Frauenfelder, 'Classical Myth', Bryn Mawr Classical Review 9505
URL = http://hegel.lib.ncsu.edu/stacks/serials/bmcr/bmcr-9505-frauenfelder-classical

@@@@95.5.3, Powell, Classical Myth

Barry B. Powell, <i>Classical Myth</i>. With new translations of
ancient texts by Herbert M. Howe. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice
Hall, 1995. Pp. xxvi + 707. ISBN 0-13-143470.
     Reviewed by David W. Frauenfelder -- North Carolina State University
     frauenfelder@social.chass.ncsu.edu

     When one considers the continuing popularity of Mythology
courses in schools and universities, together with new approaches
and insights brought forward by scholars in recent years, it is
something of a surprise that so few new comprehensive textbooks
have emerged to challenge the hegemony of Morford and Lenardon's
<i>Classical Mythology</i> (M.&L.). Now more texts are on the
horizon.[[1]] One of these, Barry Powell's ambitious effort,
<i>Classical Myth</i> (P.), challenges M.&L. on its own terms,
outstripping it both in completeness and interpretive
sophistication. It will be interesting to see whether P.
convinces many instructors of myth to switch from M.&L. I suspect
that it will not.

     The first thing that strikes one upon opening P. is its
size. Bigger is better seems to be the working assumption. A
little taller and a full inch wider than the already substantial
M.&L., it is a hefty and imposing volume. Although about equal to
M.&L. in number of pages (P. 733, M.&L. 725), P.'s larger
format[[2]] and fewer pages devoted to the survival of classical
myth (dealt with in P. by 40 individual "Perspectives") ensure
that students are given more texts in translation, more tales
paraphrased, and more interpretation. Indeed, P. ranges far wider
than M.&L., encompassing not only Roman myth but also tales of
the Near East--Hittite, Mesopotamian, Assyrian, Hebrew and
Egyptian. Mesopotamian myth is given pride of place in Chapter 2
as "the earliest myths" and "valuable for our understanding of
classical myth" (p. 17). The placement is also in accord with the
author's guiding principle: to go beyond traditional applications
of myth in books such as M.&L., in order to emphasize the
"anthropological, historical, religious, sociological, and
economic contexts in which the stories of the ancients were told"
(p. xxiii).

     The volume is organized along the same general lines as
M.&L., though not always in the same order. The first chapter is
devoted to an introduction to the subject and a definition of
myth. Theories of interpretation, included in M.&L.'s first
chapter, merit a separate and longer section in P. After the
chapter on the Mesopotamian material, the volume moves on to
examine the cultural background of Greek myth. The main body of
the work considers first the divine ("Divine Myths"), then the
human ("Greek Legends") side of the tales, with chapters on
"Myths of Death" and "Myths of Inspired Knowledge" (prophecy and
healing) as transition between the two. The general movement is
from background to creation to the gods to the intersections of
gods and humans (death, prophecy) to the human world, a tried and
true format.

     The important chapters on definition, background, and
interpretation are the most useful parts of the text. In these
sections, the prose is straightforward and unadorned, with
considerable pains taken to explain unfamiliar terms. As in
M.&L., we read in P.'s Chapter 1 that there are three kinds of
myth: divine myth, legend, and folktale; the author's strength is
in his patience to explain these terms fully, which M.&L. treats
in a couple of paragraphs. Yet he also shows a fine sense of
restraint, moving through the chapter in an economical 12 pages.
P.'s history of interpretation, similarly, feels fresher than
M.&L.'s, not least because it is presented as history rather than
as a laundry list of approaches. Its weakness is its placement at
the end of the book; more on this below. The chapter on culture
is mixed in character. There is ample treatment of the contexts
of Greek myth--geographical, historical, social, and religious--
and this is welcome; however, there is no mention of such ideas
as the shame culture, the importance of <i>hybris</i>, or the
traditional separation of gods from humans, a concept existing
side by side with the belief noted in P. that "the supernatural
world easily mixes with the humans" (p. 78).

     Delving into the main body of the text, one is immediately
impressed by the abundance of detail. The author has set a
difficult task for himself, not only to retell the stories, but
to put them in context (within Greece and comparatively across
cultures), and having done so, to interpret them. Loaded with so
much information, the text could easily become unreadable. It
does not. The stories are retold engagingly, with frequent
photographs, maps, charts and illustrations which ease the
reader's eye; there are also frequent headings and sub-headings,
giving the impression that one is marching briskly on to the end.
No single chapter is overlong by itself. If one is to digest all
this copious detail, a text with a format such as this one is
imperative.

     Much of the material in the main chapters, and that which
M.&L. lacks by comparison, is interpretive. Where M.&L. is
content to offer a sentence or a paragraph, and a conventional
one at that, P. often takes a page or more. Dionysus, for
example, rates three and one-half pages of interpretation in P.,
while M.&L. settles for three paragraphs. P. is truer to the
march of classical scholarship here: Dionysus is among the most
studied and still the least understood of the Olympian gods.
Indeed, there are piles and piles of studies on this one topic
that could be brought forward for the student's edification. But
it may not be the textbook's place to make this choice for the
instructor.

     P. is admirable in its presentation, completeness, and in
its willingness to move beyond traditional views on Greek myth.
Considered from a pedagogical point of view, however, P. seems
less successful. The amount of material will be daunting to many
instructors of myth, not to mention students, who clamor for
fewer names and events to memorize, not more. The first question
asked in many a mythology class is how much of the text will be
on the exam. I applaud anyone whose students will tolerate and
memorize all or most of the material P. includes, or who has the
fortitude to assign them this task. I am less stout-hearted, and
less enamored of detail for its own sake.

     A secondary but important consideration concerns
interpretation. P. provides wheelbarrows full, drawing from every
approach and method. In addition to explaining myths as
entertainment, as aetiology, or as imparting a moral lesson, P.
uses psychology, structuralism, ritual and historical approaches,
and especially folktale motifs to illuminate the stories.
Sometimes P. offers an overarching interpretation, excluding
discussion of other viewpoints (e.g. Odysseus' journey, Jason and
Medea). Sometimes it clumps together several differing
interpretations (e.g. Demeter/Persephone, Dionysus). This
piecemeal arrangement is unsettling, the more so because
discussion of interpretive methods is postponed to Part IV, the
last major section of the book. For the student it is difficult
to connect the process of interpretation with the individual
story, since there is little explanation of how interpretive
conclusions are reached. This renders the process a kind of
oracular activity, unnecessarily so. It would have served the
author well to insert at the beginning a statement such as he
makes at the very end of his text, a statement which would
prepare the unwitting student for the unwieldy mass of
interpretations offered: "Greek myth taken together is too
complex, too many-faceted, to be explained by a single theory.
Its complexity is bound up with the complexity of human
consciousness itself... To understand it, we must make use of
insights offered by different schools of interpretation" (p.
685).

     There is a difficulty here for the instructor as well. One
of the instructor's lone privileges in class is disseminating his
own point of view on the stories, and, I hope, helping the
students towards developing theirs. One of M.&L.'s strongest
attractions is its single-faceted explanations, which can be used
effectively as starting points (or as straw men) for the
instructor's own argument. The numerous and varied approaches of
P. may leave the instructor with the sense, either that he has
nothing left to say, or that he must take valuable class time
justifying his approach over against those of P., or again that
he must jettison large chunks of material as unimportant for the
exam. M.&L. is a better choice here, because it presents the
stories with a minimum of distraction.

     P. makes no egregious factual errors, but there are
inconsistencies and lapses in judgment. I was disappointed to
read, for example, that P. first passes on the old chestnut about
the rape of Persephone as an aetiology of the seasons (p. 6),
only to discard that interpretation in favor of an aetiology "for
the presence of death in the world. (pp. 236-7)." P. also follows
M.&L.'s inexplicable contention that Gaea came from Chaos, when
it is clear from Hesiod's text that she came after him ("First of
all came Chaos, and then broad-breasted Gaea", <i>Theogony</i>
116-7).[[3]] The difficulty is compounded when we read in the
same paragraph, "Tartarus is often confused in Greek myth with
the abode of Hades, but Hesiod seems to mean by it the outermost
edge of creation, the primordial yawning, the vertiginous abyss
from which Gaea sprang" (p. 96). This sentence cannot intend to
make Tartarus and Chaos an identity, but it comes close to doing
so, and it will likely confuse the undergraduate reader, who has
before him a genealogy on the facing page which shows Tartarus
and Chaos as separate beings.

     Interpretive curiosities are much more numerous, not
surprising in a book of this size and scope. P. also has a
tendency towards soaring generalizations ("Achilles is the
intellectual, questioning the very foundations of his traditional
culture when he rejects Agamemnon's offer of the rich gifts...
His successors in Greek culture will create philosophy, a
rejection of traditional (and 'mythical') explanations in
exchange for a reasoned investigation..." [p. 567]), which can
only raise the specialist's hackles. I found myself in hot
disagreement with the unitary interpretations of the Odysseus
story (pp. 620-1) and of the Jason and Medea cycle (pp. 528-9),
and the strange passage on Oedipus' free will or lack thereof
(pp. 487-8) left me shaking my head in bewilderment. Working
through this volume sometimes resembles swimming with jellyfish.
Sooner or later one is bound to come upon something that stings.

     Of course, the proof of any textbook is in the teaching.
What look like weaknesses may yet end up as strengths, especially
in the hands of the right instructor. But I suspect that M&L will
not lose many adherents. It is a difficult thing to write an
effective myth textbook, or at least one that will satisfy a
substantial percentage of instructors. We are an idiosyncratic
bunch, with our own ideas and particular points of view. Any book
that goes beyond a retelling of the stories can only produce
disagreement; P. proves this point abundantly. M.&L.,
conventional as it is, is a safer bet than P. 

     Barry Powell brings to this monumental effort an
imaginative, active mind, a huge appetite for learning, twenty
years of experience in teaching myth, and an admirable conviction
that everything in his chosen subject is worthwhile for the
undergraduate to experience. These strengths do not always
translate well into his textbook. There is a polite expression
that I have heard in the south for use when asked one's opinion
on an item possibly dear to the heart of a friend or colleague:
"I wouldn't choose it for myself." In this case, it sums up my
response perfectly.

NOTES

[[1]]  See the review by Lowell Edmunds of Fritz Graf's <i>An
Introduction to Greek Mythology</i>, <i>BMCR</i> 94.9.10.

[[2]]  A full page of text in P. has about 550 words; M.&L. about
425, though P. has fewer full pages than M.&L. P.'s font also
appears smaller, but it is not. Perhaps it seems that way because
M.&L.'s text is darker and easier to read.

[[3]]  M.&L. at least alerts the reader that this interpretation
is a guess ("This is how we interpret Hesiod; not everyone will
agree" [p. 43].); P. does not.