Ivan Strenski and theories of myth

Couple of weeks ago I accidentally ran into one book in the Bill Bryson library. I was looking for some anthropological books about myth and religion when I spotted a spine with the title saying: Four Theories of Myth in the Twentieth-Century History. I do not usually borrow books at random from a library, but I made an exception for this one, because after I skimmed through it, I decided that it was worth reading. The book was written by an American scholar Ivan Strenski and published in 1987. I have never heard of Mr. Strenski before, however, his book turned out to be a really good one.

The book is about four major thinkers on the field of myth in the twentieth century: Neo-Kantian philosopher Ernst Cassirer, historian of religion Mircea Eliade, and two famous anthropologists - Bronislaw Malinowski and Claude Lévi-Strauss. Ivan Strenski gives his readers some basic ideas about all four theories, and he also places them in their historical context. For example, Strenski tries to show how Cassirer’s theory of myth can be seen as related to the rise of Nazi party to power in the interwar years in Germany or how Eliade’s hermeneutical approach is related to the political turmoils in Romania during 1930s. But Strenski’s evaluation is not based on a naive biographical approach. Strenski does not approach ideas as if they were a mere result of their authors’ life experiences (here, his approach is well informed by Quentin Skinner’s Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas).

Reader might find some chapters more engaged with biographical information while the others are more engaged with theoretical debates (ironically, the most theoretical part of the book is the chapter dedicated to the Durkheimian theory of myth). In this respect, one might find the content of particular chapters unbalanced. Nonetheless, Strenski’s book still remains a very good one. From time to time it is relieving to engage with more biographical information presented in a digestible form rather than with dense theoretical debates. And not only for this reason is Strenski’s book interesting. Strenski is a scholar interested in theories of religion. His project seems to be concentrated on introducing order to the confused field of religious theories. In 2006 he published a reader titled Thinking about Religion which covers theories of religion from David Hume to Mircea Eliade. In this respect I am highly sympathetic to Ivan Strenski’s approach, because certain degree of theoretical order, which Strenski attempts to establish, should be essential to any discipline. 

If you are more interested in Mr. Strenski’s work you can visit his homepage. And every modest Durkheimian zealot should be aware of his book The New Durkheim.