----- Original Message -----
From: "Douglas Barbour" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, October 26, 2005 3:33 PM
Subject: Re: Geoffrey Hill: The Orchards of Syon become faith vs reason
>I take both your points as given (from reasoning).
>
> I've just been reading this new series of books on Myth, which begins with
> Karen Amrstrong's A Short History of Myth, in which she takes a long walk
> through the way myth has operated from the Paleolithic to today. Of the
> modern period she says, the triumph of reason & science has cut many off
> from the uses of myth, understood as story & not as science. Her point
> about what Alison calls 'the dress of reason' is intriguing: for she sees
> the scientific approach partly obscuring the way of myth, the power of
> metaphor, etc, so that (as a 'short history' must simplify) 'Creation
> stories had never been regarded as historically accurate; their purpose
> was therapeutic. But once you start reading Genesis as scientifically
> valid, you have bad science and bad religion.'
>
> Her book is about what myth-making, which she finds now in the arts, can
> still do for us, but not as science, &, as a very short overview, it does
> a pretty good job for Woolf's Common Reader (if such still exists).
>
> Doug
>
Karen Armstrong and Margaret Atwood are discussing Myth tonight on Radio 3
and I will be listening, having a night off from my Bach concerts. I saw
these little books being reviewed but didnt realise Karen Armstrong had
written one. I read all her work. I think Margaret Atwood's book is the
retelling of a Greek myth which she is turning into a play (or TV programme)
with Phyllida Law. I just found the article in today's Guardian...Atwood
will be acting in her update of the Odyssey told from the viewpoint of
Odysseus's wife.
And I remember these myth books are published by The Honourable Jamie Byng
at Canongate whose ex-wife Whitney had a marvellous statement about their
love in Scotland on Sunday this week. So Karen Armstrong must have written
an introduction for them. To Amazon!
The staged reading of The Penelopiad is on tonight at St James's Church,
Piccadily.
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