The article focuses on the issue of reception of ancient myths in popular culture. As popular culture is known for vast use of different ancient myths in many productions, the question may be raised, if they can be still named as ‘ancient’. With the example of the drowned peninsula of Orr in Guild Wars video games, which is compared with the Atlantis isle of Plato, the article proves that despite structural similarity of the story, these two are different myths. The myth of Atlantis is shaped by the Greek culture, which is oriented on the past, with strong conviction that the human race is heading towards destruction. The story of Orr reflects immersion in present time and the need to bury the past once and forever. Therefore, popular culture creates its own mythology, which is named as the mythology of popular culture.
Ján Kollár (1793 – 1852) was well known Slovak representative, celebrated poet and ideologist. However his scientific career is still not well illuminated. This paper focuses on Kollár's interest in history and his discovery of the supposed Slavic pagan idol. During the honeymoon in autumn 1835 Kollár visited town Bamberg in Germany. Near entrances of the Bamberg cathedral he found two ancient sculptures of lions and copied supposed runic inscription. He believed that they represent Slavic deity "Černoboh" [Dark/Evil God] and that the inscription is evidence of the runic letters of the ancient Slavs. About his discovery he wrote to friends. Pavel Jozef Šafárik (1795 – 1861) informed the scientific spheres and also German scientists began to occupy themselves with problems of the sculptures and inscription. Although the final achievements proved that the inscription was not real Slavic relic and sculptures were created in the Middle Ages, Kollár believed in their authenticity for the rest of his life. The discovery also influenced his later scholar activities, when he became a professor of Slavic archaeology and occupied himself with problems so-called "Prillwitz idols".
The claim that all living creatures constitute a wholeness in the world of nature is a primary thought of the Chinese philosophy. It links both cosmological and anthropological motifs. Living creatures are interconnected and interdependent. The world of nature is tao. Tao is wholeness. The world of nature is in constant flux set by progressive cycles in which individual changes take place. When the world of nature remains stable, it reaches equilibrium. Life can develop in a harmonious way. Chinese anthropology treats the human as a microcosm of the world of nature. Man is an intermediary between Heaven and Earth and a descendant of the interpolating cosmic and earthly powers. An ideogram, found in China, presents the human figure as a tree rooted in the Earth, with hands outstretched like branches towards Heaven, deriving power from both above and below.
The article introduces research into myths and legends in French anthropology, giving a general theoretical and historical overview of the discipline and its trends. Among the approximately five hundred abstracts, which have recently been published in “Fichier Central des Thèses”, the database of French higher educational institutions, and which include the word “myth” either in the heading or the body of the text, less than 5% are researches into ethnology or anthropology, whereas the others come from the field of literary studies, psychology, sociology, linguistics, politology, etc. This proves that myths cover a considerably wider range of disciplines than anthropological studies. This brief overview presents only a part of the diverse and complicated French myth and legend studies. From the point of view of terminology, it would be essential to establish if all the authors who discuss the notion of the myth mean one and the same thing. The article focuses on anthropology, disregarding research into stories and legends in literary disciplines and myth-critical trends, as well as myth studies carried out by psychologists. Recent studies using myths in a figurative meaning – for instance, politology – have not been included either. Only printed materials have been used, leaving aside cultural activities, including museums, where myths, folk tales and legends find wider response than among the readers of academic publications. The facts presented in the article direct the reader to the key texts, in order to arouse curiosity and interest in this so far poorly studied topic in the era where anthropology is meant to regulate, above all, social and intercultural problems.
Herodotus, Theophrastus, Pliny the Elder, Achilles Tatius, Philostratus, and other writers in antiquity provide similar descriptions of the fertilization of date palms in Mesopotamia. However, although all these narratives bear a general resemblance to one another, none can be proven to be the direct source of Ammianus Marcellinus’s version (Res Gestae, XXIV,3,12–13). Instead this article argues that his account was influenced by contemporary oral retellings of an Assyrian fertility myth.
The Czech and Polish modernistic project of the critical national mythology is, in general, a form of the artist’s discussion with his own cultural tradition which was represented by the common, collective awareness. This collective awareness was, at that time, deprived of official form, due to the lack of state independence. In the works of Stanisław Wyspiański and Julius Zeyer, we can see the aspiration to achieve the recent, non-fixed look at the national tradition in its literary shape. There was the idea of tragic conflict which has been used by Wyspiański, first of all, in the cycle of his historical plays: Bolesław Śmiały and Skałka. Julius Zeyer’s most famous work, the epic poem named Vyšehrad, refers to the most important tradition of Czech romanticism, namely, to the way of the functioning of folklore in literary tradition. Zeyer also took up the discussion with the tradition of the alleged medieval manuscripts (the so-called Rukopis královédvorský and Rukopis zelenohorský) and suggested a critical using of national mythology. Critical – in this case – means: non-particular, non-provincial, opened to influence and reinterpretation.
This article is a part of the bigger work entitled The Ambivalence of Byzantism in Taras Shevchenko’s Writings. The aim of the article is studying the problem of perception and interpretation of the mytheme of Jerusalem in the works by Taras Shevchenko. The crosscultural, semiotic, hermeneutic and comparative analyses allow for discovering deep semantic levels of the “Jerusalem” loci in the works by T. Shevchenko, for clearing out its subtexts and for defining its poetic structure and the levels of the artistic interpretation. In the result of the analyses it has been found that the association “Kiev–Jerusalem” in the works by Shevchenko has its loci of various meanings, which have been formed in the course of a long trajectory within the historic space. The mytheme “Jerusalem” is realized primarily in its Biblical and genetic aspect. The contents of the “Jerusalem idea” proves Shevchenko’s solid knowledge of the Old Testament dogmas in the field of the Judaic history and culture. The resemblance of/between Kiev and Jerusalem is formed on the basis of [the] allegories, the poetical means aiming at the context reading with regard to the urgent social and historic reality. Introducing the mytheme “Jerusalem” into a discourse of fiction, T. Shevchenko accounts for actualization/transposition of its Biblical semantic field/range unto the social, political, cultural and spiritual needs of the epoch. The image of Kiev in Shevchenko’s works has strong sacred characteristics/connotations which indirectly correlate with Christian viewpoints. The importance of Kiev as the spiritual habitable globe is underlined by frequent recollections about numeruous temples, monasteries, saints, monks, icons, pilgrimage traditions, etc. The results of the research can be used for courses in the Ukrainian History of Literature and Theory, for text-books and training aids, for further comparative studies of Shevchenko’s works. The results of the study are addressed to philologists and researchers of the Ukrainian literature. The academic novelty of this article lies in the fact that the mytheme “Jerusalem” in Shevchenko’s works has for the first time become the object of individual research and that theoretic aspects and comparative typological levels of this problem have been elaborated.
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This paper proposes a reading of Northrop Frye‘s work in the context of certain conflicting claims of feminist theories. On the one hand, postmodern thinkers advocating gender scepticism question the legitimacy of comprehensive communal symbols; on the other hand, building on the binaries of gender, feminists continue to perform a useful critique of the extremely ―masculine‖ values of Western culture. I argue that Frye‘s unique distinction between primary concern (mythology) and secondary concern (ideology) can be used to theorize the difference between archetype and stereotype, and thus to distinguish the ideological and oppressive from the nourishing and liberating aspects of gendered imagery in our culture. And ultimately, Frye‘s typological dialectic provides a way of going beyond the binaries of gender towards the interpenetration of masculine and feminine, subject and object, culture and nature.
We aim to understand how different conceptions of the world coexisted, were creat-ed and maintained, and to understand the differences between classical and contempo-rary mythology in the art context. Are we living in post-mythological times? Is there a pattern or a semblance of structure in both classical mythology and contemporary myths such as the cyborg? Can we stretch the definition of mythology so that it encom-passes everything that in some way tries to imbue a sense of order in the chaos of human life?
This paper explores the role of myths and archetypes in organizational research. The notion of myth is introduced and theories regarding the origins of mythology are discussed. Myth’s typical features and its role in shaping social reality are considered to better understand the role of mythology in modern organizations. The role of archetype in organizational myth is also emphasized. Analysis of examples of organizational mythologies is combined with methodological insights regarding the ways in which myths and archetypes can be studied in different organizational contexts. The study not only aims to improve comprehension of key assumptions, theories and concepts involved in studying organizational mythologies, but also to enhance the ability to apply this method of organizational analysis.
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Author of the study presents, on the basis of the analysis of the modifications of the story on the origins of the Přemyslid dynasty in medieval narrative sources (Legend of Kristián, Chronicle of Kosmas, Old Czech Chronicle of the so called Dalimil, ...) as well as their comparison.
The article discusses folk beliefs and narratives about supernatural beings in Virumaa, one of the regions in north-eastern Estonia. The region under discussion is situated in the area where cultural currents from the West and East intermingle, revealing common features with Germanic and Eastern Slavic traditions, with a noticeable Finno-Ugric substrate. Attitude towards forest fairies is rather neutral; according to the beliefs of indigenous forest belt peoples they often help humans. The water spirit is not always supposed to be hostile but is presented as the ruler of waters and protector of fishes. The beliefs held in the Russian villages in the area of Lake Peipus, on the other hand, feature the water spirit as a demonised, aggressive spirit. The latter is also true about the barn spirit, who tortures the cattle it does not like. By the end of the 19th century mythological fantasies, for example, legends of especially hostile beings – the plague, nightmares, and dog-faced plunderers – in active narrative tradition faded away. Two aetiologies have been presented about the werewolf: a human being either turns into a wolf or is bewitched into one. Imagery of the dead spirit has been rather persistent and even today memorates about experiencing it are narrated.
This paper focuses on dragons in Greek and Roman literature. They are be concerned both as a motif and as a topos. Showing their role in textes may help in understanding the phenomenon and popularity of dragons nowadays. By analizing their apperance in textes of ancient Greek and Roman literature the division into three main groups is made: dragon as an enemy of a hero, as a guard of a virgin and as a watchman of tresaures.
Mitologia nierówności jest częścią mitologii kapitalizmu. Mitologia ta stworzyła oczywistość, która stała się treścią świadomości potocznej w Polsce po 1989 r. i nie została poddana krytycznej refleksji w debacie publicznej. Pełni ona funkcje ideologiczne wobec systemu: objaśnia go odwołując się do tzw. normalności i naturalności, a także usprawiedliwia jego negatywne społeczne skutki. Mitologia ta utrudnia lub wręcz uniemożliwia krytykę systemu i działanie na rzecz jego zmiany. Konstrukcja zmitologizowanej oczywistości jest pełna sprzeczności, ignoruje osiągnięcia myśli filozoficznej i społecznej, a także doświadczenie rzeczywistości. Znaczącą rolę w powstaniu tak zmitologizowanej oczywistości, odegrały elity intelektualne, które przyjęły bezkrytycznie mitologię kapitalizmu, mimo iż wiele faktów historycznych (doświadczenie pierwszej wojny światowej, Wielkiego kryzysu lat 30. i późniejszych kryzysów kapitalistycznego świata) wskazywało na konieczność ostrożnego jej potraktowania. Niebezpieczeństwo mitologii kapitalizmu i w szczególności mitu nierówności polega na tym, że stoi za nim taka wizja człowieka i rzeczywistości społecznej, która wyklucza wolność i godność człowieka. Mit nierówności i ta całość, którą tworzy – mitologia kapitalizmu – wykorzystuje zwulgaryzowaną wersję pojęcia homo oeconomicus i przedstawia ją jako uniwersalny obraz człowieka. Gdyby poważnie i konsekwentnie potraktować te wątki, które są zawarte w micie nierówności i mitologii kapitalizmu, to można w oparciu o nie zbudować społeczeństwo i państwo niedemokratyczne. Obowiązkiem intelektualistów jest krytyczna analiza świadomości społecznej i tworzących ją mitów, co oznacza próbę wskazania ich źródeł, związku z doświadczeniem, kontekstu filozoficznego, uwikłań i skutków społecznych.
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Mythology of inequalities is a part of mythology of capitalism. This mythology created obviousness that became after 1989 content of the everyday consciousness and was never critically analyzed in. It plays in the system an ideological function: it explains this system referring to its “normalcy” and naturalness, and justifies its negative social consequences. Any criticism of this system and activity oriented at its transformation was made difficult or impossible. The construction of the mythologized reality is full of contradictions and disregards achievements of social thought and the real-life experiences. An important role in the rise of this mythologized reality was played by intellectual elites that uncritically accepted the mythology of capitalism in spite of many historical facts (the experiences of the 1st World War, Great Depression and subsequent crises) suggested the necessity to approach it cautiously. The danger resulting from the myth of capitalism (of inequality), consists in excluding dignity and freedom of man by the anthropology it comprises. The myth of inequality (and the whole myth of capitalism of which it is a constitutive part) avails of trivialized version of the concept of homo oeconomicus and presents it as universally valid image of man. If to take seriously and systematically those ideas, one could – availing of them –construct undemocratic society and state. It is the duty of intellectuals to analyze critically social myths it comprises – to try to discover their origins and relations with experience, to characterize their philosophical contexts and consequences for society.
This article is a systematic approach to the character of deity, who bears the name Mitra in India, but in Iran is called Mithra (later Mihr). The study aims to give answers to three questions: 1) What are the similarities between the Indian Mitra and the Iranian Mithra, if we leave aside the name of the deity? 2) What are the differences between these two deities? 3) What are the changes that the depiction of Mitra/Mithra has gone through in Indian and Iranian mythologies? To answer these questions, the article first gives an overview of Mitra in India, then of Mithra in Iran, and finally compares the two. Both approaches start with a comprehensive overview of sources. In India the main source for the study of Mitra is Vedic literature (ca 1500/1200–600/500 BC), namely the Rigveda, Atharvaveda, Yajurveda, and Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa. These sources are consistent, describing Mitra as a deity connected with the Sun, the incarnation of divine order, harmony, and friendship among mankind. Some light is thrown also on Mitra in post-Vedic literature, mainly in epic literature (ca 300/200 BC–200/300 AD). In Iran, the sources are even more varied. They start with Iranian scripture Avesta (ca 1000–300 BC) and epigraphic sources from Achaemenian dynasty (6th–4th century BC), and continue with written sources from Greek and Roman writers (6th century BC to 3rd century AD), epigraphic material, and data from coins from Kushan (1st –3rd centuries AD) and Sassanid periods (3rd–7th centuries AD), not to forget Pahlavi writings from medieval Persia (7th–10th centuries AD). According to the sources, Iranian Mithra is a divine warrior, ruler of the worlds, judge of the dead, and protector against demons. He is still connected with the Sun, and helps the mankind, but more aggressively than Indian Mitra, who has ceded all his warlike attributes to his dual companion Varuṇa. The article concludes that the cult of Mithra that was so influential in the Mediterranean region has probably borrowed more from Iran than India.
The process of mythologization of avifauna has been analyzed in order to study the relation between man and nature, and more precisely, between the Renaissance humanism and natural sciences. One issue is puzzling in this field – why did educated and well-read humanists mythologize nature, including the avifauna? Why did authors, for whom in principle criticism was an elementary indicator for perceiving reality, got rid of it so easily? 16th century authors with humanist education did not reconstruct nature but art, and they searched for its ideal in ancient works filled with mythologization of the nature. Humanist erudition required describing mythical animals and equally mythical symbolic of those animals. In this way one could prove that he knew ancient texts well. Reconstruction of such nature as it really existed was an attitude that was unworthy of a humanist artist. Hence the store of knowledge and ignorance that existed in those times was translated into a particular, often mythologized, text written by a Renaissance author.
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Mythologies from different parts of the world have always used female characters. Most of these are not positive ones, quite the reverse. Nowadays, our generally accepted attitude towards womanhood and women has barely anything to do with the emotions which were triggered by such mythical creatures as lamias, mermaids or vampires. Furthermore, equal rights are perceived, today, as integral to a healthy society. Yet, there are some aspects of womanhood that are not only absent in public discourse, but also trigger such extreme emotions as fear and disgust. One such trigger is menstrual blood. The aim of this article is to present negative images of the woman in mythology, with all their consequences, as well as to show how feminist reflections and artistic activity negate this understanding of womanhood and sexuality, frequently employing controversial and inconvenient themes in the furtherance of that goal.
Podstawowym celem artykułu jest wskazanie założeń sejsmologii mitologicznej jako techniki badawczej używanej w paradygmacie studiów kulturowych. Zakłada ona rekonstruowanie i interpretowanie przez badacza tropów kulturowych zawartych w tekstach generowanych w danym momencie historycznym określonego społeczeństwa. Najistotniejszym aspektem w kontekście tego podejścia jest badanie mitów typowych dla danego społeczeństwa - kreowanych, podtrzymywanych, reprodukowanych i funkcjonujących społecznie, a widzialnych w sektorach społecznym, ekonomicznym, politycznym, czy kulturowym. Mają one zasadniczy wpływ przede wszystkim na życie codzienne danej społeczności i wyrażają się w rutynowych nawykowych działaniach. W perspektywie przedstawionej w niniejszym studium akcent badania położony jest kategorie takie jak „tekst”, „mit”, „mitologia”, „tkanka mitologiczna”. Oddziałują one w substancjalny sposób na wzorce i normy każdej grupy ludzkiej i determinują myślenie o rzeczywistości.
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2_Apart from Kundera and Barthes, I look at the work of Camille Flammarion, from the same point of view. His work concerns the line dividing life and death and also life and afterlife. The reason for choosing Flammarion was the duality of his position, as a celebrated scientist as his time, who also wrote 'academic' pieces about the afterlife. He wrote his quasi-scholarly works on a purely literary ground plan, even if he insisted that he was writing a report that had nothing to do with literature. This example demonstrates just how convincing literature can be when lacking a recognizable literary form. This may lead us to question whether literature (in its concealed illusory form) is the very principle of madness or vice versa.
The Symposium alias The Banquet belongs to those hypotexts by Plato which have been constantly reread and reinterpreted by the authors of French decadence. This article is focused on the Péladan’s reinterpretation of one of its parts, the famous Aristophanes’s speech about love. It implies on one hand the masculine notion of “androgyne”, heavily valorised in the fin de siècle novels, and, on the other hand, the feminine concept of “gynandre”, perceived negatively, feared and mocked. Why in Péladan’s (1858–1918) eyes and according to many others decadent authors man is gorgeous and intelligent enough to realize on his own the platonic ideal of the union of the two sexes? And what about the woman, henceforth outmoded and “useless”? The decadent misogyny ties itself in knots over its fanciful theories which are reflective of the spirit of this historical period.
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