ABSTRACT
The interpretation of myths, and the relative weight that should be attributed to mythical materials in historical reconstructions based, partly or wholly, on oral evidence, has been a bone of contention ever since Jan Vansina presented a comprehensive statement on methodology in this field (Vansina, 1965). In the domain of Central African history, which has been Vansina’s main interest, this debate has been carried on by such scholars as Luc de Heusch (1972), Joseph Miller (1976), Roy Willis (1976) and Thomas Reefe (1977). Scholarly opinion has oscillated between the rather literalist early views of Vansina and the dismissively structuralist approach of de Heusch (which would read myths uniquely as timeless statements of dominant symbolic themes in a culture). As the body of available data expanded, and experience in the handling of such data accumulated, we have seen the emergence of more relativist approaches, best exemplified by Willis’s work, which try to specify the conditions under which what aspects of what sorts of myth become amenable to what types of historical interpretation.2
