The materials given here are based on Leonard & McClure with additional notes added by Bill Stifler, 2005, 2016.

The 20th century saw a shift in the study of myth toward interdisciplinary approaches and a new emphasis and recognition of the function of myth within societies (Leonard and McClure 13). Many of these 20th century approaches also viewed myths as reflections of the cycle of the seasons or the cycle of life.

Anthropological Approaches

Sir James Frazier (The Golden Bough)

The anthropological approaches viewed myth as "primarily a living, oral, culture preserving phenomenon." Anthropologists focused on the ways "in which myths function in living societies. The most significant work of this approach was Sir James Frazier's 12 volume The Golden Bough (Leonard and McClure 12).

Frazier saw the stories of the death and resurrection of gods as fertility rituals of slaughter of "sacred kings" in agricultural ceremonies aimed at insuring a plentiful harvest (Leonard and McClure 12-13). Stories like the Mesopotamian story of Damuzi taking Inanna's place in the afterlife; the death of the Stag King in Europe; or the death and resurrection of Christ, who becomes the firstfruits of the resurrection (KJV, I Corinthians 15.20-23) all follow this pattern.

Frazier also saw myth evolving from magic to ritual to religion (Leonard and McClure 13). For instance, in Exodus 12, Moses gives the Israelites strict instructions to follow for the night when God would kill all of the firstborn in Egypt (magical or miraculous event). Exodus 12 also explains that these instructions are to be followed as ritual from that day forward, each year as a Passover celebration (ritual) and that when their children later asked about the meaning of the ritual, they were to explain that it was done in remembrance of the day when God passed over their houses to deliver them from the Egyptians (religion) (KJV, Exodus 12). Christ later redefines the ritual as representing his own sacrifice (KJV, Matthew 26.26-28). Paul later explains in greater detail the ritual of communion and its religious significance (KJV, I Corinthians 11).

Despite an emphasis on the function of myth, however, Frazier still viewed myth as "primitive science," an imaginative explanation of natural processes (Leonard and McClure 13).

Other key anthropologists include Edward B. Tylor, Andrew Lang (who also collected many fairy tales), Franz Boas, and Emile Durkheim (Leonard and McClure 13).

Myth-and-Ritual School: Lord Raglan - 22 Typical Incidents (The Hero)

According to the Myth-and-Ritual School, "myth is a script from which early religious rituals were performed." "[M]yths are derived from rituals and . . . were in origin the spoken part of the ritual performance" (Leonard and McClure 14). For instance, archaic peoples, using sympathetic magic, acted out the ritual of a successful hunt as the hunters surrounded the shaman dressed as the stag. Eventually, the ritual was explained in myth, that the stag king must die to ensure a fruitful harvest.

In The Hero, Lord Raglan developed a 22 point scale identifying basic archetypal patterns in the lives of mythic heroes. His scale became controversial when Raglan suggested it could be used to separate historical from non-historical characters (Leonard and McClure 14). Raglan's 22 incidents will be discussed in more detail in Module 4.

Modern Anthropology: Bronislaw Malinowski - Myth as Charter

Bronislaw Malinowski saw myths as "charters" of social customs and beliefs, practical guides to life and morality (Leonard and McClure 14-15). For Malinowski, a myth served its community in the same way that the Magna Carta defined English society, limiting the power of the king and identifying the rights of the people or the way the Mayflower Compact, another famous charter, defined the society of Puritans in the Plymouth colony. Modern day conservative evangelical Christians see the Bible in the same way, as a guide to their lives and practice.

Malinowski was the first to recognize that myths were "[n]ot an 'explanation in satisfaction of scientific interest.'" Instead, myths were stories that defined a community (Leonard and McClure 15). He also recognized that myths are "true," not in a historical or scientific sense, but because they provide "primitive faith and moral wisdom" (Leonard and McClure 15). Malinowsky argued that myths could be studied in the "oral performance, rituals, and ceremonies" of aboriginal peoples, extrapolating from those the meanings of past myths (Leonard and McClure 15). Because myths define the behavior and practices of a culture, Malinowski realized it also influences living people's "sociopolitical behavior" (Leonard and McClure 15).

Impact of Malinowski's Approach

• Malinowski redefined the study of modern anthropology, but his approach continued to marginalize as "primitive" certain cultures (Leonard and McClure 15). Despite his insights, Malinowski failed to see that modern people had myths, believing that modern people were too "enlightened" to believe in the superstition of myth.

• Malinowski also emphasized field research rather than only studying texts (Leonard and McClure 15).

• Malinowski emphasized the function of myth, affirming its role in defining culture and society (Leonard and McClure 15).

• Malinowski promoted an understanding of the "myths of extinct cultures" through the study of the myths of "living cultures" (Leonard and McClure 15). For instance, modern deer hunters who hunt for meat after a first kill may mark their faces with blood, drink the blood of a fresh kill, or take a bite of the still warm heart or liver. This practice can be traced all the way to archaic times and pre-historic hunters. One of the mysteries of life is that creatures must kill to live. Humans saw the death of the animal as part of the cycle of life. The deer is killed and eaten by the human, who will eventually die and be buried. The human carcass will fertilize the soil allowing the grass to grow which the deer will eat, and the cycle repeats endlessly. In enacting the ritual, the hunter recognizes and accepts the deer's sacrifice as part of the cycle of life. In less obvious ways, the saying of grace before a meal is a similar ritual, only now thanks is given to the god who provides the meal rather than to the creature itself.

• Malinowski related the study of myth to "lived experience" (Leonard and McClure 15), resulting in many anthropologists embedding themselves in aboriginal cultures to try to understand the lives and myths of aboriginal peoples.

Psychological Approaches: Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung

The two most significant psychologists in the study of myth are Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung. Both argued that "our gods and other mythic characters, as well as our dreams and works of fiction, are projections of that which the unconscious contains" (Leonard and McClure 16). In Genesis, humans are created in the image of God (KJV, Genesis 1.27). In Freud and Jung's view, the gods are created in the image of humans, reflections of psychological conflicts within the minds of humans.

For Freud, "myths are the unconscious mind's strategy for making visible and comprehensible the internal forces and conflicts that impel our actions and shape our thoughts" (Leonard and McClure 16), the psychological conflict between the instinctual id and the social restrictions of the superego. In many cartoons, a demonic version of the main character will appear on the character's left shoulder, enticing the cartoon character to take some action that is selfish or self-serving while an angelic version appears on the right shoulder encouraging the cartoon character to make a moral choice. These cartoon memes exactly emulate Freud's view of the symbolic externalization of an internal psychological conflict.

For Jung, "the unconscious is not individual but universal [collective]; . . . it has contents and modes of behavior that are more or less the same everywhere and in all individuals." Jung labelled "the contents of the collective unconscious . . . as archetypes," "projected and therefore refined images that symbolize the [psychic content the unconscious] contains" (Leonard and McClure 16). These archetypal symbols include the symbolic significance of numbers, colors, certain objects, and characters . Some examples of mythic archetypal characters include the Wise Woman, the Hero, the Great Mother, the Father (All-Father), the Miraculous Child, and the Shadow (Leonard and McClure 16). According to Jung, the gods of various cultures are more complex aggregations of archetypal material, "their respective culture's elaborations of universally available psychic material." He called these divinities "eternal images" (Leonard and McClure 16).

For both Freud and Jung, the similarities in myth are explained by a common human psychic inheritance. Various archetypal approaches will be studied in Module 4.

Literary and Cultural Approaches: Graves, Frye, and Campbell

Robert Graves and Northrop Frye

A number of literary critics popularized psychological and archetypal approaches. The two most important were Robert Graves and Northrop Frye (Leonard and McClure 17). Graves' most important work was The White Goddess. Graves argues in The White Goddess that originally religions were matriarchal and that vestiges of this practice can be found in literature and art ("Robert (von Ranke) Graves," par. 6). Like Frazier, Graves sees an early focus on fertility as centered in the earth mother.

Northrop Frye in Anatomy of Criticism argues that "four basic motifs [recurring elements] corresponding to the seasons (spring-comedy, summer-romance, autumn-tragedy, and winter-satire) give shape to all literature" (Leonard and McClure 17), connecting literature and myth in ways similar to the psychological approaches.

Joseph Campbell - The Monomyth

Joseph Campbell did more than any other person to popularize the study of myth due to his television appearances, especially his 1980s series The Power of Myth with Bill Moyers (Leonard and McClure 17). The pragmatism of John Dewey had shifted the focus on education at the beginning of the 20th century away from the classical approach to education, where every graduate was fluent in Greek and Latin, and often Hebrew to an education that focused on industry and the marketplace, where contemporary spoken languages were more important that the classical languages, which had underlain academic studies. Campbell's teachings brought mythology back into the college classroom as a legitimate field of contemporary study and as an influence on popular thinking. The psychological approaches had suggested that myth was as applicable to modern peoples as to ancient and archaic peoples. Campbell makes this foundational to his approach to myth. "George Lucas freely acknowledges the influence of reading . . . [Campbell] . . . on his science fiction epic, Star Wars. (Leonard and McClure 17) Campbell's books include The Power of Myth, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, and the four volume The Masks of God (Leonard and McClure 17).

Although influenced by Freud and Jung, Campbell emphasizes the "story of the rugged individual who realizes his true nature through heroic struggle" (Leonard and McClure 17). Where Malinowski defined myth as a charter of belief and practice for a community (Leonard and McClure 14-15), Campbell defined myth as an individual's journey to enlightenment and maturity. In this way, Campbell's approach is, in many respects, uniquely American, with its emphasis on the individual. For Campbell, "mythology is ultimately and always a vehicle through which the individual finds a sense of identity and place in the world." In The Hero with A Thousand Faces, Campbell identifies this heroic mythic pattern which he calls the monomyth (a term from a novel by James Joyce). The monomyth is a cycle of birth and rebirth, an adventure from innocence to mature awareness which transforms the hero and helps the hero find his/her place in the world (Leonard and McClure 17). A version of the monomyth will be examined in Module 4.

Structuralist Approaches: Lévi-Strauss, Propp, Eliade

Claude Lévi-Strauss: The Search for "Deep Structure"

In similar fashion to abstract artists, structuralism looks for "the undergirding steel that holds up the building of all human artifacts and endeavors" (Leonard and McClure 18). Lévi-Strauss, using the linguistic model of Saussure, searched for the objective universal patterns of relationships in myth. He identified certain "codes" which operated through "binary oppositions," and these codes help people manage the conflicts within their lives and societies. While Freud and Jung saw these hidden conflicts as the basis for the development of an individual's character, Lévi-Strauss saw these conflicts as the inherent foundation for how stories are told (Leonard and McClure 19). His focus is on how societies balance these oppositions (Thury and Devinney 354). For instance, opposing the hero is the villain; opposing good, is evil. The story develops within the conflict between these oppositions moving toward some resolution or balance. Because Levi-Strauss is examining the role of myth in defining culture, he emphasized comparing different versions of the same myth in order to gain a full understanding of the culture's values (Thury and Devinney 355).

Cultures struggle to mediate between impossible oppositions resulting in conflict and crisis. Some of the oppositions that Levi-Struass sees in myth are

Types of Binary Oppositions (Magoulick; Thury and Devinney 354, 367)

Type	Examples
Sociological Conflicts	Nature vs. Culture Male vs. Female Youth vs. Aged Rich vs. Poor Legal vs. Illegal Married vs. Unmarried the people (us) vs. the other (them) brother vs. sister, father vs. mother, husband vs. wife, and so on
Geographic Conflicts	North vs. South East vs. West Valley vs. Mountain Desert vs. Garden Ocean vs. Land
Cosmological Conflicts	Above ground vs. Below ground Heaven vs. Hell Sky vs. Earth Good vs. Evil Light vs. Dark
Logical Conflicts	True vs. False Left vs. Right
Techno-Economic Schema and Conflicts	Water Famine leads to Hunt leads to Success Raw vs. Cooked
Global Integration Conflicts	Life vs. Death Gods vs. Humans
The Hero vs. Villain (Hero attempts to mediate between dualities/oppositions)	Often Twins: Messiah vs. Trickster

The way that a culture attempts to mediate between or resolve these oppositions reveals the culture's values.

Vladimir Propp: 31 Functions of the Russian Folk Tales

Vladimir Propp looked for commonalities in Russian folktales and identified 31 functions that he believed characterized fairy tales (Leonard and McClure 19). Propp examined Russian fairy tales, developing charts that indicated each function as it appeared within a fairy tale. While all 31 functions might not appear in every fairy tale, Propp argued the functions would always appear in the same order within the fairy tale. His work with Russian fairy tales was later applied to fairy tales from all cultures as well as to hero myths. Propp's 31 functions will be examined more closely in Module 4.

Mircea Eliade: The Sacred and the Profane

Mircea Eliade suggests that the world can be viewed in two distinct ways: the sacred and the profane. That which is sacred serves a religious function that connects the person who enters the sacred space with the transcendent world of the eternal. Sacred space is characterized by ritual and religious activity. That which is profane belongs to the everyday world of space and time, the historical "ordinary" world in which we live. Profane space is "available to people without special ceremony or ritual." According to Eliade, entering into the sacred space results in a return to the cosmic time of creation itself, allowing people to renew a connection with the eternal and transcendent in order to "begin their lives anew" (Leonard and McClure 20). In Eliade's view, archaic people had a deeper and closer connection to the world of transcendence than modern people who live out their lives in the profane world of time and space. (Leonard and McClure 20-21) For Eliade, myth serves a "religious function" and "facilitates the putting to death of stale, profane consciousness, restoring the participants to the virgin possibilities of creation" (Leonard and McClure 21). Eliade's principal works include The Sacred and the Profane, Cosmos and History: The Myth of the Eternal Return, Myth, Dreams, and Mysteries, Myth and Reality (Leonard and McClure 20).

The sacred and the profane act as binary oppositions. In referring to the sacred, Eliade uses the term hierophany for ordinary objects that manifest the sacred (Eliade 11) and theophany for manifestations of a god or goddess ("Theophany"). Coupled with the word theophany is the word numen, from the Latin word for divine power ("numen, n."), which Eliade uses to refer to the divine might of a deity. Eliade identifies the axis mundi as the center of the world ("Axis Mundi"), the pole or axis around which the world spins and which may connect the elements of the cosmos: the underworld, earth, and sky. The axis mundi often appears as a tree or mountain. The imago mundi is a minature image or microcosm of the world, a physical representation of the cosmos, containing within the image stylized representations of the sky and earth (Eliade 42). This model of the world can be a city, a temple, or an altar.

The Problem with 20th Century Approaches

• Reduced myths to "analytical schema," typically involving the cycle of the seasons
• Ignored the literary character of myth, emphasizing instead the structural patterns common to myths
• Failed to see the historical and cultural contexts of myth
(Leonard and McClure 21-23)

While there are certainly values in identifying the patterns common to all myths, focusing on those patterns to the exclusion of those traits unique to and individual culture's myths gives a lopsided view. In addition, the result is often an abstracted, generalistic view where adherence to the universal pattern becomes more important than the content of the myth itself.