1. Ways of Interpreting Myths about Hercules
Modern Theories

2. Modern Interpretations of Myth
Two modern meanings of “mythology”:
a system or set of myths
the methodological analysis of myths
A monolithic theory of myth vs. the multifunctionalism of myth
The autonomy of myth
See: Some Theories of Myth
Externalist Theories: Myths as Products of the Environment
Internalist Theories: Myths as Products of the Mind

3. Externalist Theories: Myths as Products of the Environment
Myths as Aetiology
Comparative Mythology
Nature Myths
Myths as Rituals
Charter Myths

4. Myths as Aetiology myth as explanation of the origin of things
myth as primitive science
"The Origin of the Milky Way” (c.1575)
Jacopo Tintoretto ( )
National Gallery, London

5. F. Max Müller Nature Myths
Founder of the social scientific study of religion
Comparative approach:
Study of Vedic peoples of ancient India applied to myths of other cultures (Greece and Rome)
For Müller, the culture of the Vedic peoples represented a form of nature worship, an idea clearly influenced by Romanticism
Max Müller )

6. Zeus as the Sky Dyaus pitr Sanskrit Zeus pater Greek Jupiter Latin
Dyaus = “he who shines”
pitr = father
Zeus pater Greek
Jupiter Latin
Tiu Vater Teutonic (German)
Indo-European

7. Herakles (Heracles) Hercle Hercules
American
Greek
Roman
Italian Renaissance
Etruscan

8. Hercules and Nature Myths

9. Myths as Ritual Sir James Frazer’ The Golden Bough (1890-1915)
Comparative mythology
myths as by products of ritual enactments
stories to explain religious ceremonies
The Golden Bough On-Line:

10. Turner’s “Golden Bough”
Joseph M. W. Turner ( ) The Golden Bough  1834
Tate Gallery, London

11. Hercules and Ritual Diodorus Siculus
Coin from Cyrene showing Zeus Ammon
(Kunsthistorisches Museum,Vienna)
Diodorus Siculus
book To reluctantly meet with Herakles, Zeus killed a ram and used the ram’s head as a mask when he spoke to his son; for that reason, the Egyptians portray Zeus with the head of a ram
Frazer. The Golden Bough. Chapter 52. Killing the Divine Animal

12. Jupiter (as Ammon with Horns) Seducing Olympias (mother of Alexander)
by Giulio Romano (Orbetto; )

13. Charter Myths
belief-systems set up to authorize and validate current social customs and institutions.
Bronsilaw Malinowski
( )
Selected Bibliography:
Does the myth of Hercules validate social customs and institutions?

14. Hercules, Admetus and Alcestis Xenia (Guestfriendship)
Hercules Fighting Death to Save Alcestis by Frederic Lord Leighton ( ).

15. Hercules Restoring Alcestis. Pietro Benvenuti (1769 - 1844)

16. Structuralism Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908-) Jean-Paul Vernant
Pierre Vidal-Naquet

17. Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908-)
myth reflect the mind's binary organization
diachronic vs. synchronic reading of myth
humans tend to see world as reflection of their own physical and cerebral structure ( two hands, eyes, legs, etc.)
Left/right, raw,/cooked, pleasure/pain
Myth deals with the perception and reconciliation of these opposites
mediation of contradictions
How does Hercules mediate contradictions?
For more on Levi-Strauss see

18. Hercules Mediating Contradictions
Human Animal (Lion Skin) Human Divine
Virtue Vice
The Drunken Hercules c. 1611
Peter Paul Rubens
Gemäldegalerie, Dresden, Germany

19. Hercules and Centaurs
Nessus
Pholus
Chiron

20. Narratology Vlaimir Propp (1895-1970)
Propp argued that all fairy tales were constructed of certain plot elements, which he called functions, and that these elements consistently occurred in a uniform sequence. Based on a study of one hundred folk tales, Propp devised a list of thirty-one generic functions, proposing that they encompassed all of the plot components from which fairy tales were constructed.
What narrative functions are in the myth of Hercules?

21. Johann Jakob Bachofen (1815 – 1887)

22. Feminist Approaches to Myth
Marija Gimbutas ( )
Marija Gimbutas was an archaeologist with a scholarly background in folklore and linguistics, making her uniquely qualified to synthesize information from science and myth into a controversial theory of a Goddess-based culture in prehistoric Europe. Joseph Campbell said that, if her work had been available to him, he would have held very different views about the archetypes of the female Divine in world mythology.
Primacy of Matriarchy
What about Hercules? (Glory of Hera)

23. Myths as Products of the Mind
Individual Mind
Sigmund Freud ( )
id / ego / superego
dream world of the individual
Does Hercules appeal to our individual dream world?

24. Myths as Products of the Mind
Collective Mind
Carl Jung ( )
dream world of society
collective unconscious
archetypes: recurring myths characters, situations and events
archetype as primal form or pattern from which all other versions are derived
Does Hercules appeal to our collective unconscious?

25. Students of Jung Mircea Eliade (1907-1986) Victor Turner (1920-1983)
Ernst Cassirer ( )
Mircea Eliade ( )
Victor Turner ( )
Joseph Campbell ( )

26. Mircea Eliade ( )
Eliade's analysis of religion assumes the existence of "the sacred" as the object of worship of religious humanity.
Myths reflect a creative era, a sacred time, a vanished epoch of unique holiness. Is Hercules living in a vanished epoch?
More on Eliade:

27. Joseph Campbell 1904-1987 Hero's rite of passage journey of maturation
Growth into true selfhood (Jung's individuation)
More on Campbell:

28. Myth and Dream Myths as Products of the MIND
The Monomyth (James Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake)

29. Hercules’ Rite of Passage. separation—initiation--return (See Hero Pg

30. Tragedy and Comedy in the Monomyth
“The universal tragedy of man”
“The happy ending of the fairy tale, the myth, and the divine comedy of the soul, is to be read , not as a contradiction, but as a transcendence of the universal tragedy of man.” (pg. 28)
It is the business of mythology proper, and of the fairy tale, to reveal the specific dangers and techniques of the dark interior way from tragedy to comedy.
Is Hercules part of the Monomyth?