Week 1 Flashcards
(30 cards)
Myth
A myth is a story.
-may be narrated orally, until eventually given written form.
-also may be told by means of no words at all.
Ex: painting, sculpture, music,
dance and mime, or by a com bination of various media. as in the case of drama, sona. opera, or the movies
Why definitions are important
definitions are enlightening because they succeed in identifying particular characteristics of different types of stories and thus provide criteria for classification.
True myth or proper myth
A category of myths involving traditional tales depicting the origins of things, located in a timeless past and concerning the gods and their relations with mortals.
- is used for stories primarily concerned with the gods and humankind’s relations with them.
Ex: concerned with gods, religion, and the supernatural.
Saga or legend
(and we use the words interchangeably) has a perceptible relationship to history; however fanciful and imaginative, it has its roots in historical fact.
Folk tales
Are often stories of adventure, sometimes peopled with fantastic beings and enlivened by ingenious strategies on the part of the hero or heroine, who will triumph in the end; their goal is primarily, but not necessarily solely, to entertain.
Fairy tales
may be classified as particular kinds of folk tales, defined as “short, imaginative, traditional tales with a high moral and magical content”;
- Fairy tales are particular kinds of folktale, but any meaningful distinction between the two is difficult to arrive at.
Why myths were created
Mythes are a many-faceted personal and cultural phenomenon created to provide a reality and a unity to what is transitory and fragmented in the world that we experience the philosophical vision of the afterlife in Plato and any religious conception of a god are mythic, not scientific, concepts.
Myth provides us with absolutes in the place of ephemeral values and with a comforting perception of the world that is necessary to make the insecurity and terror of existence bearable
Myth and truth
Neither have to be exclusive from one another.
A story embodying eternal values may contain what was imagined, at any period, to be scientifically correct in every factual detail; and the accuracy of that information may be a vital component of its mythical raison d’être.
Mircea Eliade
Conception of myth: sees myth as a tale satisfying the yearning of human beings for a fundamental orientation rooted in the religious aura of a sacred timelessness.
- Yearning is satisfied only by stories narrating events surrounding the beginnings and origins of things.
-believes that God created the world, and this initial cosmogony becomes the origin myth. (model for creations of every kind and stories about them.)
- concept develops a difficult, complex mysticism.
- myth provides in the imagination a spiritual release from historical time.
• This is the nature of true myths, which are fundamentally paradigms and explanations and most important to the individual and society.
Greek and Roman stories reflect
universal preoccupation with creation, the nature of god and humankind, the afterlife, and other spiritual concerns. = true myths.
Etiology
myth should be interpreted narrowly as an explication of the origin of some fact or custom.
• mythmaker a kind of primitive scientist.
- uses myths to explain facts that cannot otherwise be explained within the limits of society’s knowledge at the time.
• theory is adequate for some myths.
• doesn’t allow for the imaginative or metaphysical aspects of mythological thought.
• does nothing to identify a myth specifically and to distinguish it clearly from any other form of expression, whether scientific, religious, or artistic–that is, too many essentially different kinds of story may be basically etiological.
explanatory
Ppl do not interpret etiological too literally and narrowly.
four themes of Burkert’s modified synthesis of the structural and historical approaches:
- Myth belongs to the more general class of traditional tale.
- The identity of a traditional tale is to be found in a structure of sense within the tale itself.
- Tale structures, as sequences of motifemes, are founded on basic biological or cultural programs of actions.
- Myth is a traditional tale with secondary, partial reference to something of collective importance.
Walter Burkert
believes that the structure of traditional tales cannot be discovered without taking into account cultural and historical dimensions. With regard to the cultural dimension, the structure of a tale is shaped by its human creators and by the needs of the culture within which it is developed.
Therefore, the structure of a tale is “ineradicably anthropomorphic and fits the needs and expectations of both the teller and the audience.
Burkert Quote about a good tale
This is why good tales are so easy to remember: There are not terribly many items to memorize, since the structure has largely been known in advance.”)
- Further— and here we approach the historical dimension— a tale has a use to which it is put, or, expressed in another way, “Myth is traditional tale applied.”
Characteristics of myth
Myths at first relied on memory, and it’s important to remember how long those memories can really last over a couple hundred years.
- Simple plot
-every story needs to have a plot.
-depend completely on what you remember therefore ancient myths have similar themes and structure. - Characters
-usually supernatural, gods and goddesses
- superhuman. Demigods half human, half god - Timeless
-even tho myths happened so long ago, can take myth out of content and give different names to characters and still have a similar action. The idea contained in the myth stays. The idea is what makes the myth timeless.
First Greek author of myths is?
Homer
Iliad and Odssesy
Both deal with Trojan war
Ritual Theory
- Claims that myths explain rituals or customs or rituals.
- J.G. Frazer
- Jane Harrison
Ex:
- Prometheus teaching humans how to sacrifice to Zeus
Structuralist Theory
- claims that myths are tools we use to come to terms with life.
- mythic products of the human mind display a binary tendency.
- mind attempts to mediate and to resolve or reconcile binary contradictions or opposites by using myths
-according to the structuralist, we don’t have to compare myths at all. The reason they say there are similar myths in different cultures is because the human mind, basically, we all think alike
- Vladimir Propp
- Walter Burkert
- Claude Levi-Strauss
–> “Myth is the tool with which we come to terms with the greatest mystery”.
– greatest mystery is the possibility that we won’t be forever.
Exs:
- life vs death
- culture vs nature
- good vs evil
- raw vs cooked
- hunter vs hunted
Aetiologically Theory
- Claims that myths explain why or how myths happen.
- Aition = reason or cause
Exs:
- Dionysos turning pirates into dolphins
-
Comparative Theory
- looks at the origins of myth by comparing myths from around the world
- Joseph Campbell
Exs:
- Zeus vs Typhoios compared to Murduk vs Tiamat
- Gilgamesh vs Humba compared to Heracles or a greek hero
- Greek flood story compared to Biblical or other flood story
Psychological Theory
- Claims myths are based on human emotion and that they come from the human subconscious mind
- Sigmund Freud
- Carl jung
Exs:
- going to underworld to confront death
- Oedipus complex: son hates father, rival for mothers love.
- Electra Complex: Daughter hates mother, rival for fathers love
Allegorical Theory
- Claims that myth means something different then what the story says.
- hidden meanings
- Max müller
Exs:
- Aphrodite often stands for love and beauty
Allegory
Allegory is a way of interpreting myth not literally but as a
“sustained metaphor.”
