Myth: Its Meaning and Functions in Ancient and Other Cultures

This is an academic book written in a very ponderous and somewhat arrogant style. If it has any value, it is historical, as a text that helps us to understand the state of mythological studies towards the tail end of the 1960s if that matters to you.

While Kirk can be almost snidely brutal about other academics and there is the prevailing scent of old battles of little current importance, his primary interest is in responding (favourably if cautiously) to the emergence in France of Levy-Strauss' structuralist approach to myth.

This element in the book has some small value but it has to be said that, by the end of the book, after 285 pages of argument, I was still no wiser as to the meaning or function of myth. Occasional insights had show more scarcely made the effort of reading it worthwhile. It stays in the library - but only just. show less

Spends too much time trash talking the systems of deeper thinkers and better writers, but still makes some good points about the variety of possible origins and functions ("narrative, operative or validatory, and speculative or explanatory") of myth, its nuance, arguments for the localized social meaning of many mythic stories, but also generally a seriousness of purpose, a recurrence of themes, and a connection to a radically different concept of time than the historical/chronological.