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Don’t judge myths by their covers |
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Written by James Linville
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Friday, January 15 2010, 9:30 PM |
A search though bookstores and libraries will turn up numerous collections of world mythology. Some will be rather dense and academic in tone and perhaps not all that enjoyable to read while others will be far more accessible to a non-specialist audience. Of the latter, some can be very good, but others can be rather disappointing from an educational point of view. Some books may lead readers to a false sense of familiarity with different ways of life or, worse, not challenge long-standing biases that regard the people of ancient or non-Western societies as “primitive,” unintelligent or even without a proper moral sense.
Myths do not exist in a vacuum but are inextricably linked to many other facets of life. Some myths are told only in specific circumstances, such as annual agricultural rituals. Without a clear understanding of how the ritual works, the true meaning of the myth may be hidden. Some myths are distinctly political, ascribing rules divine legitimacy. Others tell of great heroes whose exploits test the nature or limits of human existence. Why the natural cycles of the Earth are what they are is also the subject of myth. One of the most important functions of many myths is that of articulating group identity. Myths tell people who they are, where they came from, and what their goals and values are. No one theory can explain all myths and no one anthology can do justice to the diversity or to how myths “work” in societies and individual lives.
Some anthologies are organized culturally, with perhaps a few Norse myths followed by some from India, Japan or Australia. While this makes a lot of sense, to fully understand the few selections on offer from each religion requires a lot of background information that such books cannot provide on their own. Other collections may arrange their contents based on subject matter, such as creation, sacred places, or heroic trials or quests. There are justifications for this, too, but also limitations. Above all, it blurs the vast cultural differences between the various myth makers and the book’s audience. Some books market the myths of other people as more or less exotic aids to the reader’s own journey of self-discovery. While this may bring some comfort to readers, it does nothing to help them understand how others see the world and human life.
In many cases, the mechanics of collecting and translating myth are smoothed over to provide an easy reading and enjoyable collection. Many societies have multiple versions of the same basic myth, but a collection might offer a single, conflated version that does not even follow the plot of any story actually told by the storytellers themselves. Some collections do not even offer translations of all of its material, but are creative retellings, sometimes radically abridged with the original storytelling style completely effaced.
Many myths are known only from broken or badly damaged tablets or manuscripts. Sometimes there is even some uncertainty as to the order of the fragments. Scholars occasionally have no idea what some important words and phrases in a text actually mean. Academic works would detail these issues and the various attempts to solve them, and offer a patchy, gap-filled translation that would be a torturous read with copious notes. The same myth in popular level books may be presented with the gaps filled in with speculation or “best guesses,” often without admitting there was a problem in the first place. The results may be good bed-time reading, but it is not a good source for the study of mythology. As always, “buyer beware.”
James Linville teaches in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Lethbridge.
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