Chapter 25 Flashcards
(24 cards)
Xenophanes
Complained of ethical weakness of the Olympians insisting that popular notions about the gods must be wrong
Allegory
Means “saying something in a different way” or “saying something different from what appears to be said”; translated from an initial frame of reference to another
Symbolism
Something put together with something else
Etymology
Speculation about “the true meaning of a word”
Euhemerism
Thesis that the gods were once humans
Neoplatonism
School that revived many of Pluto’s theories and became the major philosophical movement; believed in a higher dimension of reality beyond the limits of time and space
Enlightenment
Profound cultural revolution
Rationalism
Belief or theory that opinions and actions should be based on reason and knowledge rather than on religious belief or emotional response
Romanticism
reaction against the arrogance, superficiality, and outright blindness of Enlightenment; saw emotional side of experience as most distinctively human: intense feeling, awareness of powerful but obscure forces, abnormal states; intuitive relationship with nature
Johann Bachofen
advanced romantic theory; student of roman law noticed women enjoyed status in some ancient legal and social symptoms; believed patriarchal authority was preceded by stage which women had great influence
Sir James Frazer
one founder of modern anthropology; accepted social evolution as explanation with universal application; gathered evidence from all over the world which decisive conclusions about meaning of myth could be drawn
Ritual Theory of Myth
theory that origin of myth is closely tied to religious ritual
Charter Theory of Myth
theory to serve as a justification of what things are
Max Muller
Sanskrit scholar; used Solar Mythology
Solar Mythology
Muller’s theory that in the myths there is an allegory of struggle between sunlight and darkness
Indo-European Comparative Mythology
elucidate European myths and discover essential patterns and original meaning of myth
Sigmund Freud
view on myth based on individual rather than society; theory began with thinking about dreams of individuals
Oedipus Complex
Freud; adult male psychology arises form infant boy’s sexual attraction to his mother and his hostility and jealously to his father
Carl Jung
Freud’s associate; explore the unconscious; discerned a complex symbolism that conceals the unconscious and furnishes access to it; did not believe unconscious was sexual in nature
Collective Unconcious
consciousness was like a bay on ocean of psychic activity; in the bay there are archetypes which are timeless recurrent images on which our emotional world and myths are built
Structuralism
influential theory of myth interpretation by Claude Levi-Strauss
Claude Levi-Strauss
French anthropologist; believed meaning in traditional story is not conveyed by content, but by structural relations behind the content
Paris School of Myth Criticism
Levi-Strauss and his French followers are collectively called this
Program of Action
structures that inform myth may reflect on biological and cultural programs of action
