Anthropos: Anthropos, 78.1983,1-4

Anthropos, 78.1983,1-4

Bibliographische Daten

Zeitschrift

Strukturtyp:: Zeitschrift

Werks-URN (URL):: https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:kobv:11-714820

URN:: urn:nbn:de:kobv:11-714820

Persistenter Identifier:: BV043334262

Titel:: Anthropos

Untertitel:: internationale Zeitschrift für Völker- u. Sprachenkunde

Erscheinungsort:: Fribourg

Verlag:: Ed. St. Paul

Erscheinungsjahr:: 1906

Sammlung:: Zeitschriften und Zeitungen > Zeitschriften zur Ethnologie

Wissensgebiet:: Sozial- und Kulturanthropologie > Allgemeines

Zeitschriftenband

Strukturtyp:: Zeitschriftenband

Werks-URN (URL):: https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:kobv:11-711855

URN:: urn:nbn:de:kobv:11-711855

Persistenter Identifier:: 1513160147092

Titel:: Anthropos, 78.1983,1-4

Erscheinungsjahr:: 1983

Signatur:: LA 1118

Sammlung:: Zeitschriften und Zeitungen > Zeitschriften zur Ethnologie

Zeitschriftenheft

Strukturtyp:: Zeitschriftenheft

Titel:: Bd. 78, 1983, Heft 3-4

Sammlung:: Zeitschriften und Zeitungen > Zeitschriften zur Ethnologie

Zeitschriftenartikel

Strukturtyp:: Zeitschriftenartikel

Titel:: Strands versus Structure in the Theory of Myth

Sonstige Person:: Eichinger Ferro-Luzzi, Gabriella

Sammlung:: Zeitschriften und Zeitungen > Zeitschriften zur Ethnologie

Strands versus Structure in the Theory of Myth 439 The above scholarly definitions and distinctions of folk narrative with out being entirely erroneous were mistaken in supposing that every concept must have one or a small number of essential attributes. Even Eliade, who postulates a gliding scale from the myth to the fairy-tale, does not give up essentialist definition. Thompson (1958: 107-108), who notes that “the two forms of the fairy tale and the myth continually flow into each other” goes on to search for the place of origin of the earliest form of a story even though he knows that the forms and consequently also the tales are unbounded. The polythetic notion runs counter to ingrained habits of thought, which have had philosophical support from the times of Plato and Aristotle and therefore it has found great resistance in philosophy and science. In cross-cultural comparison it might seem, for instance, to require the abandon ment of key terms like “incest” and “belief” (Needham 1971: 28; 1972: 131, 151) because of their imprecision. But this is not necessary. On closer inspection imprecision and uncertainty turn out to be less than originally thought. The new polythetic way of looking at things in order to reveal its full revolutionary potential has to be integrated (in most cases) with the no tion of nodal elements or prototypes. The choice of the term “prototype” is somewhat unfortunate. When I first used it (Eichinger Ferro-Luzzi 1981a) adopting it indirectly from Berlin and Kay as well as Rosch (Shweder 1977: 646), I did not foresee all the problems it might create, but have also been unable to think of a completely satisfactory alternative. Putnam’s “stereo type” (1975: 148-151) has the same inconvenience that it risks to suggest the original model after which later forms are copied. The “prototype” of a myth Indo-Europeanists try to reconstruct, which is precisely one point my approach tries to disprove, is such an original model. In order to avoid all confusion I wish to stress that “prototype” in my usage coupled with “polythetic” does not refer to the original model but to the most frequent features of a fluid class. The rose, for instance, may be considered the prototype of the polythetic-prototype concept “flower” in the eyes of the westerner. Speakers of western languages have hardly coined their terms for “flower” after the model of the rose, but when asked to name a flower, more often than not they will mention the rose. Prototypical or nodal elements have long been intuitively known and they are the ones which have usually been mistaken for essential attributes defining concepts. Undoubtedly preoccupation with religion is a prototypical element in myth but it is not essential. If it were so, Lévi-Strauss would have analyzed few myths. On the other hand, the first dictionary meaning of “legend” is “life story of a saint,” so that the myth and the legend overlap in an im portant part of their semantic domains and there is no reason to consider the legend a different “mode of elaborating reality” as Lévi-Strauss claims (1971: 539). The fairy-tale uses many motifs and structural features like the love of redundancy, which are also found in the myth, but clearly lacks the grandiosity of the myth. Lévi-Strauss’s (1966: 183) definition of the fairy-tale as “myth in miniature” might therefore be acceptable, although

Zugriffsbeschränkung

Nutzungslizenz

fullscreen: Anthropos, 78.1983,1-4

Zeitschrift

Zeitschriftenband

Zeitschriftenheft

Zeitschriftenartikel

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Downloads

Ganzer Datensatz

Diese Seite

Seitenauswahl

Bildfragment

Formate und Verlinkungen

Formate

Links

Zitieren

Ganzer Datensatz

Diese Seite

Zitierempfehlung