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Copyright 1968 Vanderbilt University Press Nashville, Tennessee Library of Congress Catalogue Card Number 68-8564
Printed in the United States of America
First paperback edition, 1993 ISBN 0-8265-1248-8
Page v
In Memory of Professor Joachim Wach
Page vi
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I am indebted to Miss Mary L. Vandersea and Mr. Paul L. Richards of the Brown University Library and to Ann T. Hinckley of the U.C.L.A. Research Library for the kind help they have rendered, in and above their official function as book experts. I also thank Lynn F. Lanzetta for her invaluable work in correcting and typing the first part of the manuscript, and the incisive criticism accompanying each section.
Most of all, I am grateful to my students. If this book is useful, as I hope it is, it is because of their questions and remarks. Among my former students at Brown University, I should mention especially Ellen T. Kaplan. In the second part, I owe much to Messrs. David Himrod and Edmond Krafchow, graduate students at U.C.L.A.
KEES W. BOLLE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES
Page vii
CONTENTS
Preface to the Paperback Edition
ix
Introduction
xi
Part I: Myth
1 A New Interest
3
2 The Problem of "Types"
8
3 Themes and Ideas
14
4 Reformulation of the Question
31
5 Unconcern for Form, and Humor
35
6 Characteristics of Humor
41
7 The Churning of the Ocean
73
8 A Final Examination
83
Part II: Myth and Mysticism
9 Reconnaissance
97
10 Subjectivity and Objectivity
112
11 Mysticism: Histories and Types
118
12 The Origin, the Supreme, Visible and Invisible
132
13 Mystical Knowledge
141
14 Universality; Beyond the Official Tradition
151
15 Creative Allegorization and New Symbols
159
16 Myth and Mysticism
164
Appendix
187
Index
193
Page ix
PREFACE TO THE PAPERBACK EDITION
When it first appeared in 1968, The Freedom of Man in Myth placed side by side the four topics of religion, humor, myth, and mysticism. Even Mircea Eliade, who favored me with the honor of being his first doctoral candidate at the University of Chicago, felt somewhat uncomfortable with the juxtapositions in my book. For him, the experience of the mystic was inseparable from, if not identical to, the "real reality" of religion; he assigned a more exalted position to mystical experience than I in my youthful enthusiasm seemed to accord it. But I did notand still do notthink that the linkage of the four topics implies any trivialization. On the contrary, I believe that the juxtaposition itself brings us closer to our religious documents.
Although the book's first edition did not take the country by storm, it nevertheless seemed to have an impact on the solemnity that was prevalent not only among historians of religions but also among
Page x
cultural anthropologists. These scholars had made so many theories and held so many assumptions that exaggerated the distance between the subject of religion and the ordinary experience of people. Here, I argued, the notion of humorif accepted as a natural part of our existencecan open our eyes.
In the last quarter century the scholarly climate has changed somewhat. Not only has The Freedom of Man in Myth been read occasionally in college courses, but several seriousserious rather than solemnwriters have discovered the vital function of narration and humor in religious texts of various traditions.
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1968