Theorizing Myth: Narrative, Ideology, and Scholarship

by Bruce Lincoln

In Theorizing Myth, Bruce Lincoln traces the way scholars and others have used the category of "myth" to fetishize or deride certain kinds of stories, usually those told by others.

He begins by showing that mythos yielded to logos not as part of a (mythic) "Greek miracle," but as part of struggles over political, linguistic, and epistemological authority occasioned by expanded use of writing and the practice of Athenian democracy. Lincoln then turns his attention to the period when myth was recuperated as a privileged type of narrative, a process he locates in the political and cultural ferment of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Here, he connects renewed enthusiasm for myth to the nexus of Romanticism, nationalism, and Aryan triumphalism, particularly the quest for a language and set of stories on which nation-states could be founded.

In the final section of this wide-ranging book, Lincoln advocates a fresh approach to the study of myth, providing varied case studies to support his view of myth—and scholarship on myth—as ideology in narrative form.

Genres: Nonfiction, Religion, Mythology, Philosophy, History, Anthropology, Theory

313 pages, Paperback

First published April 3, 2000

Reviews

[— sab · Rating 3 out of 5]

read for school.

[Talia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thought it was a great way to look at myth as "ideology in narrative form". I particularly loved the sections dealing with the Greek transition from the valuation of Mythos to Logos going in to the revival of myth as a means of distancing society from the "Jewish/Catholic" lens.

My biggest qualm is that the epilogue was thoroughly thought-provoking, but in it, Lincoln was trying to approach a big issue: how does logos- laden scholarship differ from mythology, particularly given that both, in their own way, try to create a narrative that supports a certain ideology? Therefore, while Lincoln certainly previously warned the reader that it's going to be a very condensed issue, I truly believe that he could have given a few more chapters to an issue which is very prevalent in the academic community as opposed to the later chapters which demonstrate his method of comparative mythology. While I enjoyed reading those chapters and dealing with those particular myths, in retrospect I think the pages could have been put to better use.

[AC · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is valuable largely because it demonstrates, with ample bibliography, the connection between the political and philological commitments of men like Eliade and Dumézil. The idea that men of this caliber -- and I include Heidegger, Werner Jaeger, and hundreds or thousands of others -- that men of this intellectual caliber did not understand the political implications of their philosophies, or the philosophical suppositions of their politics -- is a claim as grotesque as it is implausible.

Otherwise - the book is of only moderate interest.


{{I don't know if I will ever read this, but I should look at it, as it has chapters on the fascist backgrounds of both Dumezil and Eliade. I don't know whether or not Lincoln's approach is methodologically sound enough or theory-free enough to fork over the money for it... I'll have to poke around on that...}}

[Taylor Swift Scholar · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was well-written but did not do much for me as a lay person. The most interesting bit was a chunk in the middle about how the language and mythology of “Aryans” came to have so much meaning for the Germans.

[Matthew · Rating 4 out of 5]

Theorizing Myth is a history of the idea of myth structured as a series of essays on the interplay of myth, narration, overt power and subversive rhetoric. In all cases, Lincoln argues, myth is a type of ideology in narrative form, but the connotations are different throughout the attested 2700 year history of the word.

Part 1 deals with the ancient senses of the word, with Chapter 1 tracing the etymology of "myth" from the Greek muthos and its earliest documented use in Homer and Hesiod. Rather than having the connotation of a fable, it instead denotes a type of speech act said by the powerful who have the means to impart their will upon the world. Logos, in contrast, is a type of speech almost exclusively used by women or the physically weak.

Chapter 2 deals with the history of mythos from Pindar through the pre-Socratics, and into Plato. Throughout these centuries, as Greek science and philosophy increasingly erode at poetic, religiously inspired explanations of the world, mythos gains the connotation of a tale or fable. Plato, however, makes use of the term as an instructive narrative that while not necessarily true, can orient people toward truth. By the Hellenistic era, mythos has taken on its more modern denotation. Though Lincoln doesn't take the argument this far, one can feel like the meanings of the words switch places, with Logos usurping the powerful, divine, omnipotent mantle of mythos by the 1st Century AD, and sealing it with the Gospel of John: "In the beginning was the Logos, and the Logos was with God, and the Logos was God."

Part 2 picks up the history of the idea of Myth at the Renaissance. It's a jarring jump, and while understandable given the connotation of myth changed little in the intervening eras, skipping over so much ground feels like a criminal caesura. For instance, Aristotle's Poetics and Julian the Apostate's "To the Cynic Heracleios" mention some form of the word mythos more than three times as frequently as the Iliad or Odyssey.

(https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/...)

This post-renaissance history of the idea of myth shows it being increasingly tied to the idea of a people or Volk. A brief outline is as follows:

Johan Gottfried Herder posited that mankind at its root is not divisible into races or civilization into hierarchy but different cultures and physiognomies developed in reaction to new environments as mankind spread out. During this spread myth develops as a culture defines itself in opposition to other cultures. The Englishman William Jones posited an Asian origin European cultures. Germans were particularly drawn to these two ideas and merged them to see themselves as having a glorious past. Grimm, Feuerbach, Wagner, Nietzsche, Muller, and others honed the idea of a Volk further into a German identity that increasingly viewed Jews as other. Anthropologically, rather than merely religiously.

The next three chapters deal with three figures whose works, while perhaps the best of these scholars, still had an otherizing stance that came to be embodied by Nazi thought: William Jones, Nietzsche, and Dumezil. Jones, while not Eurocentric quite literally placed Persia as the origin of humanity and Persian as the Adamic language. Lincoln argues that Nietzsche's blond beast was not merely a lion, as others like Kaufman claim, but something that definitely had a racial component. Third, Dumezil reoriented an understanding of the German God Tyr to be a legal God, in line with his anti-Nazi but pro-Italian Fascist politics.

Part 3 involves accounts of Plato's Phaedrus, Plutarch's account of the Sibyl, Gautrek's saga, and Pandits under the aforementioned William Jones. Lincoln argues each reoriented myths to serve their political needs.

Lincoln concludes the collection with a commentary on whether scholarship is a logos or a muthos, musing that "if myth is ideology in narrative form, then scholarship is myth with footnotes." Overall it's a deft analysis and comparative approach to myths and the history of myths and how political forces shape and reorient them.

[Noah · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found this disappointing, and I’m also not especially sure why we’re reading it for this class. I was excited by Lincoln’s overarching argument, that myth is narrative ideology, but he does far less theorizing than the title would suggest, and his extensive close reading is certainly interesting, but not especially useful for me. Most disappointing, however, is where he lands on the relationship between scholarship and ideology/myth: I think his own book counters the position he explicitly lays out in the epilogue.

[Arthur George · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is not a comprehensive theoretical overview of myth theory, but is a series of chapters oriented toward more specific propositions such as myth as ideology in narrative form, myth as an expression of power, how myth evolves according to the evolution of society and political power and intellectual influence, etc.. It is truly excellent insofar as it goes. Much of the book is devoted to a deep examination of the evolution of German national myth, which also was excellent. But for a more general survey of theories of myth, the reader has to look elsewhere.

[Mel · Rating 4 out of 5]

In Theorizing Myth, Lincoln states that his intention is not to argue for a conclusive definition of “myth”—and, by declining to do so, he sets himself apart from a long tradition of post-Renaissance European and American scholarship in which his predecessors not only employed particular understandings of “myth” but actively employed their ideas about myth to justify their (often condescending) assessments of human groups and cultures and advance ideologies that privileged the groups and cultures they considered superior. Rather, Lincoln’s goal is to trace the genealogy of the “word, concept, and category” of myth with the intention of not only demonstrating why scholars should bring a critical lens to the “stories others have told about others’ stories,” but also to the discipline of scholarship itself (ix).

Important quotes:
- “I hope to show that things are not so simple and the problems—moral and intellectual—that attend this discourse and discipline are not so easily resolved.”
- "Scholarship is myth with footnotes."

[Sophie · Rating 5 out of 5]

A VERY hard read, but very much worth it. Really sheds light on the origins of organized religion.

[Emily · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just plain brilliant.