Author: | Andrew Lang | ISBN: | 1230000249064 |
Publisher: | Consumer Oriented Ebooks Publisher | Publication: | June 29, 2014 |
Imprint: | Language: | English |
Author: | Andrew Lang |
ISBN: | 1230000249064 |
Publisher: | Consumer Oriented Ebooks Publisher |
Publication: | June 29, 2014 |
Imprint: | |
Language: | English |
*This Book is annotated (it contains a detailed biography of the author).
*An active Table of Contents has been added by the publisher for a better customer experience.
*This book has been checked and corrected for spelling errors.
It may well be doubted whether works of controversy serve any useful purpose. ‘On an opponent,’ as Mr. Matthew Arnold said, ‘one never does make any impression,’ though one may hope that controversy sometimes illuminates a topic in the eyes of impartial readers. The pages which follow cannot but seem wandering and desultory, for they are a reply to a book, Mr. Max Müller’s Contributions to the Science of Mythology, in which the attack is of a skirmishing character. Throughout more than eight hundred pages the learned author keeps up an irregular fire at the ideas and methods of the anthropological school of mythologists. The reply must follow the lines of attack.
Criticism cannot dictate to an author how he shall write his own book. Yet anthropologists and folk-lorists, ‘agriologists’ and ‘Hottentotic’ students, must regret that Mr. Max Müller did not state their general theory, as he understands it, fully and once for all. Adversaries rarely succeed in quite understanding each other; but had Mr. Max Müller made such a statement, we could have cleared up anything in our position which might seem to him obscure.
Contents
Recent mythology -- The story of Daphne -- The question of allies -- Mannhardt -- Philology and Demeter Erinnys -- Totemism -- The validity of anthropological evidence -- The philological method in anthropology -- Criticism of fetishism -- The riddle theory -- Artemis -- The fire-walk -- The origin of death -- Conclusion.
*This Book is annotated (it contains a detailed biography of the author).
*An active Table of Contents has been added by the publisher for a better customer experience.
*This book has been checked and corrected for spelling errors.
It may well be doubted whether works of controversy serve any useful purpose. ‘On an opponent,’ as Mr. Matthew Arnold said, ‘one never does make any impression,’ though one may hope that controversy sometimes illuminates a topic in the eyes of impartial readers. The pages which follow cannot but seem wandering and desultory, for they are a reply to a book, Mr. Max Müller’s Contributions to the Science of Mythology, in which the attack is of a skirmishing character. Throughout more than eight hundred pages the learned author keeps up an irregular fire at the ideas and methods of the anthropological school of mythologists. The reply must follow the lines of attack.
Criticism cannot dictate to an author how he shall write his own book. Yet anthropologists and folk-lorists, ‘agriologists’ and ‘Hottentotic’ students, must regret that Mr. Max Müller did not state their general theory, as he understands it, fully and once for all. Adversaries rarely succeed in quite understanding each other; but had Mr. Max Müller made such a statement, we could have cleared up anything in our position which might seem to him obscure.
Contents
Recent mythology -- The story of Daphne -- The question of allies -- Mannhardt -- Philology and Demeter Erinnys -- Totemism -- The validity of anthropological evidence -- The philological method in anthropology -- Criticism of fetishism -- The riddle theory -- Artemis -- The fire-walk -- The origin of death -- Conclusion.