A Short History of Myth [Hardcover]

Karen Armstrong (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 5, 2005

This brilliant, readable synthesis of the history of mythology and the function it serves to humanity is the launch title of the groundbreaking publishing event, The Myths. “Human beings have always been mythmakers.” So begins Karen Armstrong’s concise yet compelling investigation into myth: what it is, how it has evolved, and why we still so desperately need it. She takes us from the Paleolithic period and the myths of the hunters right up to the “Great Western Transformation” of the last five hundred years and the discrediting of myth by science. The history of myth is the history of humanity, our stories and beliefs, our curiosity and attempts to understand the world, which link us to our ancestors and each other. Myths help us make sense of the universe. Heralding a major series of retellings of international myths by authors from around the world, Armstrong’s characteristically insightful and eloquent book serves as a brilliant and thought-provoking introduction to myth in the broadest sense -- and explains why if we dismiss it, we do so at our peril.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This is an pedestrian study from the noted and popular religion scholar, in which Armstrong takes a historical approach to myth, tracing its evolution through a series of periods, from the Paleolithic to the postmyth Great Western Transformation. Each period developed myths reflecting its major concerns: images of hunting and the huntress dominated the myths of the Paleolithic, while the myths of Persephone and Demeter, Isis and Osiris developed in the agricultural Neolithic period. By the Axial Age (200 B.C. through A.D. 1500), myths became internalized, so that they no longer needed to be acted out. Reason, says Armstrong, largely supplanted myth in the Post-Axial Period, which she sees as a source of cultural and spiritual impoverishment; she even appears, simplistically, to attribute genocide to the loss of "the sense of sacredness" myth offers. Armstrong goes on to relate that in the 20th century, a number of writers, such as Eliot, Joyce, Mann and Rushdie, recovered the power of myth for contemporary culture. Although the book offers no new perspectives or information on the history of myth, it does provide a functional survey of mythology's history. But a more engaging choice would be Kenneth Davis's Don't Know Much About Mythology (Reviews, Sept. 5). (Nov.)
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From Booklist

In this essay, superpopular religion historian Armstrong (Islam: A Short History, 2000) fastens the attributes of myth to the major chronological categories of human history. At each transition from the Paleolithic to scientific eras, she argues that a mythical conception of natural forces has drifted ever further from interpretation in pragmatic and logical terms, such that myth in modern times is a beleaguered species of fiction. To Armstrong this state reflects a profound misunderstanding of what myth is and does. Defining it as an art form that, on the assumption of the existence of an invisible realm of reality, protects one against the despair arising from the limitations of the tactile world (death in particular), Armstrong relates how mythology has historically been reformulated. She traces a theogony, illustrating it with examples from Chinese, Middle Eastern, Egyptian, and Greek cultures, as sky worship phased into anthropomorphic gods and then into ethical systems such as those of Confucius or Jesus. Written with great explanatory clarity, Armstrong's review of mythology is an efficient, fascinating experience. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 176 pages
• Publisher: Canongate U.S. (October 5, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 184195716X
• ISBN-13: 978-1841957166
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5.2 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (49 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #109,487 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Karen Armstrong is the author of numerous other books on religious affairs-including A History of God, The Battle for God, Holy War, Islam, Buddha, and The Great Transformation-and two memoirs, Through the Narrow Gate and The Spiral Staircase. Her work has been translated into forty-five languages. She has addressed members of the U.S. Congress on three occasions; lectured to policy makers at the U.S. State Department; participated in the World Economic Forum in New York, Jordan, and Davos; addressed the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington and New York; is increasingly invited to speak in Muslim countries; and is now an ambassador for the UN Alliance of Civilizations. In February 2008 she was awarded the TED Prize and is currently working with TED on a major international project to launch and propagate a Charter for Compassion, created online by the general public and crafted by leading thinkers in Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism, to be signed in the fall of 2009 by a thousand religious and secular leaders. She lives in London.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

102 of 107 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Compelling, October 30, 2005

By 

Edward Tsai (New York, NY United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: A Short History of Myth (Hardcover)

This book is not an introduction to the mythology ... there are many other books for that. Rather, it is an essay on what role myths (and ultimately religion and spirituality) play in human life and why they remain important. Myths provide a means to connect our finite lives, bonded by our inescapably mortal condition and the fear that inevitably accompanies the knowledge of our ultimate fate, with the infinite beyond us, a connection that we feel in moments of transcendence where we literally lose our individual selves and communion with something greater than ourselves ... be that God, the universe, our antecedents or heroic examples. Myth in short gives our lives meaning and significance in an otherwise frightening and indifferent world. Myths are not to be taken literally, because to do so would take the sacred out of the realm of the sacred and make it profane. Myths inhabit the world of the sacred because they are meant to exist beyond the world of profane explanation.

What Armstrong does very well is to explain how advances in the material and economic condition of human civilization throughout history and prehistory interacted with this basic human need to transcend his immediate condition to create various epochs of myth. She goes beyond myth to explain the competitors to myth, be it ritual without mythology (i.e., Confucianism) or logos (i.e., Greek rationalism) and how they had their roots in myth and why they are linked still. Her explanations are lucid and her prose is clear. For such a short book, she packs a lot of information in and, more importantly, compelling ideas.

The only shortcoming I felt was the last chapter on Armstrong's view of the future in the West, which seems to rely too heavily on literature. When was the last time your average joe picked up Joyce's Ulysses for spiritual sustenence? I would have liked to see something more about the reemergence of Islamic and Christian fundamentalism and even something about Falun Gong in China. These are all important developments which tie directly into what Armstrong's essay discusses. But this is a very very minor complaint. The book otherwise is a compelling guidebook both to our spiritual past and to the inner maps of the human soul. I think it will serve well as a reference for those anxious about the future.

[UPDATE: I am inclined now, after some time and much additional learning, to believe that "myth" is not the appropriate way to describe the spiritual experience, and hence think Karen Armstrong's entire thesis, as logical as it seems, to be flawed, if not outright wrong. Notable and credible scholars have indicated that there is a reality to the spirit world, which one can shield oneself against through excessive rationality, but cannot be entirely denied. The fact of the spirit world then throws into doubt the entire edifice of the materialist's belief system, where the supernatural is denied. Armstrong's views are definitely more in the humanist, materialist camp, and hence deny the reality of the spirit world. If one assumes the spirit world has reality, then her views are not useful. I recommend reading Gary North's "Unholy Spirits" as a counterpoint. It will definitely open your mind to other possibililties which are not widely discussed in our modern materialist culture.]

41 of 43 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Myth-ing in Action, January 22, 2006

By 

mrliteral - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: A Short History of Myth (Hardcover)

Karen Armstrong, an adept writer about religious history, takes a bit of a breather with this short book on the role of myth in society. Not that this book is missing her typically astute writing, just that it's brief, almost more of an extended essay than an in-depth look at the subject.

Armstrong follows the development of myth from prehistoric times to the present. Myth, as she describes it, is a fundamental part of human development, and similar stories can be found from culture to culture. The use of myth is a way for people to connect with the unseen forces of the universe. In the earliest days (the era of the hunter-gatherers), everything seemed to be imbued with this supernatural force: rocks, animals and the sky. With the development of agriculture and civilization, new myths developed and eventually, there would be a rebellion against myth.

In fact the concluding portion of the book revisits the ideas Armstrong presented in greater detail in The Battle for God. Namely, when there is a conflict between myth and reason, a backlash will occur (taking the form of what we would consider fundamentalism).

As with other books of Armstrong's that I have read, this is written with a sophisticated audience in mind and will not be an easy read for everyone. In addition, the more religiously orthodox may be offended by some of her writing, which treats the stories of the monotheistic faiths as mythical as the tales of Zeus or Odin. But with these caveats in mind, this is a good, insightful book that will provide perspective on the role that myth has played in human development.

46 of 49 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Drives home her themes, November 16, 2005

By 

David E. Levine (Peekskill , NY USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: A Short History of Myth (Hardcover)

In reading other works by Karen Armstrong, a recurrent theme is the dichotomy between mythos and logos. Mythos implies myth and wonderment. Logos, on the other hand, seeks to make sense of reality through scientific and historic reason. In "A History of God," Armstrong, by examining the development of the three major Western religions, shows the progression from mythos to logos. In that book, it was unclear to me whether Ms. Armstrong, a former nun, believes that this progression is ultimately a good or a bad development. However, here, in "A Short History of Myth," it is clear that Ms. Armstrong decries the disappearance of mythos.

Throughout the ages, myth has developed appropriate to the society of that time, whether it be early hunting societies, later agricultural societies, urban societies or modern society. The early mythology was understood to be mythology. Mythology is a way to get at the truth. I had the opportunity to speak briefly to Ms. Armstrong at a booksigning when I purchased this book. I told her that I believe in God but, I do not view God anthropomorphically. I related to her that God is unimaginable to me but that I nonetheless pray to anthropomorphic mythological images of God because I cannot pray to an abstraction. Ms. Armstrong (to my great pride and delight)heartily endorsed my viewpoint. The tragedy today is that so many people have no appreciation for myth. They either do not believe in any sort of divinity and only accept what can be proven logically, historically, and scientifically or they take an opposite view which also denies myth. This opposite view is that everything in the Bible actually happened and can be proven through reason; that everything is scientifically and historically true and not a myth. A religion that states that you must accept certain doctrines as historically true and accurate or you will not be saved is an example of this type of denial of myth. The view is that the doctrine is historically true and verifiable and that to think otherwise is a sin.

Ms. Armstrong notes that mythology was never meant to be historically and scientifically accurate. Rather, in combination with logos, it is a legitimate way to understand the world around us. Ms. Armstrong notes that in the arts, there are secular myths that have arisen. Nonetheless, she believes that spititual mythology is healthy and necessary. She states, "We must disabuse ourselves of the ninetheenth century fallacy that myth is false or that it represents an inferior mode of thought." She states that we "need myths that will help us identify with all our fellow human beings, not simply those who belong to our ethnic, national or ideological tribe." I highly recommend this book as a fine, succinct history of the development of mythology throughout the ages and as a cogent defense of importance that myth holds in a healthy society.