Book Condition: Very Good with slight tropical speckling to Page Edges. Otherwise, clean, clear text in tightly bound volume. No internal inscriptions, markings or stains. 4th Printing of 1968 Beacon Press Paperback Edition. Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.3 x 0.8 inches\nWeight: 13.6 ounces. The broad scope of this rich book succeeds in giving the reader an introduction to myth and mythmaking. Contents: Introduction . HENRY A. MURRAY 1. The Historical Development of Mythology . JOSEPH CAMPBELL 2. Recurrent Themes in Myths and Mythmaking . CLYDE KLUCKHOHN 3. The Yearning for Paradise in Primitive Tradition. MIRCEA ELIADE 4. Theories of Myth and the Folklorist . RICHARD M. DORSON 5. Stars and Stories . PHYLLIS ACKERMAN 6. Some Meanings of Myth . HARRY LEVIN 7. New Directions from Old . NORTHROP FRYE 8. An Examination of the Myth and Ritual Approach to Shakespeare. HERBERT WEISINGER 9. The Working Novelist and the Mythmaking Process. ADREW LYTLE 10. World Interpretation and Self-Interpretation: Some Basic Patterns. ERNST TOPITSCH 11. The Three Romes: The Migration of an Ideology and the Making of an Autocrat. ROBERT LEE WOLFF 12. The Myth of Nazism . HENRY HATFIELD 13. The World Impact of the West: The Mystique and the Sense of Participation in History. JOHN T. MARCUS 14. A Modern Mythmaker . PHILIP RIEFF 15. Myth and Identity . JEROME S. BRUNER 16. Myth and Mass Media . MARSHALL MCLUHAN 17. The Possible Nature of a "Mythology" to Come. HENRY A. MURRAY APPENDIX: I. "The Necessity of Myth." MARK SCHORER II. "Reflections on Violence." GEORGES SOREL III. "Doctor Faustus." THOMAS MANN IV. "Freud and the Future." THOMAS MANN. The volume that lies ahead of you is notable in the main for its scope, diversity, import, scholarship, and style. This is apparent from the start, since Mr. Campbell's brilliant chapter, written as his introduction to a work in progress--no less than a world-embracing history of mythology in four volumes--possesses all these qualities and something more, the vision of an emergent, energy-releasing frame of mind for those who are disposed and capable. Beginning with the earliest known patternings of myth in the Orient and Near East, Mr. Campbell carries us swiftly down the ages with eloquence and apt citations through daemonic and metaphysical mythology to the humanistic, poetic mythology of Greece, and finally to our current situation, leaving us with the seminal idea of extending Huizinga's conceptions of the "play-sphere" to the whole realm of myth. Although Mr. Campbell mentions the global distribution of certain mythic themes, in this volume it is Mr. Kluckhohn who with the skill of gift and discipline brings his encyclopedic and exact knowledge of primitive cultures to bear upon the question of cross-cultural universals in the field of myth as well as upon the problem of the psycho-sociological function of mythic imaginations. His substantial chapter, full of sage comments, now constitutes our most dependable basis for the reconstruction, among other things, of certain features of contemporary psychoanalytic theory. In contrast to these two authors, the equally knowledgeable and comprehensive Mr. Eliade has chosen to concentrate on a single integrate of myths, those descriptive of Paradise, the immortality of primordial man, his communion with God, his fall, the origin of death, and the discovery of the "spirit." With signal clarity and distinction, both of feeling and of thought, Mr. Eliade portrays the intimate relationship of this mythic compound with the ecstatic trances of shamanism, as well as the ideological continuity between this most elementary form of mystical experience and Christian mysticism. In the next chapter, Mr. Dorson, our foremost champion of the folklorist's point of view and methods, draws his sharp sword of reason and of satire and attacks the Hydra of monomaniac theories relative to the proper interpretation of myths. Here, for many of us, his special service consists in highlighting the absurdity and faddishness of some of our latest ideas, by juxtaposing, for example, the extravagances of the currently fashionable psychoanalytic school of interpreters with the more patent, discredited extravagances of the old solar school. Most pertinent in this connection is Miss Ackerman's elegant, compact, and discriminating essay in which--by substituting a more restricted and more valid theory for the hypertrophied theories of the past and sustaining it with telling particles drawn from her vast store of applicable learning--she succeeds in restoring to their proper place the once prodigiously inflated and then punctured and ostracized astronomical interpretations of certain mythic compositions. Next in order is Mr. Levin's learned, graceful, and witty addition to our knowledge of the diverse referents, from Homer to modern times, of "myth," the chameleonic term that most of us are employing as if it pointed to one and the same class of entities. Mr. Levin's nicely-woven history of the word appears at this point, instead of where it stood originally at the beginning of the symposium, in order to provide a clarifying prelude to the succeeding chapters of this book. Mr. Levin is clearly less concerned with primitive myths--either of the ancient Orient and Near East or of contemporary non-literate societies--than he is with "myth" when used in connection with literary works or political ideologies of the Western world. The notion of "myth" as contrary to fact and reason, and as capable, in certain of its forms (e. g. Fascism), of producing infectious and malignant psychic inflammations has proved sufficient ground for Mr. Levin's resolution to remain a member of the society of mythoclasts along with the majority of scholars. At this juncture, then, the reader might be well advised to turn to the Appendix and read, as an impressive contrast, the definition of myth elaborated by Mr. Schorer. Mr. Schorer--perceptive interpreter of the visions of William Blake-- is more hopeful of the beneficent potentialities of the imagination than he is fearful of its dangers--chief requirement for membership in the smaller but more exuberant society of mythophiles, which includes Mr. Campbell, Mr. Lytle, Mr. Bruner, D. H. Lawrence, Thomas Mann, and possibly a few others represented in this volume. The conscious or unconscious role of myth in the creation of literature is the topic of the valuable chapters by Mr. Frye, Mr. Weisinger, and Mr. Lytle. Taking off from Aristotle's unelaborated comment that dramatic and epic poetry, because of its concern with universals, is more philosophical than history, Mr. Frye, in felicitous and explicit language, elucidates with copious examples the nature of poetic thought, in what respects it is similar and in what respects dissimilar to other kinds of thought --metaphysical, metahistorical, historical, and scientific. As illustrations of mythic configurations and patterns which have provided poets with the necessary structure for the arrangement of their images and image-phrasings, Mr. Frye orders in an astonishing manner some of the favored cosmologies of literature-- various hierarchical stratifications of regions from the highest (heaven) to the lowest (hell), including the ascensions and descensions of different orders of beings from one region to another. In the course of this adroit exposition of his subject- matter, Mr. Frye manages to behead with three sharp sentences those who have held that the poet's cosmology is extraneous to his craft, that the Divine Comedy is the metaphysical system of St. Thomas translated into imagery, and that poetry is simply a form of permissible lying. Mr. Weisinger, who has profound understanding of the historic transformation of sacred ritual into secular tragic drama, offers us a revealing and even-handed, tightly knit review of recent endeavors of literary critics to interpret the works of Shakespeare in terms of the death-and-renewal ur-myth of the Near East. The disparity of these generally far-fetched interpretations might well have been predicted, each being the resultant of a different man's attempt to reach the interior of an author's mind by empathy or inference, capacities which are dependable in none of us. These capacities, however, need not be strained or even exercised when we come to an author who is brave enough to expose for our benefit the more salient features of the order of mental processes that occurred during the composition of a book. This is precisely what Mr. Lytle generously agreed to do in response to petitions from several members of this company, and so our collection of papers is now happily enriched by his absorbing account of the operation of myth in the mind of a novelist at work. Of a wholly different sort is the enlightenment to be gained from the superb chapter by Mr. Topitsch, packed as it is with illustrations of highly consequential imaginal projections into the universe--that is, into "what is remote, unknown, or difficult to understand"--of conceptual images derived from the domain of social and productive action--that is, from "what is near, well known, and self-evident." Even more remarkable are the numerous instances cited by Mr. Topitsch of the subsequent retrojection (or introjection) of these same projections - actual cities are built according to the model of the imagined "heavenly city," and so forth--and also, among other trenchant observations, examples of the projection of incompatible dispositions and powers into the personality of God and of the creation in this way, by man himself, of momentous, insoluble problems calling for solution, the creation, in other words, of a state of affairs conducive to obsessional neurosis. This brings us to Mr. Wolff's fascinating, substantial, and convincing story of the emergence and propagation of the flattering image of the Russian Tsar as "the sole Emperor of all the Christians in the whole universe." Here is myth in the form of a vainglorious, wish-fulfilling vision, if not of a full-fledged delusion of grandeur, operating in the service of a national ideology. Of similar psychic fabric and tenor, though more preposterous and pathological, were the myths of the Nazi epidemic, the roots and cancerous growth of which constitute the subject matter of Mr. Hatfield's comprehensive, interesting, and vitally important essay. Here would be the timely place to experience two moving and instructive passages to be found in the Appendix: first, the excerpt from Sorel's Reflections on Violence, and second, that from Mann's Doctor Faustus. The latter will implant in sensitive minds an indelible impression of the intoxicating effects of a grandiose mythology once a desperate and reckless minority has become possessed by it. Today, after the debacle of Nazi-ism, we have a salutary deterrent social myth, conforming to the classic pattern of arrogant pride (hubris) and retribution (nemesis). With this in view should we not be mindful of the nearly universal human tendency, mentioned by Mr. Levin, to denounce "myth as falsehood from the vantage point of a rival myth"? What is our myth? Mr. Marcus does not precisely specify, his purpose being to point to what is characteristic of all powerful Western myths-- including Fascism and Communism--as compared to Oriental myths, namely, a linear time-perspective combined with a conviction of election and of the necessity of participating in an historical process moving inexorably towards an ultimate consummation. To do justice to the intensity with which future- oriented myths of this messianic type--whether Christian or anti-Christian--have been experienced and believed, and do justice to the power of such visions of destiny to mobilize and orient social action, Mr. Marcus has chosen the term "mystique." The essence of the mystique is the conviction that the ideal is not only immanent in history but has actually been embodied in one or more particular myth-events (e. g. Fall of the Bastille, October Revolution in Petrograd, etc.). Mr. Marcus' vivid and zealous description of the role of an activist mystique of movement in giving the individual the sense of a meaningful relationship to his world and of obligation to history-in-the-making constitutes a striking contrast to the state of affairs in America today, especially as represented by the half-hearted, directionless, lonely peer- groups of our schools and colleges. The reader leaves this thought- evoking essay with the picture of a new Orient and new Africa , both infected with the inflammatory germs of a host of competing mystiques derived from the aggressive West, their traditional circular time-perspectives having been replaced by a consciousness of history and of destiny--all this at the very moment when the West, distrustful of fanatical leaders of fanatical herds, is vainly searching for a realizable vision of world harmony and peace. Here I shall rest, trusting that I have given you just enough of the salt and savor of each portion of the feast that lies ahead of you to whet your appetite for purchasing my book and no more.
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