Politics of Myth

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Amid the horrors of world war and the exponential expansion of technologies and economies, the mid­twentieth century saw also a late modern upsurge of popular and academic interest in mythology. Three persons were primarily associated with this development: the analytic psychologist C. G. Jung, the historian of religion Mircea Eliade, and the widely read public mythologist Joseph Campbell. The interest was not merely aesthetic: these interpreters of ancient myth said much to lead their public to believe that a rediscovery of meaning in myth could contribute to solving the personal and social problems of those tumultuous times. At the same time, all three mythologists have at times been associated with the politics of the extreme right, even, according to some charges, with sympathy for fascism and anti­

Semitism. The present book refers to these serious accusations, while chiefly endeavoring to extract the political and social philosophy presented explicitly and implicitly in the entire lifework and published corpus of the three persons.

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