W. Burkert, 'The Organization of Myth'
(Structure and History in Greek Myth and Ritual)
Burkert's chapter, I think, is a useful 'afterword' to the theories of
myth, for, at the very least, he cautions against the easy application
of myths to some 'reality' from which they are thought to derive and to
which they directly refer. The theories tend to suggest that there is
a single answer to the question of a myth's origins and identity (the
sun, a rite, the birth trauma, etc.), and use procrustean methods
to make the myth fit theory. Burkert instead argues that myths' relationships
to reality are complex; each myth must be treated as partaking of common
patterns, but also as different because of its unique history. Burkert's
chapter builds a definition of myth in five stages.
1) To begin with, myth is a form of 'traditional tale.'
Since it is 'traditional,' what is interesting is not its origin (it is
probably pointless to search for 'origins'), but its preservation and
transmission, i.e., the retention of its identity while evolving over
time--both the fact and the history of its evolution. Likewise,
as 'tale,' myth is linear and fictive; it has its own internal
necessity (what Aristotle, you remember, associates with 'plot'). A myth's
identity as tale, therefore, is independent of any pragmatic reality.
There is no exact or direct equivalence between a tale and reality.
In fact, the multiplicity of 'references' the various theoretical approaches
posit for any single myth (whether 'external'--nature, ritual, social
custom--or 'internal'--psyche, etc.) is a clue to the fact that it cannot
be pinned down as referring immediately to any kind of reality (pp. 1-5).
2) As 'tale,' and therefore as a kind of 'language,' myth can be approached
in connection with three primary linguistic categories: sign, sense, and
reference. A myth's immediate identity lies, however,
not in any single text (the linguistic category of 'sign'), nor in any
particular reality (the linguistic category of 'reference'), but in
the 'structure of sense' internal to the myth itself (p. 5)--a
linear fiction bound by internal necessity. Thus, Burkert finds the structuralist
approaches--especially Propp's 'narratology'--more promising than
the nature, ritual, charter, and psychological approaches (pp. 5-14).
All these other theories tend to be applied in procrustean manner, and
although they 'make sense' of myths, they do not necessarily reveal anything
about the myth's identity 'as tale,' nor is the 'sense' they make necessarily
what the structure of the myth is 'saying,' its message.
Rather, tale structures (being linear) are 'sequences of motifemes'
(units of plot actions). [Burkert criticizes Levi-Strauss' brand of structuralism
because it doesn't take seriously the sequential, linear nature of tales--see
the Supplement on Myth Theories.] And when you analyze the sequences
in myths, you soon discover that even myths from different cultures seem
to share fixed, predictable patterns. Propp focused
on a 'fixed sequence' of '31 functions' he identified as the quest
tale. Dundes added 'four more general sequences: Lack-lack liquidated;
Task--task accomplished; Deceit--deception; Interdiction--violation--consequence--attempted
escape (p.6).' Burkert himself identified a 'fixed sequence [involving
the five 'functions'] of departure, seclusion, rape, tribulation, and
rescue as prelude to the emergence of the hero'; he called this initiation
or coming-of-age sequence 'the girl's tragedy' (p.7) and found variations
of it in at least seven Greek myths. [Some of the added variations specific
to particular tales are, in part, what turn these 'tales' into
'myths,' as he will soon suggest, but let's not get ahead of ourselves.]
For another example he describes the' combat tale' sequence behind both
Hittite and Greek cosmogonic myths, tale that present the creation of
the cosmos as the product of a series of combats, most of which
threaten to return the emerging cosmos to pre-cosmos disorder
(pp. 7-10). We see at most stages of Hesiod's cosmogony either that the
current ruler violates cosmic order himself (Uranus and Cronus) and must
therefore be defeated, or that he (namely Zeus) contends with violent
threats (Titans, Typhoeus/Typhon) to that order. [Prometheus, unless we
believe Caldwell, appears to be a threat of a different kind.] Characters
change from one tale to the next, from one culture to the next, but the
actions (motifemes) have a notable consistency. Many tales seem to have
been 'translated' from one culture to another, but the trail of transmission
is too complex to verify such 'borrowings'; furthermore, tales seem to
get altered in the process; culturally specific details get lost and added.
3a) The similarity between tales from different cultures instead probably
results from the fact that the sequences of actions in myths
appear to be based upon basic biological and cultural programs
of action (p. 18)--sequences of verb imperatives
that we as humans are programmed--genetically and culturally--to do.
This, by the way, is the reason mythic plots 'ring true': because they
are 'basic human plots'--getting (quest), winning (combat), accomplishing
tasks, counteracting deficiency or lack, violating taboos. [He elaborates
on the plot of 'getting' with this sequence: 'go out, ask, find out, fight
for it, take and run' (p. 16).] These plots are the basic functions of
human economy, aggression, communal integration, etc., and they account
for myth's seriousness. [Caldwell's identification of the Freudian
psychological pattern of frustration (Tartarus) and desire (Eros)
in the Theogony may be seen as Dundes' and Burkert's 'lack--lack
liquidated' program of action?]
3b) On top of these basic plots, of course, as part of the processes
of cultural and literary transmission (in order, that is, to make the
stories different and memorable) there are layers of peculiar details,
characterizations, exaggerations, thematic contrasts in character or scene,
inversions (of roles involving gender and aggression, e.g., in the Oresteia)
etc.--all of which Burkert labels 'cystallizations,' and which
may or may not be significant for the 'identity' of the myth. He thinks,
for example, that the omnipresent dragon in myths (HP's Great Goddess
guardian) is merely the perfect exaggeration or crystallization
of (= 'giving permanent form to'? 'adding a layer on top of'?) the 'adversary'
in the combat tale--invented precisely to make the tale more effective
and not necessarily, therefore, a remnent of goddess-worship. [On p. 19
Burkert seems to suggest, moreover, that the so-called 'Oedipal' features
of so many classical myths (mother-, father-, sibling-, spouse-, child-rivalries/murders)
may in fact not be the basic level of the tale's biological/cultural
program, but rather layers of crystallization serving to make the tale
memorable by mating sexuality with aggression. All myth doesn't arise
from a repressed birth trauma after all!] Such crystallizations can explain
the many differences between the Hittite stories involving Kumarbi and
the Greek stories about Cronus. Most Greek myth scholars treat the role
of Cronus in the Greek cosmogony as derived from that of Kumarbi in the
Hittite story. Burkert agrees: many of the Hittite details did not transfer,
and many of the Greek ones have been added for various reasons, but structural
analysis reveals that the 'basic structure of the action pattern' in both
is identical (pp. 21-22). In each case the cosmogonic myth is revealed
to be a doubled combat tale, involving castration and swallowing, and
resulting in the return of cosmic kingship to Heaven (in the Greek case,
with the sky/storm god Zeus) after the dethroning of the mischievous intermediary
(Cronus, who had disposed of the original sky-god Uranus).
4. Everything Burkert has said so far applies to myth only because myth
shares these characteristics with all traditional tales. What
makes myth different is that myth is a traditional
tale that is applied--i.e., 'a traditional tale with secondary, partial
reference to something of collective importance'
(23). This is the place where Burkert makes room for the earlier
theoretical approaches. A traditional tale is one that is usually already
present in a culture ('pre-formed) and available to be applied to something
of immediate importance or concern to a culture--whether that be anxiety
or awe regarding nature, explanation of religious rite, charter for social
custom, concern regarding family, clan, or city, psychological need, drive,
disease, etc. When applied, it becomes myth. But the tale
itself did not arise because of some direct reference to the sun, sacrificial
rite, psychological trauma, etc.--but rather from a basic 'program of
action' inherent in human nature. Thus, Prometheus, perhaps a folktale
trickster character, becomes the lead character in a myth
when his tale is applied to such culturally important phenomena as fire
and sacrificial ritual--particularly a culturally specific form
of sacrifice. And the Greek cosmogonic myth resulted from the application
of a combat tale to the emerging need to explain the origin of things--at
a time when such an application was the chief or only method of general
speculation, i.e., pre-philosophy. Myths are 'located' in
specific families, cities, temples, etc., and their characters are not
carelessly or gratuitously named, but have specific reference to a city,
family, etc. Thus the abduction and rescue of a woman (say, Helen) is
a common plot for traditional tales, but when the characters are the kings
of the chief Greek cities, the tale becomes a myth of Greek 'self-consciousness'
and distinction (p. 24). [Thereafter, other Greek adversaries tend to
develop a 'Trojan connection,' p.25.] Also, a myth, of course, can have
numerous applications--explaining the partial usefulness of most of the
theories proposed; Burkert's theory is broad and flexible enough to incorporate
the partial truths of all the other theories.
5) Finally, there is the historical dimension. Myths evolve
through consecutive changes, crystallizations, applications,
etc. --with the result that you can sometimes locate within them specific
historical (or pre-historical) periods. Myths bear 'the marks
of history' (27). Thus, Teiresias' sex-change experience, perhaps 'originally'l
a theme from puberty or initiation rites (marking 'submission and domination'),
seems to reflect as well the orientalizing period in Greek archaic history,
when Greek culture showed the influence of more eastern peoples; thus,
here there are signs of the investiture/ appearance of ecstatic eastern
priests/seers (30). And thus, Odysseus' adventure with the Cyclops reflects
several 'programs of action': it has the general outline of a quest-for-food
tale, but the combat pattern in its center has become its dominant feature--making
the final sacrifice of the ram (the original goal of the adventure?) appear
gratuitous and eccentric. And the wooden spear may also reveal a paleolithic
element in the myth (the mark of history). Burkert concludes by
reaffirming, then, the structuralist interpretation that the tale reflects
the confrontation of nature and culture (to be eaten or not to be eaten
but to eat), but he does so, not by playing a Levi-Straussian structuralist
'logical game' (34), but by analysis of the myth as a complex of
biologically and culturally programmed patterns of action (beating monsters,
getting food) performed by a major hero with cultural and religious significance,
and reflecting a fact of historical evolution (survival of the race through
violent technology).
Myths share many common features--identical basic patterns--but every
myth is also unique, and can reveal the marks of its own history--with
patient and creative analysis.
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