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    Notices of Books: Structuralist Essays. by M. Detienne (And

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    Maria V.
    This document summarizes two books on Greco-Roman mythology: Myth, Religion and Society edited by R. L. Gordon, and Myth and Society in Ancient Greece by Jean-Pierre Vernant. The first book is a collection of structuralist essays on mythology by prominent French scholars including Detienne, Vernant, and Vidal-Naquet. The second book is a translation of Vernant's work examining the concept of myth and developments in the analysis of myth in ancient Greece. Both books are seen as useful introductions to the structuralist approach to mythology, though the methodology can be daunting. The reviewer believes courses on classical mythology are rare due to uncertainty around content and interpretation, and these books help address

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    Notices of Books: Structuralist Essays. by M. Detienne (And

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    Maria V.
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    This document summarizes two books on Greco-Roman mythology: Myth, Religion and Society edited by R. L. Gordon, and Myth and Society in Ancient Greece by Jean-Pierre Vernant. The first book is a collection of structuralist essays on mythology by prominent French scholars including Detienne, Vernant, and Vidal-Naquet. The second book is a translation of Vernant's work examining the concept of myth and developments in the analysis of myth in ancient Greece. Both books are seen as useful introductions to the structuralist approach to mythology, though the methodology can be daunting. The reviewer believes courses on classical mythology are rare due to uncertainty around content and interpretation, and these books help address

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    This document summarizes two books on Greco-Roman mythology: Myth, Religion and Society edited by R. L. Gordon, and Myth and Society in Ancient Greece by Jean-Pierre Vernant. The first book is a collection of structuralist essays on mythology by prominent French scholars including Detienne, Vernant, and Vidal-Naquet. The second book is a translation of Vernant's work examining the concept of myth and developments in the analysis of myth in ancient Greece. Both books are seen as useful introductions to the structuralist approach to mythology, though the methodology can be daunting. The reviewer believes courses on classical mythology are rare due to uncertainty around content and interpretation, and these books help address

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    41 views1 page

    Notices of Books: Structuralist Essays. by M. Detienne (And

    Uploaded by

    Maria V.
    This document summarizes two books on Greco-Roman mythology: Myth, Religion and Society edited by R. L. Gordon, and Myth and Society in Ancient Greece by Jean-Pierre Vernant. The first book is a collection of structuralist essays on mythology by prominent French scholars including Detienne, Vernant, and Vidal-Naquet. The second book is a translation of Vernant's work examining the concept of myth and developments in the analysis of myth in ancient Greece. Both books are seen as useful introductions to the structuralist approach to mythology, though the methodology can be daunting. The reviewer believes courses on classical mythology are rare due to uncertainty around content and interpretation, and these books help address

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    NOTICES OF BOOKS 193

    baffle me, and I simply do not understand how in Thuc. has already said in CUCD Bulletin 6 (1977) 12-13.
    it is not the author who speaks, but Athens herself (75); There are other signs to suggest that the compilation of
    this comes perilously close to what L. elsewhere calls il Myth, Religion and Society was somewhat hasty: I can see
    non-sense. But it would be a pity if his book were to no principle governing the insertion of explanation by
    gather a homogeneous layer of dust in a cultural ditch of the editor; the page reference to Dionysos Slain on p. viii
    non-percurrent neglect; it deserves better. is incorrect; Gernet's piece also appears in The Anthropo-
    F. D. HARVEY logy of Ancient Greece, similarly published in 1981; the
    University of Exeter title preferred for the final contribution is almost
    identical to that given Vernant's introduction to The
    Gardens of Adonis as presented in Myth and Society. One
    GORDON (R. L.) Ed. Myth, religion and society: of these days someone will check the various English
    structuralist essays. By M. Detienne [and translations of several of these studies against the French
    others]. Cambridge etc.: University Press and original, and the results will prove an interesting
    Paris: Maison des Sciences de l'Homme. 1981. Pp. comparative study.
    xvii + 306. £20.00 (bound), £6.95 (paper). P. WALCOT
    VERNANT (J.-P.) Myth and society in ancient University College, Cardiff
    Greece. Trans. J. Lloyd. (University paperbacks,
    775.) London: Methuen. 1982. Pp. x + 242. £4.95.
    DETIENNE (M.) L'invention de la mythologie.
    Take any group of Classical Studies students and ask (Bibliotheque des sciences humaines.) Paris: Galli-
    them to nominate in order of preference courses they mard. 1981. Pp. 253. Price not stated.
    wish to be offered by the department, and I confidently
    predict that there is likely to be a clear majority vote in As dedicated Detienne-watchers know, the first
    favour of courses on Greco-Roman mythology. Yet things to look for when a volume of his comes out are
    such courses are rare in British universities. Why? The the chapter-heads. You expect unusual flavours, strange
    real reason, I suspect, is that the potential 'consumers' beasts, exotic plants. Open this latest work, however,
    have only the vaguest notion of what they mean by a and you get a surprise. No 'Du raifort au pample-
    course on mythology, while we the 'producers' are mousse'; not a perfumed panther in sight. This is a new
    equally baffled, knowing neither what material to and more sober Detienne, not so maddening, more
    deploy nor how to deploy that material. It is significant conventional.
    that John Peradottofs annotated bibliography on this The title refers to that development in eighteenth-
    subject, issued by the American Philological Association and nineteenth-century scholarship whereby mytho-
    in 1973, relegates to its closing couple of pages texts in logy became a separate discipline. But la mythologie, like
    translation relevant to the study of classical mythology, its English counterpart, is ambiguous, since it may
    and that these list a mere handful of translations of denote either the study of myths or myths themselves.
    Hesiod, the Homeric Hymns and Ovid's Metamorphoses. Hence D.'s title too is ambiguous, and deliberately so;
    Methodology is an even greater problem. What for what his book is also about is the series of gestures
    approach are we to adopt ourselves, and how are we to made by philosophers, historians and others in ancient
    present the interpretation of others? Obviously we must Greece who, in varying degrees, achieved detachment
    at least introduce our students to the work currently from their inherited traditions and reflected critically on
    being undertaken by the French structuralists, however them, a process which led eventually (with Plato) to the
    daunting a prospect this may be to some. Extracts from 'invention' of mythology in quite a different sense.
    books or articles promise to be the most palatable form What links the ancient and modern halves of D.'s
    of introduction, and this is just what is offered by the enquiry is the idea of'scandal': in his view a feeling of
    two volumes reviewed here. The first features substan- outrage was a major factor both in the genesis of
    tial extracts from Cunning Intelligence (seeJHS 96 [1976] modern mythologie-savoir and in the attaining by (some)
    212-13) and Dionysos Slain (see JHS 98 [1978] 188), Greek intellectuals of a distance from (some) myths.
    Vernant on the Prometheus myth (twice over and then Ch. 1 asserts uncontroversially that 'ce qui fait parler
    again in Myth and Society]), five papers, the best in the la science des mythes, e'est qu'on apercoit soudainement
    collection, by Vidal-Naquet, including 'a considerably que la mythologie des Grecs est remplie d'histoires
    revised version' of the splendid 'Black Hunter' study of indecentes . . .' (18). We begin with Fontenelle and
    the ephebeia, the seminal ' "Value" in Greek Myth' by Lafitau, both of whom were keenly aware of the
    Louis Gernet and Detienne on Virgil's Orpheus myth; 'absurdity' of the antique myths. But that the stories
    the other is all Vernant (see JHS 96 [1976] 211-12), the were perceived as absurd was not enough to cause a
    longest contribution being his important survey of the 'scandal'; 'scandal' only arose when it was felt that they
    concept of myth and developments in the analysis of were absurd when they ought not to have been: 'A l'aubc du
    myth. It is more than convenience of access which XIX e siecle, le Grec n'a plus droit a l'erreur ni aux
    makes both collections useful; it can be a dubious sottises: ne de la terre ou surgit la conscience de
    compliment to praise a list of'works cited' but the one soi . . . rhomme grec est porteur de la Raison' (27—8).
    included in Myth, Religion and Society (pp. 272—90) is a At this stage two alternative strategies were deployed to
    veritable mine of information even for an initiate. explain how the Greeks could have been so apparently
    R. G. A. Buxton supplies an introduction to Myth, irrational: that of Max Miiller (if we understand
    Religion and Society in which he attempts to recommend indo-european linguistics we can make the apparent
    what follows to those inclined to be sceptical. His irrationalities vanish) and that of Tylor (mythology
    defence of structuralist theory is too brief to be belongs to humanity's childhood).
    compelling and, in the main, Buxton repeats what he Having argued that mythologie-savoir was inaugur-

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