Myth and Religion in Mircea Eliade by Douglas Allen

Author:Douglas Allen [Allen, Douglas]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Nonfiction, History, Italy, Religion & Spirituality, Reference, Philosophy
ISBN: 9781136769443
Publisher: Taylor and Francis
Published: 1998-09-01T04:00:00+00:00

THE DEFINITION OF MYTH

In attempting to define myth, Mircea Eliade departs from a common Western tradition of privileging documents of Greek mythology:

From Plato and Fontenelle to Schelling and Bultmann, philosophers and theologians have proposed innumerable definitions of myth. But all of these have one thing in common: they are based on the analysis of Greek mythology. Now, for a historian of religions this choice is not a very happy one. It is true that only in Greece did myth inspire and guide epic poetry, tragedy, and comedy, as well as the plastic arts; but it is no less true that it is especially in Greek culture that myth was submitted to a long and penetrating analysis, from which it emerged radically “demythicized.” If in every European language the word “myth” denotes a “fiction,” it is because the Greeks proclaimed it to be such twenty-five centuries ago. What is even more serious for an historian of religion: we do not know a single Greek myth within its ritual context. Of course this is not the case with the paleo-oriental and Asiatic religions; it is especially not the case with the so-called primitive religions.6

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