Kozolupenko, D. P. Concerning Specific Nature of ‘Ancient’ or ‘Primitive’ Mythology: Poetic and Socio-Psychological Approaches to Research of Myth

Abstract: The author describes the two main approaches in myth research: poetic (interpretative) and socio-psychological. As a part of the first approach, the author describes the three concepts originating in the Ancient World and still being used with some alternations nowadays. All of them have the same drawback: they are principally interpretive which is unacceptable when related to a myth. The advantage of the second approach is that there is an attempt to interpret myth not on the basis of research logics but to define relations and objective laws typical for mythological world perception. These laws and relations may seem awkward to a modern European but this approach tries to understand what role it could have played in the primitive society as well as what psychological and social functions the myth had.

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