1: Myth Defined Flashcards
Etymology of Myth
Mythos: ‘Word’, ‘Speech’, ‘Tale’, ‘Story’ and eventually became Logos: ‘Word’, ‘Speech’, ‘Reason’
What is Mythology based on
- based on logos/rational
- set of myths. Ex: Mythology of Athena
- study of myths. Ex: Classical mythology
Definition of Myth
Traditional tale:
* Traditional: handed down from generation to generation; word of mouth; anonymous
* tale: story arc that has plot, structure, and characters
Important to society:
* explanatory and exemplary
Types of Myth
True Myth or Myth Proper
Saga or Legend
Folktale
True Myth or Myth Proper
aka divine myth
* major and minor deities
* concerned with relations with mortals
modern analogue
* science
* explanatory → etiological
Etiological
Greek: Aitia > Eitia > Etia
“Cause,” “Reason”
Saga or Legend
Heroes & Heroines
* Nobility: those who are known
* Hero ex: Heracles battling the bull helped by Hermes
* Heroine ex: Cassandra battling Clymenatra
Modern Analogue:
* History
* Real World Locations:
→ Troy in Turkey
→ Mycenae in Greece → Lion Gate
→ Thebes in Greece
Folktale
- includes fairytales and fables.
- German for Marchen
- Written and oral
- not nobility like in Saga or Legend but regular people that rise up
Modern Analogues
* movies, novels, folktale elements
Ex: Aesop and the Fox
Ex: Cupid and Psyche: one of the earliest novels
“It’s Just a Myth”
Urban legend: traditional tale
fiction vs fact
Rationalism
- ancient greek interpretations that started challenging myths
- anthropomorphism: divine beings in human form
Rationalism Philosophers
- Plato rejected all greek mythology
- Xenophanes: one of the first to challenge these myths. Fl. 6th c BC using anthropomorphism
- Both said that these are immoral things to teach people
Anthropomorphism
- part of rationalism
- Anthropos: human; Morphos: shape
- Xenophanes said that:
→ people’s gods are perceived as human in form
→ we are biased in our approach of what diety should be like
Allegory and types
Allegory: saying a thing another way
1. Physical allegory
2. Psychological/moral allegory
3. historical allegory
Physical allegory
- Theagenes: 6th c. BCE
→First attested to have used allegory
→Apollo = Fire; Poseidon = Water
Psychological/Moral Allegory
Athena: wisdom
Aphrodite: desire
Historical Allegory
- Euhemerism: saw myth as early history
→ gods were just deified for their great deeds. Ex: Zeus was once a mortal king in Crete who disposed of his father, Cronus - Antirationalists: opposite extreme of Euhemerism
→ favor metaphorical interpretations
Euhemerus of Messene
Associated with euhemerism and historical allegory
* 3rd c BCE Mythographer (collects myths)
* The Sacted Scripture: golden pillar inscribed with kings and queens who had identical names to Greek gods so kings and queens were just deified
* Isodore of Seville: Christian gods were also just regular behings
People in Psychological Theories
Sigmund Freud
Carl Jung
Sigmund Freud
part of psychological theory
* Myths: collective and recurrent dreams. Reflect people’s waking efforts to systematize the incoherent visions and impulses of their sleep world
→ Dreams and dream-work
* Sophocles Oedipus Tyrannos → Oedipus Comple
Dream and Dream-work
Sigmund Freud
* Dreams: fulfillment of wishes that have been repressed and disguised
* Dream-work: 3 primary activities
1. Condense: combination of things like centaur
2. Displacement: changed
3. Represent: transmission of elements into imagery or symbols, often sexual
Carl Jung
part of psychological theory
* Myths: collective unconscious. Revelation of the continuing psychic tendencies of society
* Myths contain
→archetypes: timeless, recurent images that society as a whole has come to depend
→electra complex: aka Oedipus complex as first archetype discovered by Freud
Archetypes
Carl Jung and psychological theory
* Anima: female within every male
* Animus: male within every female
* Divine Child: if born will solve all of the world’s problems
* Earth Mother
* Wise Old Man
People in Structuralism Theories
Vladimir Propp
Claude Levi-Strauss
Walter Burkert
Russian Motifemes and Parts of a Myth - Vladimir Propp
31 motifemes in Russian folktale
4 parts of a myth
1. Pattern or structure will emerge
2. Possible to find the same structure in other myths, making it easier to organize the study of myths
3. Possible to compare the myths of one culture to another
4. This comparison makes it easier to appreciate the development of a myth
Vladimir Propp
Structuralist theorist
* morphology of the folktale
* russian folklorist
* determined that there was a narrative structure of tales and broke it down into the smallest narrative units called motifemes
* myth or folktales are fixed sequences of motifemes
Claude Levi-Strauss
Structural anthropology: links myth and society
* Sees myth as a mode of communication from the structure of the mind that tries to find a resolution between conflicting opposites
* Draws evidence from primitve and preliterate cultures
* meaning of myth - form of myth → no one version of a myth is right, all versions are valid and should be taken in as a whole
* myth creates binary oppositions: pairs that contradictions each other
Claude Levi-Strauss Assumptions
- All human behavior is based on certain unchanging patterns in all ages and societies
- Society has a consistent structure in which every component plays a meaningful part
Walter Burkert
Structuralism
* classical myths have a historical and cultural dimension with layers of development
* “myth is traditional tale applied”
* anthropomorphic
* something of collective importance
4 Theses of Walter Burkert
- Myth belongs to more general class of traditional tales
- Identity of traditional tale found in structure of sense within tale itself
- Tale structures, as sequences of motifemes, founded on basic biological or cultural programs of action
- Myth: traditional tale with partial reference to something of collective importance
