Myth Theorized - Robert A. Segal
Dubuisson on Twentieth-Century Theorists of Myth: Foreword to Daniel Dubuisson, Twentieth Century Mythologies: Dumézil, Lévi-Strauss, Eliade
Myth Theorized - Robert A. Segal
Robert A. Segal [+]
University of Aberdeen
Description
In chapter nine I sum up the book Twentieth Century Mythologies: Dumézil, Lévi-Strauss, Eliade (2006) by Daniel Dubuisson. It was originally published in French in 1993. Dubuisson might have considered other theorists as well, but two of them, Freud and Jung, he does not even deem worthy of the term. Strikingly, he pits Dumézil and Lévi-Strauss against Eliade. He praises Dumézil and Lévi-Strauss as rigorous thinkers. He disparages Eliade as a fascist rather than a scholar. Where, for Dubuisson, Dumézil and Lévi-Strauss were open enough to change their minds, Eliade never was. He simply put his ideology in seemingly ethereal, apolitical terms. I consider whether, chronology aside, his three qualify as, in my terms, twentieth-century thinkers.