What sort of thing are the narratives of the life of Jesus, literarily speaking? (History? Biography? Fiction? Myth?) And what bearing does their genre have on the manner of interpretation proper to them? This chapter attends to Origen’s account of the Gospels’ genre, literary precedents, and relationship to other forms of ancient literature in order to establish why he believes the Gospels cannot be read as transparently historical narratives. Here, I propose that the kind of narratives Origen believes the Evangelists compose is directly comparable to the stories one finds throughout the scriptures of Israel. Furthermore, Origen also relates the Gospels’ literary similarity to Jewish biblical narrative to the way they both share a similarly complex relationship to facticity. The Gospels, in sum, all narrate the deeds, sufferings, and words of Jesus “under the form of history”; these historical narratives are of a mixed character, interweaving things that happened with things that didn’t and even couldn’t, with an eye toward presenting the events recorded to have happened to Jesus figuratively.

This chapter turns from the question of the Gospels’ literary form to that of their literary formation. According to David Strauss, no preceding understanding of the Gospels shared closer proximity to the emerging “mythical point of view” than “ancient allegorical interpretation” – an astonishing claim left unexamined since his Life of Jesus was first published. Strauss’s comparison of the mythical and allegorical views cuts closer to the heart of Origen’s sense of the figurative nature of the Gospels than any other account of early criticism of the Gospels. Nevertheless, I challenge Strauss’s final charge of unrestrained interpretive “arbitrariness” resulting from Origen’s view. I show instead that Origen locates the formation of the Gospel narratives in the Evangelists freely “making use” of the traditions they had received for their own purposes, freedom reflected in the distinctive (even discordant) characteristics of their narratives, which differ according to how the authors sought, “each in his own way,” to “teach what they had perceived in their own mind by way of figures.” Thus, for Origen, the Evangelists themselves were “figurative readers” of the life of Jesus.

Origen’s surprising presence within David F. Strauss’s genealogy of the critical examination of the life of Jesus ought to stir contemporary readers from slipping into their own forms of presumption regarding when, exactly, reading of the Gospels first became critical or what the term “critical” even means. Strauss’s presentation also underscores the difficulty of fashioning a portrait adequate to such a unique figure and introduces the need to retrieve Origen’s own first principles of Gospel reading. Here, I lay the requisite groundwork for addressing Part I’s overarching question (“What is a Gospel?”) by showing that, for Origen, the term “Gospel,” strictly speaking, does not designate just any discourse bearing the early Christian proclamation, but rather one that does so under the form of narratives of the life of Jesus. The stage is thus set for the more pivotal – and tortuous – question: What kind of narratives are they?

Heather Ingman, in her chapter, explores W. B. Yeats’s legacy in the construction of the myth surrounding the Big House, the country estates that served as a potent symbol of Anglo-Irish Ascendancy rule in Ireland. The Big House novel, which rose to prominence in the late eighteenth century, created over the ensuing two hundred years new grounds of recognition for the iconic Georgian structures that presided over vast demesnes until the Land Wars and the War of Independence altered forever the Anglo-Irish landscape. Ingman shows how the Yeatsian myth of the Big House was undermined in novels by, among others, Elizabeth Bowen, Molly Keane, Jennifer Johnston, William Trevor, and John Banville. But even in the process of dismantling the myth, these novels retained a small portion of the Big House’s cultural value because its symbolic value could be taken for granted, if only to transform it.

In his chapter, Christopher Morash examines the modern myth of Revival, which takes the form of what Roland Barthes calls a new “mythic concept.” A good example of this form of myth is the story Yeats tells of meeting Synge in Paris, a meeting that Morash claims did not necessarily have to take place in order for the story to acquire a mythic function. A more substantial instance of the myth of Revival emerges from Synge’s interest in philosophy and science, particularly the work of Herbert Spencer, which enabled him to create a mythic vision of nature based on the ambivalent relationship between the observer and natural world they observe. Synge’s reading of Spencer ultimately leads him to confront early on a central problem of later modernist writers, that is, the instability of the subject/object relationship and the “ambivalent revival” of the observer’s perspective in aesthetic production.

Few figures have been more controversial in the history of modern Italy than Luigi Cadorna. When he was appointed Chief of Staff of the Italian Army, in summer 1914, he was already popular with his fellow countrymen. Since May 1915, he became an untouchable autocrat. Enjoying exceptional powers, he governed the war zone – virtually the whole of Northern Italy – with an iron fist, more and more explicitly defying government and parliament who were, he claimed, a bunch of weak, inept, radical progressives who would lead the country to ruin. He was too much of a monarchist to aspire to dictatorship, as some of his supporters actually proposed. But he sincerely believed Italy needed a strong man in command and did his utmost to achieve his purpose. Only the catastrophe of Caporetto in autumn 1917 eventually toppled him. He was relieved of his command, held to account for his performance, and turned into the scapegoat for all the woes of the Italian war: bloodbaths in the trenches, iron discipline, firing squads galore, the home territory overrun. For several years he vanished from the scene until Mussolini, firmly ensconced as dictator, decided to call him back to the public eye.

Charles Frederick Cox returned home from South Africa on 3 October 1902. That this was months after his own regiment, 3NSWMR was because Cox had been sent to London to participate in Coronation duties for King Edward VII. While there he was both permanently promoted to Lieutenant Colonel and made a Companion of the Order of the Bath. Just as he had done upon arrival in South Africa, on his return to Sydney Cox delivered some remarks to reporters waiting dockside. ‘Lieutenant Colonel Cox does not think there will be any more trouble in the Transvaal or Cape Colony’, the Sydney Morning Herald reported, ‘but if more fighting takes place he is ready for more either there or elsewhere.’

At the heart of the bushman-soldier myth was combat. The skills of the bush – riding, shooting, living off the land, the innate intelligence of ‘the colonial’ – were valuable because they could deliver success on the battlefield. The bushmen would ‘be able to meet stratagem by stratagem’, as civilian advocate H. S. Stockdale crowed, and be ‘just as likely to stalk “the Boer” as the Boers to stalk them.’ Like many civilian enthusiasts Stockdale conceived of the Australians as auxiliaries to a British regular force, serving as scouts and skirmishers on the fringes of the battle. Military men were under no such illusions: the Australian contingents would do everything mounted rifles were expected to, from ersatz cavalry work to seizing and holding ground. Both groups, however, shared a confidence in their ideas. ‘As Australians have shown themselves in the fields of sport,’ Stockdale declared, ‘so I feel will they prove themselves on the field of battle.’

Over 15,000 individual Australians served in contingents in South Africa and at least 600 died. While it was quickly overshadowed by the First World War, it was nonetheless an important part of Australia’s military history. Australian soldiers were sent in the belief that they possessed certain qualities that would make them valuable on the battlefield. It was an idea that, in various forms, would continue to surface throughout the first half of the twentieth century. What follows is an analysis that not just dispels this myth but shows what it can tell us about war more generally.

Chapter 3 illustrates the poetics of illness experience by examining clinical conversations during a psychiatric assessment of a patient. Patients’ narratives in clinical contexts are often fragmentary and contradictory, reflecting their ongoing struggle to make sense of inchoate experience and position themselves in ways that elicit care and concern. Metaphors of illness experience open up narrative possibilities, but may be blocked by conflicting agendas or cross-purposes of clinician and patient. In place of an overarching integrative narrative are interruption, miscommunication, and mutual subversion. Focusing on narratives, with close attention to the speakers’ rhetorical aims, can identify situations of tension and misunderstanding, which can be clarified through cognitive and social analysis tracing the models and metaphors used in clinical exchanges to their personal meaning and embodiment and outward into the social world where they function as part of discursive systems that organize institutions and confer power. Close attention to metaphor in lived experience, social interaction, and cultural performance can yield an account of the dynamics of clinical conversations.

Chapter 9 explores the origins of healing authority and its experiential grounding. Sociological accounts of authority usually refer to institutional power. Many elementary systems of medicine connect healers’ own initiatory illness and affliction to their knowledge and power. This connection is explicit in the Greek myth of Asklepios and was taken up by others in terms of the archetype of the wounded-healer. This ethos of the wounded-healer reflects a relational structure present in the dynamics of the clinical encounter. Healers’ relationship to their own wounds not only conveys symbolic power but can evoke specific psychological and interpersonal dynamics that may contribute to the effectiveness of treatment. In this symbolic logic of healing, the healer’s own wounds become sources of wisdom when they are confronted rather than denied. The ways this attitude may be learned and embodied are illustrated by a series of dreams with images of wounding and healing during psychiatric training. This ethos has implications for understanding the epistemic authority of healers, the training of clinicians, and addressing basic issues in intercultural health care.

Chapter 5 focuses on the narrative shaping of the sense of self and of the process of transforming it in psychotherapy. We can advance our understanding of the sources of rhetorical power of metaphor through some version of the constructs of myth and archetype. Myth stands for the overarching narrative structures of the self and other produced and lent authority by cultural tradition. Archetype stands not for preformed ideas or images, but for the bodily or existentially given in meaning. Metaphor links the narratives of myth and bodily experience through imaginative constructions and enactments that allow movement in sensory-affective quality space. Examples from contemporary psychotherapy illustrate how healing metaphors can transform sense of self and personhood. While this approach is most obviously applicable to psychotherapy and other talking cures, which use language to reconfigure experience, it captures a discursive level of sense-making that is an important part of all forms of symbolic healing, whether during ritual actions, as part of the prior construction of expectations, or in subsequent interpretation of outcomes.

O’Casey was born into a Protestant family and his father worked as a clerk for the Irish Church Missions, an evangelical society that aimed to convert Catholics. This chapter argues that O’Casey radically reimagined Christianity, depicting characters that inadvertently travesty or re-enact Christianity’s meanings. More broadly, however, he treats the love of the divine as parallel to the love of freedom and country; rather than a strict code, such love is a life-affirming source of inspiration akin to art and poetry. O’Casey’s sophisticated understanding of the value of Christianity has little to do with sectarian differences or superstition, but inheres in caring actions, love of life, and a determination to feed the spirit along with the body.

This chapter surveys both the rich tradition of Renaissance botanical literature and some of the critical strategies currently developing around them: ecocriticism, ecofeminism, and critical plant studies. It focuses on the co-existence of myth and science in Renaissance botanical texts and the capacity of Renaissance literature to clarify the advantages and drawbacks of bestowing personhood on plants. Renaissance literature reveals the socio-political, intellectual, and aesthetic processes by which plants became hostage to two separate cultures: the scientific and aesthetic. The chapter also argues that a properly historicised view of Renaissance plant writing might in some respects make early modern texts more relevant to the present by reviving pre-Enlightenment worldviews and pre-Industrial notions of ecological enmeshment.

There is an enduring tradition that the first Europeans in the Americas and Hawai’i were perceived as gods, a phenomenon known as “apotheosis” or “the act of turning men into gods.” The tradition is especially strong in relation to two historical figures: the Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés in Mexico and the British navigator Captain James Cook in Hawai’i. It is, however, by no means confined to these two figures. Furthermore, considerable explanatory power is attributed to this divine identification: indigenous peoples apparently submitted before the demonstration of godly power. In the heyday of European imperialism – the nineteenth century and early twentieth century – this tradition was accepted uncritically by western historians. In the wake of decolonization, from the 1950s and 1960s, increasing interest in non-European perspectives on these early encounters caused historians to call this interpretation into question. Three key issues emerge: what evidence is there that such an apotheosis took place? If it did not, how did the tradition arise? And how did native peoples in fact perceive Europeans?

Chapter seven opens with an account of the arrival of Captain James Cook’s expedition at Hawai’i, his association with the native ancestor god, Lono, and his death at the hands of the islanders. It then examines in depth the evidence for Cook’s identification with Lono, and the meaning of the Polynesian concept of mana. The rest of the chapter considers the merits of the two opposing views on how Hawaiians perceived Cook, the “Cook-as-Lono” interpretation, and the “Cook-as-Lono-as-myth” interpretation. It suggests that the “Cook-as-Lono” interpretation may be closer to the realities of Hawaiian ethnography, as long as we bear in mind that Lono, as an akua or “ancestor god” bore little resemblance to the western notion of “God;” and that the binary nature of the discussion (two clashing perspectives) may be a hindrance to appreciating a third interpretation which takes account of both sides. For Hawaiians, there was no inconsistency in seeing Cook as, all at once, a (Hawaiian) god, an ancestor spirit, a sacred high chief, and a man; both human and more-than-human (or human-plus) at the same time.

Chapter 3 examines mythical, historical, and scientific facts. It offers a brief history of East Asian international relations, paying particular attention to the Chinese World Order, the Khmer Empire, and post-colonial Filipino historiography as samples for how to theorize histories from an IR perspective. The chapter discusses war and peace as well as political economy, the subject matters important for East Asian history and IR theory. It also offers a section on impacts and lessons of history, illustrating how history contributes to background knowledge, historiography and belief systems, foreign policy analysis, and IR theory. A better understanding of East Asian history allows us to contextualize contemporary issues without which we may not be able to put together a puzzle. Historical experiences inform our belief system, into which people typically fit new events or factors as explanation. History is evolutionary by nature, whether we frame it that way explicitly or not.