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A review by vertellerpaul
Myth, Volume 40: Its Meaning and Functions in Ancient and Other Cultures by G. S. Kirk
1.0
The collected opinions of G.S. Kirk
It is certainly possible to write entertaining books about the theory of myth. Kirk failed. This is a very badly written book containing very bad science. Where to begin...
First of all, the writing style is terrible. This book is a jungle, the sentences and vocabulary are vines. One needs a machete to get through. Sentences are long, convoluted and very hard to parse, even for someone fluent in English. Kirk will always use a more difficult word or expression, even if a simpler one is available. It's often unclear what a pronoun refers to or what the implied subject of a verb is. This makes for slow an laborious reading.
Unfortunately, the rewards for this tedious reading are few and far between. Occasionally, Kirk will give a nice piece of analysis, a useful list or an interesting observation. I firmly agree with him, when he (repeatedly) says that there is no one single explanation for the origin and function of myth. There are quite a few other observations that make sense, for instance about the limited role of the gods in Greek myths.
However, most of the book is devoted to Kirk's opinions, intuitions and speculations. In the first chapter he tries to define myth. Simply put his conclusion seems to be that whenever it feels like a myth, it is one. Kirk himself is the ultimate judge on this. He tries to separate folktale from myth, but never succeeds in defining folktale. He believes that fantastic and speculative elements are essential to a true myth, but again fails to define those concepts.
His book is very polemic. There is hardly a scientist on this subject he agrees with and he arrogantly brushes their theories aside as "unlikely", without proving his point or leaving any room for discussion and, even worse, without providing an alternative theory that is better than the ones he rejects.
He seems to have a special dislike of Greek mythology and seems desperate to show that it isn't true mythology (because it lacks speculative and fantastic elements and is too rich in folktale elements), not Greek (derived from Mesopotamian sources) and more like literature. I agree that Greek myth might be a special case, but why so negative? His argument is weak, Greek mythology is full of fantasy and speculation.
I could go into many more details. His definitions are often in fact his opinions and contain many values (a myth is a "serious" story - when is something considered "serious"?), it's unclear to what extent some phenomena need to be present (a myth is usually not about gods, but gods can appear in a myth - how many gods a myth make?!) and sometimes contradictory. He accuses other mythologists of not taking into account all the variants and the whole corpus of myths, but he himself picks and chooses. He jumps to conclusions and accuses others of doing just that. He simplifies and complicated at a whim.
All in all the main value of this book was to sharpen my own opinions against Kirk's and learning a few details from his theories.
It is certainly possible to write entertaining books about the theory of myth. Kirk failed. This is a very badly written book containing very bad science. Where to begin...
First of all, the writing style is terrible. This book is a jungle, the sentences and vocabulary are vines. One needs a machete to get through. Sentences are long, convoluted and very hard to parse, even for someone fluent in English. Kirk will always use a more difficult word or expression, even if a simpler one is available. It's often unclear what a pronoun refers to or what the implied subject of a verb is. This makes for slow an laborious reading.
Unfortunately, the rewards for this tedious reading are few and far between. Occasionally, Kirk will give a nice piece of analysis, a useful list or an interesting observation. I firmly agree with him, when he (repeatedly) says that there is no one single explanation for the origin and function of myth. There are quite a few other observations that make sense, for instance about the limited role of the gods in Greek myths.
However, most of the book is devoted to Kirk's opinions, intuitions and speculations. In the first chapter he tries to define myth. Simply put his conclusion seems to be that whenever it feels like a myth, it is one. Kirk himself is the ultimate judge on this. He tries to separate folktale from myth, but never succeeds in defining folktale. He believes that fantastic and speculative elements are essential to a true myth, but again fails to define those concepts.
His book is very polemic. There is hardly a scientist on this subject he agrees with and he arrogantly brushes their theories aside as "unlikely", without proving his point or leaving any room for discussion and, even worse, without providing an alternative theory that is better than the ones he rejects.
He seems to have a special dislike of Greek mythology and seems desperate to show that it isn't true mythology (because it lacks speculative and fantastic elements and is too rich in folktale elements), not Greek (derived from Mesopotamian sources) and more like literature. I agree that Greek myth might be a special case, but why so negative? His argument is weak, Greek mythology is full of fantasy and speculation.
I could go into many more details. His definitions are often in fact his opinions and contain many values (a myth is a "serious" story - when is something considered "serious"?), it's unclear to what extent some phenomena need to be present (a myth is usually not about gods, but gods can appear in a myth - how many gods a myth make?!) and sometimes contradictory. He accuses other mythologists of not taking into account all the variants and the whole corpus of myths, but he himself picks and chooses. He jumps to conclusions and accuses others of doing just that. He simplifies and complicated at a whim.
All in all the main value of this book was to sharpen my own opinions against Kirk's and learning a few details from his theories.