Myth and Method - Paperback

by Laurie L. Patton (Editor), Wendy Doniger (Editor)

In the wake of the elegant master theories of Joseph Campbell, Mircea Eliade, Georges Dumezil, and Claude Levi-Strauss, how are mythology and the comparative study of religion to be understood? In Myth and Method, a leading team of scholars assesses the current state of the study of myth and explores the possibilities for charting a methodological middle course between the comparative and the contextual issues raised in the last ten years. In confronting these tension, they provide an outline of the most troubling questions in the field and offer a variety of responses to them.

Back Jacket

'Myth and Method is a significant contribution to the study of religion, culture, method, and comparison, summarizing, with fairness, the crisis in the study of mythology that has developed in the last ten years. The volume strives for a balance between two centrifugal forces in academic discourse: the exclusive focus on method and an exclusive focus on area studies, addressing their strengths without aligning itself to the provincialism of either.

Author Biography

Laurie L. Patton is Assistant Professor of Early Indian Religions at Emory University. In addition to journal articles on the topics of early Indian religions, comparative mythology, and theory in the study of religion, she is the author of Myth as Argument: The Mrhaddevata as Canonical Commentary. Wendy Doniger is Mircea Eliade Professor of History of Religions at the University of Chicago. She is the author of several books on Indian mythology and the comparative study of mythology, including The Origin of Evil in Hindu Mythology; Dreams, Illusion, and Other Realities; and Other Peoples' Myths.