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This chapter is the first of several in the first section of the book (“Places of Jewish Music”) that locate Jewish music on the landscapes of European modernity. Rather than treating the village as an isolated place, in which folk music was limited only to Jews, the chapter reveals processes of change and transition. Jewish folk music facilitated and was the product of border crossing, particularly from a concern with the mythical past and to an historical engagement with the present. Jewish folk music practices and repertories were vastly different across Europe, weaving vernacular languages and myths together, while conveying distinctive cultural identities. The chapter includes numerous case studies of Jewish villages in the German Rhineland, on the borders of France, Germany, and Switzerland, and in rural Moravia and Romania. The “Seven Holy Cities” (sheva kehillot) of Burgenland, border region shared by Austria and Hungary, provide at rich set of specific case studies.

Herodotus articulates the continuing presence and relevance of myth in the world of the fifth century. This chapter begins by examining an episode near the end of the Histories, where Herodotus appropriates local, oral mythological traditions in the form of a story about Helen of Troy (9.73). Herodotus' presentation reveals the role of mythic discourse in shaping fifth-century events as well as drawing out wider points about historical processes. The chapter then goes on to address the more sustained and complex example of Mardonius' self-mythicising image, where reference to the mythic past is inflected through the Panhellenic poetic genres of epic and tragedy, and the questions it raises about the purposes and effects of mythic discourse on the twin levels of history and the historian's presentation.

This chapter considers the role that mythology plays in the later, somewhat more ‘historical’ part of Herodotus' work, to see whether there is anything qualitatively different in the way myth is used in these books compared with the earlier ones. The novelty in the use of myth is to be seen in two principal ways. First, in the way in which, on Xerxes' march, mythology is not simply brought into the narrative to provide extra information about an event, person, or place, but to provide a running commentary on the religious and moral quality of Xerxes' expedition: the myths that are mentioned all have a relevance to understanding the nature of that expedition. Secondly, myths take on a new function within the rhetorics of inter-national relations, being used in hostilely ‘protreptic’ and ‘eristic’ ways to promote a particular people's interests. It thus plays a major role in pointing up the deeply fissured nature of the Greek alliance: myth is not a source of unity.

This chapter addresses the question of history and theory by examining one case study from the history of modern Hebrew literature in the context of Zionist nationalism, focusing on Moshe Shamir's novel, He Walked in the Fields, which is as a whole an expression of a hegemonic Zionist ideology and culture. The critical reception of this novel is discussed in detail in this chapter as well. The chapter also addresses the issues of what determined the idealising reception of the novel and its protagonist, and what the functions of such a reception of the novel were, questions within two poles. First, it explores the novel as questioning, rather than reaffirming, the Zionist myth of the native Hebrew; and second, it juxtaposes the critical reception of the novel with the public reading of death and mourning in the young state of Israel, and between myth and history.

This chapter assesses Western ideas about early Indian notions of time and history. At the turn of the eighteenth century, the theory emerged that the Indian sense of time was entirely cyclic, was tied into infinite recurring cycles, and did not therefore recognize historical change; and in the absence of a sense of history there was no differentiation between myth and history. Cyclic time was seen as diametrically opposite to linear time and linear time was associated with dialectical change. Two hundred years later, the received wisdom on the subject remains largely unchanged. The chapter discusses that constructions of time in early India are also linked to the study of astronomy and mathematics. It argues that the cyclic time too has a genesis and a termination and its dichotomy with linear time is not as distinct as it seems. Narratives in this period, therefore, have an underlying sense of time: it is sequential, moving from the earliest to the most recent

The Introduction outlines the historical facts of the defeat of Varus and the pervasive susceptibility of historiography and biography to ideological uses and abuses even two millennia later. Nationalists, primarily politicians but also visual artists and authors, have turned to political distortions of the past as a matter of course. Later, technological advances have fundamentally altered this process. New visual mass media, especially the cinema, have decisively influenced modern views of the past by putting a distorted or simplified reconstruction of history before viewers’ eyes—sometimes blatantly, occasionally subtly, but almost always effectively.

The introduction initially sets out the main theoretical issues that the topic of Irish Catholic identities gives rise to. It address ideas such as ‘historico-myth consciousness’, and asks if the idea of myth is more truly representative of identity that the historical reality itself. Identities are constructed for purposes of inclusion and exclusion and such construction is the result of long and complex processes. For any given group these are predicated on common historical experiences but are also formed within the context of a literary articulation in any given culture. Having briefly addressed these and related topics the introduction then briefly summarises the chapters which follow.