Fictional realities and the function of myth
Saturday 5 July 2008 at 16:32 BST
This business about scientific naturalism, religion, alternative realities, and the mythical and poetic imagination, discussed here and here in reaction to an article by physicist Lawrence Krauss in New Scientist, continues to occupy my attention.
I am not qualified to address the issues with the depth and eloquence of English scholar Anja Müller-Wood. Instead I am a largely a passive consumer of stories, myths and legends. Unlike Anja I don’t do literary criticism, even though I can appreciate its value. My interest is in how storytelling influences emotional and spiritual development.
One of my favourite storytellers is Hugh Lupton, an Englishman who is well known in the folk arts scene. Lupton has for the past three decades been telling stories in schools, theatres, prisons, hospices, universities, festivals and fairs. His narration of myths, legends, folk tales, riddles and ballads is absolutely captivating, and on hearing him speak I always come away feeling that I’ve learned something about myself and the world around me today.
Lupton, in discussing what is essentially a modern form of ancestor worship, says that we are inhabited by the dead every time we speak:
“Whether we like it or not we are caught up from infancy in ancestral knowledge”.
The reason why I revisit this subject now is that I’ve just re-read the transcript of Lupton’s BBC Radio 4 presentation “A chain of voices” from February 2005. In his “Something Understood” broadcast Lupton neatly summed up the role of myth:
“The function of myth is to tell the truth. Not the everyday truth that is the opposite of lying, but the truth that can’t be told any other way. Countless intelligences have precipitated the stories. Countless voices have worked on them, shaping them and adjusting them and refining them, clothing them in the picture language that lodges in our memories. They are as durable and resilient as the words that carry them. They are a gift from the past, but they are only worth anything if they can speak to the present. Our job is to retell and reinterpret them, to let them lead us into the questions and mysteries and silences that words can only point towards.”
That, I think, says it all.
Stumble it!
Sunday 6 July 2008 at 12:52 BST
And to think myth is still used to indicate a deliberate and malicious lie.
Sunday 6 July 2008 at 15:35 BST
As Anja says (about “narrativity”), storytelling can be a means of propagating deliberate lies. But that’s no reason to throw the baby out with the bathwater, which is what some people who dislike the very notion of fictional narrative appear to be doing. Over the years I’ve come across other scientists who on principle won’t read novels. They counterpose episodic and chronological memories in the most facile way, claiming that painting, sculpture and poetry, for example, are ‘legitimate’ art forms, whereas fictional prose isn’t. For a while I was seduced by this way of thinking.
Monday 7 July 2008 at 22:58 BST
“The function of myth is to tell the truth.”
.
Hehehehehe
Go on Francis substitute the word “myth” with “religions” hehehe.
Monday 7 July 2008 at 23:21 BST
Why on Earth would I want to do that, Steven? Don’t you know the difference between fantastic tales that no-one takes literally, and religions, whose adherents actually believe the silly stories in their holy books?