Time and Myth - A Meditation on Storytelling as an Exploration of Life and Death (Paperback)

The title thinly covers three essays concerned with human experience as a "myth," in the original sense of that term - i.e., as a story, or a series of stories within stories, containing, and being contained by, the various events in human life from birth to death. The trick, as the author explains, is to see all these narratives in their proper perspective, as adventures: a search for life, Gilgamesh-like; or a return home, like Odysseus. In each case, man finds that he faces the unknown, which is to say he faces God. How he responds to that unknown at each crisis in his life will determine his relationship to it. Within that time/frame, there are three moments in the story of man's confrontation with the unknown God: crisis or encounter; a moment of withdrawal for reflection; and a final moment of acceptance, or return, at which time man achieves "all-oneness" with God's creation and therefore with God. Dunne's staggeringly speculative approach to his subject is softened to a large extent by the grace of his style and the suppleness of his thought, and the book's literary and philosophical qualities will no doubt assure its critical success. (Kirkus Reviews)

Based on the Thomas More Lectures John Dunne delivered at Yale University in 1971, Time and Myth analyzes man's confrontation with the inevitability of death in the cultural, personal, and religious spheres, viewing each as a particular kind of myth shaped by the impact of time. With penetrating simplicity the author poses the timeless dilemma of the human condition and seeks to resolve it through stories of adventures, journeys, and voyages inspired by man's encounter with death; stories of childhood, youth, manhood, and age; and, finally, stories of God and of man wrestling with God and the unknown.

General

Imprint:	University of Notre Dame Press
Country of origin:	United States
Release date:	June 1975
First published:	1973
Authors:	John S Dunne
Dimensions:	216 x 140 x 8mm (L x W x T)
Format:	Paperback
Pages:	140
ISBN-13:	978-0-268-01828-3
Categories:	Books Promotions
LSN:	0-268-01828-6
Barcode:	9780268018283

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