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Precision or Reductionism: Whence Myth Studies?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 October 2008
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Of the whole field of religious studies, one area of consistent interest and activity has been the study of myth; and if any one area has represented the wide variety of approaches scholars of religion have utilized, it is this one. Students of language and literature (e.g. F. Max Müller and J. Campbell), psychology (e.g. S. Freud and C. Jung), sociology (e.g. E. Durkheim and P. Berger), social anthropology (e.g. B. Malinowski, V. Turner and C. Levi-Strauss) as well as religion (e.g. M. Eliade and G. La Rue) have all offered interpretations of myth. An investigation of these various approaches to understanding myth seems to point to the conclusion that the history of the study of myth is a history of reductionism. That is, the heritage transmitted to scholars who would attempt to understand the nature and function of myth within a single discipline is one which most often limits the essential nature or function of myth to that discipline's underlying assumptions alone. Hence, myth is usually linked either to the social or the psychological dimension of human experience exclusively. However, even those theories of myth which combine social and psychological methods and assumptions have usually resulted in truncated conclusions which give pause to those of us who seek their application.
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References
page 369 note 1 This essay represents an expansion and defence of a thesis I originally suggested in a paper entitled ‘Current approaches to interpreting myth’ delivered at the American Academy of Religion's Annual Meeting, 30 December 1977, in San Francisco, California.
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