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Question 1

Learn to distinguish between myth, saga or legend, and folktales and fairytales.

Answer 1

Greek Myth; word, speech tale or STORY
Myth- primarly concerend with the gods and humankinds relations with them.

Saga or Legend: has a perceptible relationship to history

Folktales : stories of adventure, fantastic beings, hero or heroine will triumph in the end, for entertain, both oral and written.
Fairytales may be defined as: short, imagninative, traditional tales with a high moral and magical content, often for the young.

Question 2

Learn the fundamental differences between the following approaches to the
interpretation of myth (Psychological,

Answer 2

Freud: unconscious, interpretation of dreams, identification of the oidipus complex.
similarity between dreams and myths- symbols varied and often sexual. phallic words.

Myth: reflect peoples waking efforts to systematize the incoherent visions and impulses of their sleep world. The patterns in the imagninative world of children, savages, and neurotics are similar, and these patterns are revelad in the motifs and symbols of myth.

Jung: the collective unconcius- political social questions regarding the society. distiction between presonal and collective. forts.

Question 3

How does Freud use the Oedipus drama to explain the origin and significance of
religion? What other approaches can be brought to bear upon the Oedipus legend?

Answer 3

direct first sexual impulses toward our mothers, and first impulses of hatred and resistance to our fathers, our dreams convince us. fullfillment of our childhood wish king oidipus slew his father laius and wedded his mother jocasta.
Our instincts are suppressed.
Oidipus forces us to become aware.

Dreams are the fullfillment of supressed wishes.
dreamwork, - condensation, dicplacement, representation.
Jung: Electra complex

father figure and triump of patriarchy and establishment of a totemic system chosen sacred animal substitute forthe slain father. Most important of all from the ensuing sensen of guilt and sin for parricade emerges the conception of God as a father who must be appeased and to whom atonement must be made.

Question 4

Learn the fundamental differences between the following approaches to the
interpretation of myth (, Ritualist, Structuralist)

Answer 4

myth: the reduction to narrative shorthand of ritual mime performed in public festivals, and often recorded pictorially on temple walls, vases, seals, bowls, mirrors. one and the same.

Question 5

Learn the fundamental differences between the following approaches to the
interpretation of myth (, , Structuralist)

Answer 5

an attempt to analyzie myths into their component parts.

Question 6

4. Learn the definition of classical myth (p. 25).

Answer 6

A classic myth is a story that, through its classical form, has attained a kind of immortality because its inherent archetypal beauty, profundity, and power have inspired rewarding renewal and transformation by successive generations.

Question 7

Archetypes

Answer 7

In Jung’s theory of the collective unconscious myths contain fundamental images or patterns that continually recur: the “archetypes.” The Oedipus complex, the culture hero, the quest motif, the wise old man, and the great mother are examples of archetypes. The archetypes of human behavior with which we are born make up the “collective unconscious.

Question 8

2. What are the four theses of Burkert’s modified synthesis of structural approaches?

Answer 8

Myth belongs to the more general class of traditional tales.
The identity of a traditional tale is to be found in a structure of sense within the tale itself.
Tale structures, as a sequence 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.

Question 9

What considerations could be raised that might modulate our understanding of the
position of women in the ancient world?

Answer 9

Women were citizens of their communities, unlike noncitizens and slaves—a very meaningful distinction. They did not have the right to vote. No woman anywhere won this democratic right until 1920.
The role of women in religious rituals was fundamental; and they participated in many festivals of their own, from which men were excluded.
A woman’s education was dependent on her future role in society, her status or class, and her individual needs (as was that of a man).
The cloistered, illiterate, and oppressed creatures often adduced as representative of the status of women in antiquity are at variance with the testimony of all the sources: literary, artistic, and archaeological.