Myth

I liked it, even though it's very dense reading.

But I'm rather astonished that Coupe can talk about myths of creation, fertility, deliverance, and heroism without ever mentioning nonpatriarchal versions of same. I think there is exactly one literary myth he discusses that was written by a woman, Frankenstein, and obviously Mary Shelley was not a modern feminist. He never mentions modern Paganism, and hardly any goddesses even when talking about classical mythology. And Gaia theory, ecopsychology, etc., only refer to men. This could've been so much more interesting and insightful if he'd found a way to include the viewpoints of people who are not men, which are > 1/2 of humanity.

I read this book as part of reference material I used for a critical study. What I like about Coupe is that he doesn't rely overtly on the reference material of others, and his own critical voice and opinions are well devised and thought out. His analysis is broken down in parts: Reading Myth and Mythic Reading, each section containing sections devoted to Oder, Chaos, Ends, Truth, Psyche and History. In this short work he covers a lot of ground across diverse media material but always returns to his heading concept as not to isolate his own theory as a critical study of that particular subject material.

I am not yet sure what I think of this. I've only read it "once" (meaning, I've only made it to the last page once, but there were numerous cases of re-reading passages, sections, and even entire chapters in the process), and I plan to read it again and I expect to want to read it a third time. In one respect, that means it's not great. Just looking at the text, it doesn't look like it would be as dense as it is, but there's a lot of po-mo wordplay and lack of clarity about the subjects of sentences that made it hard for me to stay with him in places.

The book is divided into two parts, one about 'reading myth' and the other about 'mythic reading'. The latter is 'about' various literary theories of myth. The former, I'm not quite sure. show more In both parts there is a great deal of lit-crit analysis of mythical elements in various fictional works, somewhat more in the first part than in the latter. It's all very interesting but after a 'single' reading I don't think I understand his argument well enough to know what to think of it. (Allow me to say that I have a Ph.D. in American anthropology; believe me, I know from ambiguous writing.)

If you do attempt this, pay particular attention to the introduction and make damned sure you understand his usage of the 'three P words' (paradigm, perfection, and possibility, IIRC) and the theorists with whom he particularly associates each one (Burke, Cupitt, and someone whose name escapes me, too), because they lie at the core of his (Coupe's) own ideas about myth. show less