Intro chapter: 13 pages
Chapter 2: 24 pages (maybe 1/3rd to 1/2 of the way through?)

Total page count so far: 37 pages.

Only 163 pages to go. However, I found a quote that I really like which sums up quite a bit about my approach to these stories and my criticism of others who have used them to their own ends (Campbell, Freud, etc.). It comes from Scott Consigny, and he’s talking about the art of rhetoric in his essay “Rhetoric and Its Situations”:

The rhetor has a freedom of choice as to which terms to use to structure the situation and how to relate the two terms. His freedom, however, is not unlimited, but is constrained by the recalcitrance of the situation: not any choice of terms will be functional in a given situation. (6)

Those constraints (cultural, historical, geographical) are often times ignored by mythologers in their quest to come up with the Ur-explanation…and in some cases (Campbell), they completely overlook the constraints. I think it does a disservice not only to the good points that may be brought up by these academics, but to the cultures who originally owned the stories.

Ok, I’m done now. Time for some vidja games.