Prolegomenon to Teaching Myth and Old Literature, as Inspired by Mircea Eliade’s Insights
Prolegomenon to Teaching Myth and Old Literature, as Inspired by Mircea Eliade’s Insights

Summary/Abstract: As Mircea Eliade is a personality deeply connected to Romanian thought and literature and a globally renowned author dealing with man’s religious and literary capacities, perceived as hallmarks of human existence, our paper took advantage of some of his insights, which have been useful as implemented in the process of teaching literature and culture. Methodologically speaking, today’s tendency, of reducing literary phenomena to mere diachronic and ‘archeological’ perspectives, founded on the historicist and positivistic thought of the 19th century, needs reviewing. Old and modern literatures, as well as myth must be considered from a wider, transcultural perspective and as related to man’s existential, ontological issues, which have always been present as such, both in homo religiosus and/or the modern laic man. Such critical standpoint opens the way for the students to apprehend myth, religion and (old) literature as related to man’s creativity, i.e. to his permanent need to imagine, in the course of time, different ontological ‘true stories’, which describe reality and existence as related to human condition.

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