For what is possibly the primal text in English on myth, written at a 
time of crux in English society when religious myth - as opposed to 
paranoid phantasy - and scientific discovery were really still present 
to the "working classes" as inspiring insight, though and perhaps 
because embattled, consider Ruskin's *Queen of the Air*, written as a 
lecture (1869) for the Working Men's College in London, which does not 
sunder or oppose science and myth so glibly, expounding through a 
variety of examples, particularly in Part 1, the complexity of 
interaction between observation, feeling & symbolic narrative. In the 
prose poetry of these examples I often find a musical sound-sense that 
can be compared to that of Wagner's *Ring des Nibelungen*, in the 
expressive & witty reflections and caprioles on the subject of the 
Harpies, for example. Ruskin was not interested in any Arnoldian 
conflict between "Faith" and "Reason", since he experienced the Greeks' 
relation to myths as a primarily very instinctive & immediate affair 
with varying degrees of symbolic sophistication depending on historical 
& social factors, but definitely not propounded as "factual" dogma, 
either religious or scientific. Myth as experience as well as story has 
not been rendered inaccessible to a large part of the population because 
of scientific reason but, certainly in my opinion, as a result of the 
victory of convenience consumerism (as underpinned by applied science) - 
mass production with consequent loss of the feeling for the rhythms of 
nature, TV as the purveyor of frozen food for the imagination, the motor 
vehicle as modern juggernaut etc etc. So we have the tawdry 
compensations of Xena, warrior queen & the jeering jusqu'au-Bootism of 
Big Brother for the slaves of industry or indolence, the Verwurschtung 
of the old stories coupled with the immense crackle&pop cynicism of the 
Bottom Line. Of course I wallow in all the blessings/blessures of 
modernity as much as the next  Circean pig.
Thus endeth my rant.
Hi Dave, good to see you back.
Martin
Douglas Clark wrote:

> ----- 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.
>

-- 
M.J.Walker - no blog - no webpage - no idea

Nous ne faisons que nous entregloser. - Montaigne