2.2.4: Lens

Lens theory is one of the newest, and perhaps most intriguing approaches to understanding myth. The theory posits that to understand the myth from the perspective of the culture that authored it, we must first adjust our lens, ignoring our own cultural biases, codes and mores, and instead see the myths from the angle of the original speakers. This theory, like several of the others we’ve identified, is born from comparative analysis of myths, but this isn’t the final destination of the approach.

Wendy Doniger, Professor of the History of Religions at University of Chicago, applies the theory in her work, The Implied Spider, where she describes the technique as akin to using microscopes and telescopes to interpret myths: “Through the microscope end of a myth, we can see the thousands of details that each culture, indeed each version, uses to bring the story to life–what the people in the story are eating and speaking, and all the rest. . . . But through the telescope end, we can see the unifying themes.” She further explains by identifying “three levels of lenses in methods for the analysis of myth: the big view (the telescope) is the universalist view sought by Freud, Jung, Mircea Eliade; the middle view (the naked eye) is the view of contextualized cultural studies; and the small view (the microscope) is the focus on the individual insight.” The scholarly view, that best for lens theory analysis, comes from combining the first and third views.

Elizabeth Wayland Barber and Paul Barber, authors of When They Severed Earth From Sky: How the Human Mind Shapes Myth, offer detailed principles for applying both lens and neurological theory to myths. With expertise in Old World archeology and linguistics, and in comparative literature and folklore, their research originally focused on textiles, cloth and their relationship to women’s work over 20,000 years of human society. Through that work they recognized neurological patterns in the development and practice of mythological transmission. They separated those observations into forty original principles, and then into four overarching principles: Silence, Analogy, Compression and Restructuring.

Under “Silence” they illustrate lens application with the story of Moses and the Golden Calf. Having returned from his edifying communion with God in the desert, Moses finds his people, again, worshiping a Golden Calf. Apart from sharing his consternation, we may ask, why that creature? Why not an alligator, or a cat, or a sheaf of wheat? The Barbers explain, “if we refocus our lens on the culture and the context, and remember that we’re ‘not told, because everyone originally knew’ . . . (18) we realize, Moses’ people were living as slaves in Egypt and would’ve likely absorbed the key parts of their captors’ culture, like their faith, and the Egyptians, like many other cultures, worshiped that which was essential to life, pictured the sky as a giant swath of white, much like milk. Further focusing the lens reminds readers that the ancient Egyptians were an agrarian society, which depended upon cattle, the source of life-giving milk. They viewed the night sky as the underbelly (the origin of the milky night sky) of a giant cow goddess, whose four legs supported the heavens, and who each morning gave birth to a Golden Calf (Barber and Barber 18-20).

Advice for Student Writers

The research of Wayland Barber and Barber reflects the layering of two complementary theories, neurological and lens. At this point students may ask, “should I combine two or more schools of theory? Will that improve my grade?” The answer will depend upon the situation (the assignment) and the student. Some assignments may work best with a single theoretical focus, and those include a literary analysis of a single text, such as an epic poem, or a character analysis. Other assignments may yield rich results from a layered approach, such as an Honors analysis of attitudes toward women in the masculine economy of The Iliad. A conversation with the professor is often wise before engaging in a complex approach involving more than one literary theory.