Mitul în teritoriul antropologiei istorice
The Myth and the Historical Anthropology

Summary/Abstract: The Myth and the Historical Anthropology Myths and their meanings are an area worthy to be explored today, but full of pitfalls, because the many definitions tend take them outside their original side. Myth is a complex cultural and historical reality that can be addressed only from multiple and complementary perspectives. To give a definition of myth - that would be acceptable to all scientists and to everyone - is a difficult test. In the language of anthropologists, historians, sociologists, psychoanalysts, and the essayist, reporters, etc. term myth was shattered in a variety of meanings. The ambiguity of the term myth was due, for a long time, to the confusing meanings, which have been assigned, the labels of fiction, errors, distortion, stereotype, from which it started. Defining the profile of perennial cultural creations, like the myths, requires a refined investigation of the different historical attitudes towards the myth, because the origin of the myths has disappeared in time, and their expression has generated discussion and speculation since antiquity. Defined or contested furiously, haloed or disposed of on foot glory, heard or ignored, myths have known contradictory attitudes, if not a true odyssey throughout history. The change of the cultural, political, religious climate over historical periods caused significant changes in the mythical mentality. Myth hasn’t always operated in the same way and not always manifested as strongly, even in ancient societies, but manifested mainly in periods of crisis, being a ―thaumaturge‖ the collective anxieties. Although the significance of myths over the centuries has been volatile in the sense of different religious views, philosophical, scientific later, the myth was a key report in time, precisely because it is one of the constants of history. To send the myth as phantasmagoria or lend empirical explanation, logical, means to mock a cultural fact which has left its mark on the whole life of humanity.

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