| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"maff" |
| Date: |
27 May 2006 06:40:26 AM |
| Object: |
Mything in action |
Mything in action
http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,1783748,00.html
Nicholas Lezard is delighted by Karen Armstrong's A Short History of
Myth
Saturday May 27, 2006
The Guardian
A Short History of Myth
by Karen Armstrong
(Canongate, =A36.99)
George Eliot's Casaubon, you will recall, was working on the key to all
mythologies. This massive work remained uncompleted as he lay on his
deathbed. What a pity he did not have this little work to help him on
his way.
Of course, this is not exactly the kind of thing Casaubon had in mind.
This is an overview, not a key. And, as the title implies, it is,
unlike Casaubon's work, brief. And to the point. It's only 160-odd
pages; Casaubon probably had footnotes longer than that. Canongate, the
publisher, has commissioned a series of works from such people as
Margaret Atwood, Jeanette Winterson and Victor Pelevin, each of which
is designed to be a modern version of an ancient myth. This is the
volume which is meant to serve as an introduction to the whole series.
Karen Armstrong
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.atheism/msg/4d8d5d0ee9ab15fe
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| User: "stoney" |
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| Title: Re: Mything in action |
29 May 2006 07:25:45 PM |
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On 27 May 2006 04:40:26 -0700, "maff" <maff91@yahoo.com> wrote in
alt.atheism
Mything in action
http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,1783748,00.html
Nicholas Lezard is delighted by Karen Armstrong's A Short History of
Myth
Saturday May 27, 2006
The Guardian
A Short History of Myth
by Karen Armstrong
(Canongate, £6.99)
George Eliot's Casaubon, you will recall, was working on the key to all
mythologies. This massive work remained uncompleted as he lay on his
deathbed. What a pity he did not have this little work to help him on
his way.
Of course, this is not exactly the kind of thing Casaubon had in mind.
This is an overview, not a key. And, as the title implies, it is,
unlike Casaubon's work, brief. And to the point. It's only 160-odd
pages; Casaubon probably had footnotes longer than that. Canongate, the
publisher, has commissioned a series of works from such people as
Margaret Atwood, Jeanette Winterson and Victor Pelevin, each of which
is designed to be a modern version of an ancient myth. This is the
volume which is meant to serve as an introduction to the whole series.
The author has been wisely chosen. Karen Armstrong is renowned for
having once been a nun and then getting fed up with it. Her spiritual
journey may have taken a wrong turn, but at least her intellectual
journey has been fruitful: encouragingly, her PhD was rejected, so she
has been spared the horrors of the academy and the langue du bois that
it so often speaks. Her speciality now is, for want of a more resonant
term, comparative religion; she specialises in God, or what human beings
have tried to make of him. (Or her. Or it. Let us not get bogged down in
the details.)
Anyway, having now learned enough about the religious impulse (she has
published books on the Buddha, Islam, Muhammad and the history of
Jerusalem) she is able to condense, generalise and speculate about the
impulses behind the myths of (chiefly) the Babylonians, Egyptians,
Chinese and Jews. Later chapters deal with the change in the very idea
and purpose of myth as brought about by the Greek philosophers.
The book is more about provoking thought than supplying raw data, so do
not come to it if you want chapter and verse on the Norse gods or the
like. What Armstrong does in her skid over the millennia is make
comparisons, connections and contrasts in a way that cannot fail to
enlighten the general reader. She is particularly convincing on the
significance and origins of paleolithic myth - always a speculative
matter, but here handled with maximum plausibility. A myth, as she
points out, has always been something that happens all the time, in an
"everywhen" rather than a "once upon a time". As for later, retrievable
myths, she is expert on significance and practice; it is always salutary
to be reminded of the fact that the caste system in India is divinely
sanctioned, sacred and absolute, that the doctrine of original sin has
no biblical warrant, or of Jeremiah's and Ezekiel's radically unpleasant
experience of the divine ("Ezekiel is commanded by God to eat excrement;
he is forbidden to mourn his dead wife; he is overcome with fearful,
uncontrollable trembling").
Armstrong has a point to make about all of this, and highlights
modernity's rejection of myth as disastrous. "We are myth-making
creatures," she says. We need myths to "help us realise the importance
of compassion . . . to see beyond our immediate requirements. We need
myths that help us to venerate the earth as sacred once again, instead
of merely using it as a 'resource'." You may query whether myths are
what precisely are necessary for these attributes to flower; or whether
their messages are always so unambiguously well-intended - I have just
heard an Indian untouchable on the radio, not impressed with the
divinely sanctioned caste system. But if you replace the word "myths"
with "stories" her formulation works very well. (And, as far as the need
for myths goes, I concede that this is the second week running I have
reviewed a book that deals with the subject.)
The last few pages are more contentious but related to the project
Canongate is engaged upon. What myth once did, novels now do; and her
points about The Waste Land and Ulysses are well made. (Both hang on
mythical frameworks; both came out in the same year, 1922.) Myths are
narratives: as she eloquently says, we shouldn't be done with them yet.
© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006
--
Fundies and trolls are cordially invited to
shove a wooden cross up their arses and rotate
at a high rate of speed. I trust you'll
be 'blessed' with a plethora of splinters.
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| User: "Mike Painter" |
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| Title: Re: Mything in action |
27 May 2006 02:41:40 PM |
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maff wrote:
Mything in action
http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,1783748,00.html
Nicholas Lezard is delighted by Karen Armstrong's A Short History of
Myth
It wasn't until I got to the sentence above that I could make sense of
mything which I read as "my thing".
Years ago Radio Shack used starthere as a variable in a lot of their
programs and it took me a year to realize it was not "star there".
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| User: "Harry F. Leopold" |
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| Title: Re: Mything in action |
28 May 2006 12:17:25 AM |
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On Sat, 27 May 2006 14:41:40 -0500, Mike Painter wrote
(in article <UX1eg.34448$4L1.27605@newssvr11.news.prodigy.com>):
maff wrote:
Mything in action
http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,1783748,00.html
Nicholas Lezard is delighted by Karen Armstrong's A Short History of
Myth
It wasn't until I got to the sentence above that I could make sense of
mything which I read as "my thing".
Obviously you have never read any of the "Myth" books: Mything Link," "Hit or
Myth," "Little Myth Marker," and the rest. I think the author was Robert
Asprin.
Years ago Radio Shack used starthere as a variable in a lot of their
programs and it took me a year to realize it was not "star there".
--
Harry F. Leopold
aa #2076
AA/Vet #4
The Prints of Darkness
(remove gene to email)
"God hates figs."
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| User: "stoney" |
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| Title: Re: Mything in action |
29 May 2006 07:29:39 PM |
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On Sun, 28 May 2006 00:17:25 -0500, Harry F. Leopold
<hleopold@coxyx.net> wrote in alt.atheism
On Sat, 27 May 2006 14:41:40 -0500, Mike Painter wrote
(in article <UX1eg.34448$4L1.27605@newssvr11.news.prodigy.com>):
maff wrote:
Mything in action
http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,1783748,00.html
Nicholas Lezard is delighted by Karen Armstrong's A Short History of
Myth
It wasn't until I got to the sentence above that I could make sense of
mything which I read as "my thing".
Obviously you have never read any of the "Myth" books: Mything Link," "Hit or
Myth," "Little Myth Marker," and the rest. I think the author was Robert
Asprin.
-r.
--
Fundies and trolls are cordially invited to
shove a wooden cross up their arses and rotate
at a high rate of speed. I trust you'll
be 'blessed' with a plethora of splinters.
.
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