Classical MythologyTheories of Myth

Karl Philipp Moritz (1756-1793). Portrait by Karl Franz Jacob Heinrich Schumann, 1791. Halberstadt, Das Gleimhaus.

Karl Otfried Müller (1797-1840). Bust by Alexander Tondeur, 1880. University of Göttingen.

EXTERNALIST: The mythopoeic mind

Andrew Lang (1844-1912).Friedrich Max Müller (1823-1900). Portrait by George Frederic Watts, 1894–1895. National Portrait Gallery, London.

EXTERNALIST: aetiology, Euhemerism, allegory

Joseph M W Turner (1775-1851). The Golden Bough, 1834. Tate Gallery, London.

Sir James George Frazer (1854-1941). Photograph of 1933.

EXTERNALIST: ritual

Jane Ellen Harrison (1850-1928). Portrait by Augustus John, 1909. Cambridge, Newnham College.

EXTERNALIST: ritual

Bronsilaw Malinowski (1884-1942) with natives, Trobriand Islands, 1918.

EXTERNALIST: charter myths / functionalism

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939). Bookplate, logo of the Internationaler Psychoanalytischer Verlag, 1922, cartoon from the New York Review of Books

INTERNALIST: psychoanalysis

Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961). Mircea Eliade (1907-1986).Joseph Campbell (1904-1987).

INTERNALIST: psychoanalysis

Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908-2009).

Jean-Paul Vernant (1914-2007).

Walter Burkert (1931-).

INTERNALIST: structuralsim

Theseus and the Minotaur (detail). Master of the Campana Cassone, early XVI. Avignon, Musée du Petit Palais.

ALLEGORY

Karl Wilhelm Friedrich von Schlegel (1772-1829). Portrait by Franz Gareis, 1801.

Friedrich Max Müller (1823-1900). Portrait by George Frederic Watts, 1894–1895. National Portrait Gallery, London.

COMPARATIVE MYTHOLOGY

Vladimir Yakovlevich Propp (1895-1970). Photograph of 1928.

Propp’s 31 Narrative Functions.

NARRATOLOGY

Johann Jakob Bachofen (1815 – 1887).

Marija Gimbutas (1921-1994). Photograph of 1993.

MUTTERRECHT

FEMINIST/QUEER STUDIES

Betsy Damon (1940-). The 7,000 Year Old Woman. New York City, 1977. Photograph by Su Friedrich.

Artemis of Ephesus. I CE copy of the cult statue. Ephesus Archaeological Museum,

Selçuk.

NEW AGE SPIRITUALITY

A myth is a socially powerful traditional story.Buxton, Greek Mythology

A definition makes a good servant but a bad master.Buxton, Imaginary Greece

A myth is a fictitious story that illustrates the truth.Theon, Progymnasmata