does not expound a complete philosophy of language – a “logology” to complement the “mythology”; but then, as we have recognized, he is primarily a scholar rather than a theorist. A finer sense of form, a more subtle sense of symbolicity, might make his exposition seem less stark. But his instinct for the ongoing, comparative spirit of myth studies is sound. As Burke would say, if every “way of seeing” is a “way of not seeing,” then each pronouncement one makes both corrects and invites correction. This is not to condone a theoretical free-for-all: rather, it is to insist on the need for each of us to be conscious of what one is about when making a scholarly intervention – whether in the reading of myth or in the theory of myth.  Segal may seem too anxious to dispel mystery from the one; but in demanding and embodying clarity, he has performed a service to the other.

References

Burke, Kenneth

 The Rhetoric of Religion. Beacon Press. 1961

“Flowerishes,” Collected Poems 1915-1967. University of California Press.1968

“Doing and Saying: Thoughts on Myth, Cult and Archetype.” Salmagundi  7, 100-19. 1971

The Philosophy of Literary Form. University of California Press. 3rd edition. 1973 (Originally published 1941.)

Permanence and Change. University of California Press. 3rd edition. (Originally published 1935.) 1984a

Attitudes Towards History. University of California Press. 3rd edition.  (Originally published 1937.) 1984b

Jung, C. G.

On Mythology. Robert A. Segal (ed.) Princeton University Press. 1998.

Segal, Robert A.

Explaining and Interpreting Religion: Essays on the Issues. Peter Lang Publishers. 1992.

(ed.) The Myth and Ritual Theory:  An Anthology.  Blackwell Publishers.1998