Antiquity and the Making of American Myth: The Oresteia and Mourning Becomes Electra

Year 2001, Issue: 13, 13 - 22, 01.04.2001

Ahmet Beşe

Abstract

Throughout recorded history, the tales and stories, which once had theological, historical and philosophical significance and are called myths have dominated human experiences. Theatre in the Western world has been, above all, a mixture of ritual, imitation and myth. The need for ritual survives to the present day in many cultures, as can be seen in wedding ceremonies, various festivals, church services and even in some sports events. The need to imitate, or the ‘mimetic instinct’, is one of man’s oldest and most basic instinctive characteristics. Out of ritual and imitation came the need to create or regenerate myth. Myths served as the basis for rituals by which the early perceptions and predictions of humanity and those of nature could be psychologically reconciled. “Myths have their historic time and meta-historic time; the time in which they came into being and their universal validity outside of time. They are intelligible in translation-from language to language, from one civilization to another, from one religious system to another” Kott 241-242 . Thus, myths and rituals are still operative in theistic and cultural hierarchies of the world. Studying a myth or a series of myths is simultaneously studying difference and commonality of a culture in question.

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