“However, I have also argued for allegory’s positive effects. It is a process that typically takes control away from the author of a narrative and gives it to the reader. It is the reader who decides whether to interpret writing on a literal or a symbolic level. In giving greater control to the reader, allegory allows for imaginative and reflective analyses of mythology, and for its ideological purposes to be criticized, as well as affirmed.”

“Responding to myth often means wearingblinkers. Myth is a complex game of production and reception that involves selecting some parts of a narrative and suppressing others. As we shall see later on, this process of communication is not always easily controlled.”

“Psychoanalysis and Greek mythology are two sides of the same medallion. To put it differently: without classical mythology, there would be no psychoanalysis. If that seems like too bold a statement, this chapter aims to show that it is not. It will look at the dynamic relationship forged between psychoanalysis and classical myth, and the impacts, positive and negative, that each has made upon the other.There are numerous psychoanalytic theorists, but Freud necessarily takes centre stage. Like many in 19th-century Germany, Freud was passionate about ancientGreece and its myths. He was both an analyst of the psyche, or mind (using Greek myth) and of Greek myth (using the psyche). As a result, he initiated a radical new method of enquiry, psychoanalysis, and wrote a momentous chapter in the history of classical mythology.”

“Reading myth as crystallizing historical fact was a commonapproach in the 19th and early 20th centuries. But it is anapproach to myth that is fraught with problems. It ignores ortakes insufficient account of how mythic narratives are exploited for political purposes.”

“Classical mythology has been so influential upon Western culture that everyone who is alive to the art,culture,politics, and languages of today encounters it.”

“What makes someone mythic is not whether or not he lived, or lived well, but whether or not he was larger than life. Mythic heroes were – and are – outrageous and outstanding. They are phenomenal. They distil some collective ideal or fantasy. That’s why we can speak of ‘the myth of John Lennon’, but not ‘the myth of John Major’. And it’s also why Theseus made it and Lycurgus didn’t.”

“Scholars have produced as manydefinitions of myth as there are myths themselves. This bookwill discuss various definitions of myth as it goes along, but it is interested in myth as a process as much as a thing.”