Mythology Throughout History
By: Hayley Reteneller
People say that mythology and
iconology continue to reemerge in history, which is true seeing as though the word
“iconology” indicates its comprehensiveness: “icon” meaning image,
re-presentation and “logos” meaning word, speech, reason – in short, the lore
and language of visualization.
“This sense of the term was
inherited from Warburg, Saxl, Panofsky, Dvorak, Schlosser, Hoogewerff,
Gombrich, Wind, Meiss, Stechow, Held as including all the meanings – explicit
and implied, denotative and connotative – in images has a long history in
studies of explanation and interpretation.” Dreams, plants, animals, gestures,
and heaven all prefigure iconology as ways to discover meaning. Iconographers
transformed pagan mysteries into a systematic dictionary of signs.
Mythology is used when
referring to the study and analysis of stories. Early philosophical mythology was the first
intellectual movement to question the basis for the people’s unquestioning
faith in the muthoi of the
poets. A second development that arose with the birth of Greek rationalism in
the 6th century BCE is something that many have called allegorical mythology. Allegorical mythology is a way of
reading objects depicted in myth as symbolizing something beyond the story’s
plot and the literal meaning of its words. Philosophers use “Allegory of
Nature” to look beyond the literal surface to find hidden references to
religious truth.
About a century after Plato, Euhemeros
talked about the values and importance of traditional myths. His contribution
to mythology has been called historical allegory. “Not unlike the philosophical
mythologists and Theaganes, Euhemeros assumed that his ancestors were
primitives lacking the scientific method, philosophical principles, and
cognitive sophistication of the ‘modern’ world in which he
lived. Therefore, he reasoned, the ancients exaggerated the historical
facts of actual persons and events and, because they did not have access to
better forms of knowledge, accepted these embellished stories as truth.”
Founded by Zeno of Citium, Cyprus, the
Stoics made major contributions in logic, grammar, and the philosophies of
language and mind. This ancient philosophical school’s moral philosophy of
cultivating freedom from the passions that disarray our lives gives us our
modern adjective, stoic, which means “a detached indifference to pleasure or
pain.” The Stoics interpreted myth in terms of physical phenomena. The
Stoics also read the Iliad and Odyssey because they were a lot like Theagenes,
allegorical readings of myth frequently described the heroes and gods of myth
as embodying their own moral ideals and as resisting the vices and weaknesses
that they themselves wished to avoid.
More than a century later Porphyry also
employed a form of allegorical mythology in his “The Cave of the Nymphs in the
Odyssey”. “In this work he declares that what is obviously absurd in myth
positively cries out to be read allegorically so that absurdity will be
transformed into that which is meaningful. Porphyry’s Cave of the
Nymphs adds historical ‘research’ to the etymological method of the Stoics.”
Every culture has used mythology to help
analysis stories, cultures still use mythology today and will continue to into
the future.
Olympian Gods of Ancient Greek Mythology
Roman Mythology
Nicely done, Hayley. I would by no means consider myself a student of mythology, but your efforts to show a clear lineage of myth throughout history are quite refreshing. It’s not typical for people to truly go in-depth into the history of mythology and iconography by itself – Far more often, people tend to break down specific portions; the how a creature reoccurs or what it represents for example. While there’s nothing at all wrong with showing how one creature represents a wealth of morality for multiple cultures, I found your efforts to show how myth and iconography have evolved to be extremely educational.
ReplyDeleteYour pictures were well chosen, and informative. To be able to see for ourselves some images and ways that people have interpreted myth and thus have it to compare to what you’ve written is extremely helpful – we gain a more tangible connection to the history you’re sharing with us than mere words can provide.
The true glory, I believe, was in your videos. To bring us not only a pair of videos on the gods of the ancient world that not only tell us a small part about the gods themselves, but how they relate to our modern society caps your efforts nicely. Many people are familiar with gods such as Zeus, Apollo, Bacchus or Pluto, but their relationships to how we view the world today are much less obvious to most people, and the videos you provide make it abundantly clear how our past beliefs shape our present – and future – efforts.