In this Book
- The Modern Construction of Myth
- Book
- 2002
- Published by: Indiana University Press
"... one of the richest, clearest, and acutest surveys to date of the
course of theorizing about myth from the eighteenth century on. I know of no more
useful volume on the topic. Despite the postmodern connotations of the title, Von
Hendy is writing not to expose the concept of myth but simply to show the array of
ways in which it has been used from time to time and from place to place. A superb
work." -- Robert A. Segal,
University of Lancaster,
author of
Theorizing about Myth
Andrew Von Hendy offers an integrated critical account of the career of myth in modernity. He takes as its starting point some crucial moments in the 18th-century reinvention of the concept and then follows the major branches of theorizing as they appear in the work of theologians, philosophers, literary artists, political thinkers, folklorists, anthropologists, psychologists, and others.
Von Hendy pursues each of these four
fundamental strains of theory through the 20th century: the rise of neo-romantic
theories in depth psychology, modernist literature, and later in religious
phenomenology, philosophy, and literary criticism; the establishment of folkloristic
theory in ethnological fieldwork and in classical studies; the growth of ideological
theories from Sorel to Barthes and Derrida; and the recent ascent of constitutive
theories of myth as necessary fiction. Finally, Von Hendy examines the work of five
theorists who attempt to come to terms with the lessons of the ideological critique,
yet regard myth as a constructive phenomenon.
Table of Contents
- Acknowledgments
- p. ix
- Introduction
- pp. xi-xvii
- 1 From Fable to Myth
- pp. 1-24
- 2 The Invention of Myth
- pp. 25-48
- 12 Myth and Ideology
- pp. 278-303
- 13 Myth as Necessary Fiction
- pp. 304-340
- Works Cited
- pp. 363-378