Time And Myth

Book excerpt: What is man, apart from the things of his life, apart from loving and fighting and dying? In his exploration of that fundamental question, John S. Dunne considers the different ways in which man strives throughout his life for immortality. Growing out of the 1971 Yale University Thomas More lectures which Father Dunne delivered in that year, Time and Myth analyzes the man’s confrontation with the inevitability of death in the cultural, personal, and religious spheres, viewing each as a particular kind of myth that takes its form from the impact of time upon the myth. 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. The result is a fascinating “odyssey of the mind in which one travels through the wonderland of other cultures, lives, and religions only to return with new insight to the homeland of one’s own.”