CCM - Comparative Mythology Lesson
Comparative Mythology
Comparative mythology is the comparison of myths from different cultures in an attempt to identify shared themes and characteristics. Comparative mythology has served a variety of academic purposes. For example, scholars have used the relationships between different myths to trace the development of religions and cultures, to propose common origins for myths from different cultures, and to support various psychological theories.
Comparative mythologists come from different fields, including folklore, anthropology, history, linguistics, and religious studies, and they have used different methods to compare myths. These are some important approaches to comparative mythology.
Linguistic
Some scholars look at the linguistic relationships between the myths of different cultures—for example, the similarities between the names of gods in different cultures. One particularly successful example of this approach is the study of Indo-European mythology. Scholars have found striking similarities between the mythological and religious terms used in different cultures of Europe and India. For example, the Greek sky-god Zeus Pater, the Roman sky-god Jupiter, and the Indian sky-god Dyaus Pita have similar names. This suggests that the Greeks, Romans, and Indians originated from a common ancestral culture, and that the names Zeus, Jupiter, and Dyaus evolved from an older name, which referred to the sky-god in a Proto-Indo-European religion.
Structural
Some scholars look for underlying structures shared by different myths. The folklorist Vladimir Propp proposed that many Russian fairy tales have a common plot structure, in which certain events happen in a predictable order. In contrast, the anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss examined the structure of myths in terms of the abstract relationships between its elements, rather than their order in the plot. In particular, Levi-Strauss believed that the elements of a myth could be organized into binary oppositions (raw vs. cooked, nature vs. culture, etc.). He thought that myth's purpose was to "mediate" these oppositions, thereby resolving basic tensions or contradictions found in human life or culture.
Psychological
Some scholars propose that myths from different cultures reveal the same, or similar, psychological forces at work in those cultures. Some Freudian thinkers have identified stories similar to the Greek story of Oedipus in many different cultures. They argue that these stories reflect the different expressions of the Oedipus complex in those cultures. Likewise, Jungians have identified images, themes, and patterns that appear in the myths of many different cultures. They believe that these similarities result from archetypes present in the unconscious levels of every person's mind.
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