Word associations:
Myth
Are myths important, and why?
What would we consider a modern myth?
Greece/Greek
Western
Civilization
Are we part of Western society?
Does it matter to us?
Topic 1:
Introduction to Myth
Myth: A
traditional story with collective importance
Ancient Greek:
Mythos, “authoritative speech” “story” “plot”
Epos, “story, plot”
Our “myth”
Not so in Homer; Hesiod a little bit;
by Plato (5th century BC)
—myth as pejorative
Story:
Plot:
beginning, middle, end
(Zeus is not a myth)
Characters:
gods, mortals, other
Traditional:
“handed over”
Passed down, originally oral / aural
Pre-literate cultures
No “author” of an individual myth
authors of versions
of myths, but not the creator of the myth
Myths are open to change
—often many versions of the same myth, with differing
details
Beware of saying “that’s not how it is” or “what’s the
real story”?
sometimes authors very consciously tell a different version
Know whose story you’re talking about
Collective
importance:
it is important to the whole society, not just an
individual
Types of
Myths
· Divine Myths (true myth)
· Heroic Myth / Legends
· Folktales
Divine
Myths:
Primary focus on gods
Mess with mortals, fight with each other etc.
Not to be confused with religion
Same characters, different functions
Even (some) ancient Greeks objected to the behavior of
the gods
ACM 363–367 (from Plato’s Republic)
Divine myths are often explanatory:
Etiological
they
explain why something is the way it
is
Zeus causes thunder
Typhoeus
“acts of God”
It oversimplifies myth to try and squeeze everyone
into this category
Euhemerus (c. 300 BC)
the gods where great men who have been deified:
hence “Euhemerism”
Legends /
Heroic Myths:
(< Latin, “something to be read”; a Saint’s Life)
Stories about individuals, though gods may play a part
set in the distant (but human) past
Heroes and Heroines
Noble, aristocratic
Extraordinary strength, beauty, ability
Versions of legends often tell us more about the
transmitter’s cultures, than the real time being described
Limited understanding of history
Cf. Chaucer’s Knight’s
Tale
There may be truth elements contained within legends,
but this is a slippery business
Troy and archeology
Folktales
About humans, but usually regular ones
—poor cottagers, and the like
Not many Greek folktales survive, but folktale
scholarship is often helpful in explaining and understanding Divine Myths and
Legends
Study of
myth
•
Collecting the
Stories (What were they?)
Very different for different cultures
•
cf. collecting
Inuit myths with collecting Greek
Two main sources for Classical Myth:
· literary evidence
· archaeological evidence
•
Cultural
Significance of the stories
What did they mean to their original audience?
Why were they told, by whom and why?
Function?
•
Comparative
Approach
Are the classical myths like myths that operate in
other cultures?
How did the Greeks change the myths they inherited
from the Near East?
How do classical myths cf. to the stories of the
Bible?
•
Assessment of
Myth
Do they have deeper human meaning for all human
beings?
On the pronunciation of names
“The value of the sounds of names in classical myth as
pronounced in English … is a topic on which people agree to disagree”
Really?
No. Ovid,
Vergil