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No description available.

Includes bibliography.

This is a narrative of the Sugarman Project, a community project in Central Australia concerned with research into ancient Mediterranean and Greek traditions of alcohol use and abuse. The project was initiated as a response to a request from an Aboriginal man for a ‘story about alcohol’ which would fill a missing link in traditional Aboriginal conceptualisation of alcohol. The ‘story’ would have a role in indigenous treatment of alcohol abuse, put in a symbolic form consistent with oral teaching methods of indigenous custom. The project is centred around the development of an original performance script. The thesis describes the origin, context, development, rationale and implications of the project, especially with a view to considering the potential of the mythologem of Dionysos as a therapeutic paradigm in intercultural substance abuse work. Particular attention is given to the relationship between Aboriginal and European therapeutic practitioners and the use of myth, metaphor, symbolic function and specific Aboriginal ‘dreaming stories’ as a source and backup to therapeutic practice. Principal themes include the role of mythopoetic symbol formation in the development of thinking; reflections on the presence of theriomorphic serpentine imagery in the work; the role of stories as mental containers of therapeutic theory; reflections on the ‘milieu’ needed for implementing intercultural therapeutic procedures; examples of positive indigenous responses to alcohol work; preliminary notions on cross cultural transference communications; and reflections on primal states associated with alcohol intoxication. The conclusion is that the experience of developing a Western myth in concert with Aboriginal colleagues confirms the value of the initial, seminal suggestion that ‘dreaming stories’ have an authentic place in the repertoire of alcohol treatment and education / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Through a theoretical framework of myth in genesis, operation and review, this thesis evaluates the relationship between Australian society and the myth of the digger, a tradition of Australian military manhood which originated in the First World War. The digger in genesis was a product of early twentieth century Australia???s need to establish for itself a distinct national identity. Deriving strongly from existing mythology of the bushman/pioneer and foster by the work of CEW Bean, it was quickly adopted by both governments and citizens anxious to promote the contributions of the Australian soldiers and to understand the relationships that these had with the emerging Australian society. The digger in operation from the First World War to the end of the Second World War to the early 1960s demonstrates the way in which Australian (enamoured of its simple and seemingly enduring qualities) Embedded the myth at the core of orthodox thinking about national Identity, despite its exclusivity and prescriptive, authoritarian control by conservative institutions. The era of the Vietnam War acted as a key review phase for the myth as its relevance was questioned significantly. Despite temporary rejection from many and fragmentation into a variety of icons, Australia???s brief flirtation with radical thinking did not last beyond the mid-1970s. A return to conservative values in the 1980s-1990s coincided with political reconciliation over the Vietnam War ??? by the mid-1990s, the digger myth had retained its position of relevance and importance within Australian culture, demonstrating its capacity to become adapted and appropriated to reflect an increasingly democratic and pluralistic society. The current prevailing version of the digger, the &quotnew professional&quot, demonstrates the parallel transition of Australian military culture. It co-exist with other representations, providing a scaffold through which individuals interact with it to develop their own understanding of the application of the digger myth to both their own lives and Australian society.

The Maori people - those Polynesians who moved to the cooler islands of New Zealand - possessed a mythology that matched their own great qualities. They had a myth of the Creation that rivals Genesis in beauty, a pantheon of gods and heroes who can be mentioned in the same breath as those of the Greeks, and a store of splendid tribal histories, half factual, half fabulous, ... These are the opening lines of the Preface to a recently published selection of Maori myths and legends in translation: they indicate how strongly many modern New Zealanders are attracted to the various forms of Maori literature. But this is no new phenomen. For the receptive Pakeha mind has been fascinated by Maori mythology since the very beginnings of European settlement in New Zealand. Indeed, if anything, the magnetic appeal of Maori myth and legend was probably most evident in the earliest years of intercultural contact. Thomas Kendall was one of the first missionaries to work among the Maori people. Unlike most of his fellow-evangelists, Kendall determined to study and so understand the religion and customs of his adopted flock. Unfortunately, this �tragic, Faustian figure� was soon out of his depth. Kendall wrote, I am now, after a long, anxious, and painful study, arriving at the very foundation and groundwork of the cannibalism and superstitions of these islanders. All their notions are metaphysical, and I have been so poisoned withh the apparent sublimity of their ideas that I have been almost completely turned from a Christian to a heathen. Another early missionary, Richard Taylor, also studied Maori beliefs in depth. But Taylor, though he felt impelled by his inter-course with the Maori to write a long and influential treatise on his interpretation of Maoritanga, did manage to retain a degree of scholarly objectivity towards his subject. Yet even so, Taylor acknowledges in his treatise that, The Maori mythology is extremely interesting, and quite different from what we should expect from a people sunk in barbarism. ... Their ideas in some respects are not so puerile, as those even of the more civilized heathens of old, and without the light of inspiration, could not be expected to be more advanced. Nor were secular scholars immune to "Maori fever." Sir George Grey wrote of the Maori that � their traditions are puerile� and their �religious faith ... is absurd�. Yet during the eight years that he was Governor of the nascent colony of New Zealand in a period of constant interracial stress, Grey devoted a great deal of what little spare time he had to the collection and publication of the myths and legends, and �the ancient traditional poems, religious chants, and songs, of the Maori race�-- Introduction. Four poets are considered: Alfred Domett (1811-1887), Arthur Henry Adams (1872-1936), Jessie Mackay (1864-1938), Blanche E. Baughan (1870-1958).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Delaware, 2006. / Principal faculty advisor: Daniel Green, Dept. Political Science & International Relations. Includes bibliographical references.

This paper explores and compares the ways in which novelist and playwright Tomson Highway and visual artist and poet Neal McLeod use traditional and contemporary Cree narratives to represent personal and collective cultural experiences, both past and present. In Highways novel <i>Kiss of the Fur Queen</i>, and in McLeods exhibition of paintings <i>Sons of a Lost River</i>, the mythic figure of the wîhtikow, a cannibalistic entity that symbolizes the destructive forces of colonialism and urbanization, as well as the self-abusive patterns found within the individual psyche, is used in counterpoint with the Cree trickster wîsahkecâhk, elemental spirits like the Thunderbird, and heroes such as ayash and pîkahin okosisa to express a multi-stylistic array of cultural meanings that avoid absolute interpretations. Highway and McLeod create myths that explore the oppressive as well as the redemptive processes of their cultural heritage over centuries of engagement with colonial powers and institutions.

Adam Jolly May 7th, 2004 67 pages Directed by: Dr. Nancy Roberts, Dr. David Lenoir, and Dr. Lloyd Davies Department of English Western Kentucky University This thesis, consisting of three short stories, proposes to explore ubiquitous motifs by exhibition of symbolic, mythological conceptions and personalities relating mutually with the everyday and the exceptional in a plausible way. These stories are intended to include effectual inquiry and still be inventive and entertaining. Source materials for this thesis range from Norse mythology to Homer to the Charlie Daniels Band.

This study is about quantum physics and the role it can play in a religious perspective. I intend to examine how moderna physics may be related and understood as New age and Myths. My material consists of two books in the new age genre: "The Tao of Physics" by Fritjof Capra and "The Quantum Self" by Danah Zohar. My first two question to these books are which 1) religious and 2) scientific content they have. My other questions are too 3) investigate and demonstrate how these books are new age and 4) to exanine how the books can function as myths and adopt mythical features. And last 5) to compare important content and ideas between the books. My methods are a simple hermeneutic close reading with a qualitative inductive analysis grounded in previous research and theory. My method is also inspired by a contextual analysis of ideas and an exploratory study. In the investigation I start by showing what religious and scientific materials the books contain. My conslusion is that these two books thoroughly fulfill many criteria for the New age genre. They should however not be counted as Myths becuse they do not meet the requirenents I have defined in the theory section. Moreover, the books share many similarities, such as many common references and resistance to some ideas from the Western tradition of ideas. But there are also some differences, mainly in how they use quantum physics. Firstly, a difference is that Capra primarily make parallels between quantum physics and Eastern philosophical tradition which Zohar does not. Secondly, Capra uses quantum physics to approach the mesage, that is primarily derived from Buddhism, which is that the reality is dynamic and in the end that the world is a "non-existing thing". Zohar is opposed to this and she would call it an extreme solipsism. She argues that the reality consists of both a particle and wave structure wich she applices at the consciousness.