Monomýtus Jana A. Kozáka : od staroseverské magie a mytopoezie k magické poetice mýtu

Jan A. Kozák, a Czech scholar in the field of religious studies, has until recently published almost exclusively articles and books focused on the narrow subject of the Old Norse Pagan religiosity. His new monograph, Monomýtus: Syntetické pojednání o teorii mýtu (in English The Monomyth: A Synthetic Treatise on the Theory of Myth), differs significantly from the previous works, both in its thematic focus on myth as an important theoretical problem of religious studies, and in the significant expansion of the ethnographic field in which the author operates. The result is an original – and, from the perspective of scientific discourse, somewhat eccentric – work that analyzes the problem of myth either on the basis of the reinterpreted schemes of the proponents of religious studies, or on the basis of the author’s own ideas supplemented by explanatory poetic metaphors. In a positive sense, Monomýtus stands out for its multidisciplinary approach to the problem of myth, its ability to find concrete examples from world’s religions for the theses it presents, and its readable, charismatic language. On the other hand, one can criticize those parts where author’s abstract and technical language prevails without concrete examples, or where his explanatory metaphors – usually apt and humorous – lead to misinterpretations of the observed phenomena. One can also disagree with the author’s exclusive emphasis on the psychological function of the myth and the trivialization of its didactic functions.