Power and Speech. Mythology of the Social and the Sacred

Collection of scientific articles on mythsThis book brings together the very diverse contributions of scholars of comparative mythology worldwide, dealing with an equally wide range of topics related to the topic of the conference, Power and Speech. They extend from Japan, Siberia and Mongolia to the ancient Near East, the Caucasus, Hungary and Iceland and span several thousand years, from the Bronze Age to modern times. We are very grateful to the organizers of our 2015 IACM meeting at Toruń and to the three editors who succeeded in compiling and editing this volume so speedily.Michael Witzel (Harvard University)The book now before the reader began with the annual meeting in June 2015 of IACM in Toruń, Poland, ably led by Dr. Marcin Lisiecki, who, with his fellow editors has now assembled a generous collection of scholarly papers on myth under the aspect especially of “power and speech.” Among the nineteen papers one can perhaps trace some lineages back to our three phases of comparative mythology, but of at least equal importance are the heterogeneously varied approaches of this contemporary collection. May the reader enjoy the learning and variety of these studies as much as I did!Joseph Harris (Harvard University)Making a wide range of readers interested in a new book—especially when the issues considered might appear to be rather specialised—is a difficult task. Here we attempt a systematic and concise demonstration that the subject and the texts comprising the present volume make up a coherent whole. Even when read independently, the texts do not lose in significance. What makes the book worthy of interest and what unites its content is the concept of “myth,” which has recently become significant and valuable both for research on multifarious cultures (early and contemporary) and for understanding the human condition. Our authors, representing various areas of humanities and social sciences, focus on the multi-aspectual relations between myth and our title: Speech and Power.Marcin Lisiecki (Nicolaus Copernicus University)Louise S. Milne (University of Edinburgh)Nataliya Yanchevskaya (Princeton University)The book brings collection of bright essays on mythology understood in many ways: as storytelling, as political activity, as a sacred domain, and as numerous symbols used by individuals and groups in social sphere. This variety of themes brings numerous ideas presented in different approaches and analyzed with differential methodologies, which makes the book absorbing and interesting. In this work myths, mythologies, sacred stories, and symbols are seen as ideas and tales constantly defining contemporary culture.Marek Jeziński (Nicolaus Copernicus University) Read more