20th century mythology
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
|
Related e |
|
Wikipedia
Featured:  |
- 20th century culture, 20th century philosophy, mythology, Mythologies by Roland Barthes, Hollywood, P-Funk mythology, modern mythology
Many twentieth-century theories of myth rejected the nineteenth-century theories' opposition of myth and science. In general, “twentieth-century theories have tended to see myth as almost anything but an outdated counterpart to science […] Consequently, moderns are not obliged to abandon myth for science.” (Segal)
Swiss psychologist Carl Jung (1873-1961) and his followers also tried to understand the psychology behind world myths. Jung argued that the gods of mythology are not material beings, but archetypes — or mental states and moods — that all humans can feel, share, and experience. He and his adherents believe archetypes directly affect our subconscious perceptions and way of understanding. Following Jung, Joseph Campbell believed that insights about one’s psychology, gained from reading myths, can be beneficially applied to one’s own life.
Like the psychoanalysts, Claude Levi-Strauss believed that myths reflect patterns in the mind. However, he saw those patterns more as fixed mental structures—specifically, pairs of oppositions (e.g., raw vs cooked, nature vs culture)—than as unconscious feelings or urges.
In his appendix to Myths, Dreams and Mysteries, and in The Myth of the Eternal Return, Mircea Eliade attributed modern man’s anxieties to his rejection of myths and the sense of the sacred.
Mythopoeia is a term coined by J. R. R. Tolkien for the conscious attempt to create myths; his "legendarium" was to be an example of this. Tolkien's fellow-Inkling, C. S. Lewis, shared his views of myths as expressning fundamental truths.
In the 1950s, Roland Barthes published a series of essays examining modern myths and the process of their creation in his book Mythologies.
