Segal/Myth Theorized, 10. Myth and Literature

In chapter ten I present the array of views on the relationship between myth and literature. One relationship is the tracing of mythic themes in literature. The themes come above all from pagan, not biblical, mythology. Another relationship is the origin of literature from myth. The key theorist of myth here is Frazer. He himself does not apply his theory to literature, but many others do. They apply to specific myths his linkage of myth to ritual, or of story to action. Frazer, as noted, offers two distinct versions of what is called “myth ritualism.” It is his second version which is applied most often. Among the myth-ritualists discussed here are Jane Harrison, Gilbert Murray, F. M. Cornford, Jessie Weston, Francis Fergusson, Stanley Edgar Hyman, Northrop Frye, and René Girard, who himself, to be sure, sets myth against literature. Among theorists of myth, Tylor and Frazer downplay myth as story. For them, myth is a scientific-like explanation of external events that merely takes the form of a story. By contrast, Hans Blumenberg sees myth as a story and not as an explanation. The theorists who have offered plots, or patterns, for myth as story have focused on hero myths: Johann Georg von Hahn, Vladimir Propp, Otto Rank, Joseph Campbell, and Lord Raglan. Rank, Campbell, and Raglan present their patterns as applications of theories: Freud’s, Jung’s, and Frazer’s.