Book

Doniger, Wendy.

The implied spider : politics & theology in myth / Wendy Doniger.

New York : Columbia University Press, ©1998.

x, 200 pages ; 24 cm

"Tapping a wealth of traditions, from the Hebrew Bible to the Bhagavad Gita, Doniger crafts a new lens for examining other cultures, and finding in the world's myths - its sacred storiesa way to talk about experiences shared across time and space." "Myths, she shows, bridge the cosmic and the familiar, the personal and the abstract, the theological and the political. They encourage us to draw various, even opposed, political meanings from a single text as it travels through different historical contexts. And she demonstrates how studying myths from cultures other than our own can be exhilarating and illuminating." "Myth, Doniger shows, provides a near-perfect entree to another culture. Even if scholars such as Freud, Jung, and Joseph Campbell typically overstated the universality of major myths and suppressed the distinctive natures of other cultures, post-colonial critics are wrong to argue that nothing good can come from a systematic comparative study of human cultures."--Jacket.

Lectures on the history of religions ; new ser., no. 16

Myth -- Study and teaching -- Methodology.

Mythology -- Study and teaching -- Methodology.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 177-190) and index.

Introduction: Myth and metaphor -- Microscopes and telescopes. Myths as textual lenses ; Scholarly lenses on myths ; Myths as theological lenses in Job and the Bhagavata Purana ; Myths as political lenses ; Myths as human lenses -- Dark cats, barking dogs, chariots and knives. The difference of dark cats ; The dog that doesn't bark ; The same old story ; The context ; The whole and the parts: chariots and knives -- Implied spiders and the politics of individualism. Universalist problems ; Cross-cultural solutions ; The implied spider ; The postcolonial and postmodern critique of comparison ; The problem of individualism ; The art and science of mythology -- Micromyths, macromyths, and multivocality. The myth with no point of view ; Many voices ; Micromyths and macromyths ; The myth with points of view ; Inverted political versions ; Inverted political readings of contemporary mythic texts -- Mother Goose and the voices of women. Old wives' tales ; Women's points of view ; Men's voices in women's texts ; Women's voices in men's texts ; Androgynous language ; Salvaging women's voices -- Textual pluralism and academic pluralism. The archetype ; Diffusion and survival ; The foul rag and bones shop of the heart ; Jumping off the bricolage bus ; The greening of Claude Lévi-Strauss ; Seventy different interpretations ; The multiversity ; Walking the tightrope.

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