Myth: A Handbook

Myth: A Handbook William G. Doty. Westport: Greenwood Press, 2004. The words mythology and myth often appear in commentaries on American culture. Think of Henry Nash Smith's Virgin Land: The American West as Symbol and Myth (1950); Richard Slotkin's Regeneration through Violence: The Mythology of the American Frontier (1973); James Oliver Robertson's American Myth, American Reality (1980); or Morris Fiorina's Culture War?: The Myth of a Polarized America (2005). Conceptually speaking, this short list reminds us that myth is a cultural universal, with referents that range from stories of origin or compelling vision to demonstrable falsehood. Myth-focused scholars generally finesse this semantic diversity by Grafting a modest, special-purpose definition. Because critical alternatives in discussing myth originated at least as early as Plato and Aristotle, such a strategy is the pragmatic way to get on with "the myth of American isolationism," "the myth of American omnipotence," "the myth of American individualism," and so on. In teaching or writing on American mythological themes, I have often wanted a treatment of mythology that concisely guides our attention through the rich critical-theoretical literature that accumulated during the past century. No one is better suited to the task than William Doty, whose Mythography: The Study of Myth and Rituals (1986/2000) stands as a rigorously thorough analysis of myth history, theory, and interpretation. However, with its nearly 600 pages on cosmology, archetypes, rituals, social functions, gender aspects, major figures, and conflicting interpretative schools, Mythography appeals more to the specialist or to the student needing an encyclopedic overview of theoretical literature. By comparison, Myth: A Handbook is a mere two hundred pages, offering visuals and resource lists that serve undergraduates and advanced scholars alike. Although that world myth has been Doty's territory, numerous examples come from contemporary American culture. The exposition is organized into chapters: "Definitions and Classifications," "Examples and Texts," "Scholarship and Approaches," and "Contexts and Transmissions." Valuable appendixes come as Bibliography, Internet and Other Electronic Sources (annotated), and Glossary. The discussion of definition and classification emphasizes well-known conceptual alternatives and their adequacy for those narratives that have traditionally carried the myth label. Is myth sacred, a holdover from archaic religion? Is myth a special kind of rhetoric? Does myth call for action by the hearer? Does it represent cultural priorities, a sense of destiny? Does the New Age movement - very prominent in the United States at present-correctly view myths as models of spiritual development? Allied with these issues are ones related to function: Do myths, like the Book of Genesis, offer accounts of creation, of ongoing cosmological processes? Do they teach us about love, sexuality, courage, community? Unlike so many interpretive pioneers, Doty does not subscribe to any essentialist characterization, choosing instead to highlight variability in the phenomena associated with mythologies. He is firm, however, against those who lament the loss of myth or claim that the contemporary "world has moved beyond myth, emphatically rejecting the presupposed "myth of mythlessness." In sketching these issues, Doty frequently references American films (Lord of the Rings, The Matrix) and cultural heroes (Mother Teresa, John Wayne). The chapter "Examples and Texts" offers a variety of myth types and texts from historical and contemporary world culture. These exemplars concretize the themes of cultural origins; cycles of birth, death, and renewal; challenges to heroic response; scapegoating; the trickster; and miraculous birth/divine child. Many texts are Native American, and it is especially informative to see them side by side with their Asian, European, Middle Eastern, and Mesoamencan counterparts. …