Quiz 1 Flashcards
Review all material up to Lecture 7. Wed, Sep. 18th
Hesiod
Potentially real person. Author of poems “Theogony” and “Works and Days”. These poems were religiously significant but not sacred. (750 - 650 BCE)
Theogony
Hesiod’s account of the genealogy of the gods
Works and Days
A “farmer’s almanac” in which Hesiod recorded story of Pandora and the Myth of The Five Ages of Humankind
“Mythos”
Word, story
William R. Bascom
“Three forms of prose narrative”
Myth: believed as fact, setting of the remote past or another world, considered sacred, and the characters are non-human
Don Cupitt
Myth: A traditional, sacred story, of anonymous authorship, and archetypal or universal significance. recounted by a community, linked with ritual, describes deeds of superhuman beings outside historical time or in the supernatural world
William G. Doty
Mythological Corpus: One story separated from context is not a myth. Meaning is never explicit. Content is values and meanings, not surface details. Function is to explain and integrate experience. Ancient and Modern audiences seek the meaning behind the myth
Mircea Eliade
“Sacred Timelessness”: Myths help imagine a spiritual release from historical time. Origin stories give a sense to existence
Archaic period
750-490 BCE. Iliad and Odyssey. Hesiod. Originally oral. “Homer” is shorthand for Homeric Hymns
Classical period
490-323 BCE. Committed to reason and beauty Greeks begin examining their myths. Mythos, philosophy and rationalization versus Logos, rational argument
Hellenistic period
323-30 BCE and beyond. Educated and retrospective responses, some from Alexandrian scholars. Rome conquered Greece.
Classical Mythology
The study of myths primarily from the Archaic and Classical periods but also including influences from the ancient near east and Rome
Etiological Myth
Rationalizes the origin of some fact or custom (apollo’s chariot is the sun rising). Natural, Etymological, and Religious.
Euhemerus
300 BCE. Rationalizing approach: the gods were originally men, later deified for their great deeds
Allegorical Approach
Interprets myth in a non-literal way, as an extended metaphor. Max Muller
Max Muller
19th Century. all myths are allegories of nature, and so they describe meteorological and cosmological phenomena
Metaphorical Approach
Took many forms and was reshaped by the theories of psychologists and psychoanalysts. Freud, Jung. Wide range of devotion and criticism
Freud
Myths and dreams are similar in arrangement of symbols. Oedipal drama leads to patriarchy, religion, art, and myth
Jung
Myths are a projection of our collective unconscious. Myths contain archetypes, expressions of collective dreams/patterns of behaviour. Society’s psychologically depend on their myths.
Ritualist Approach
“myth implies ritual, ritual implies myth, they are one and the same” (Leach, 1954). Proponents include J.G. Frazer (1854-1941) and Jane Harrison (1850-1928)
Bronislaw Malinowski
Psychological Functionalism. Myths explain existing facts and institutions by reference to tradition. Myths are best understood through social context
Structuralism
A way to analyze myths in their component parts
Vladimir Propp
1895-1970: All Russian folktales have the same linear structure. Motifemes: Units of this structure. Focused on quest narratives
Claude Lévi-Strauss
1907-2009: Myth as a mode of communication in which structure is critical. Myth used by society to resolve conflicting ideas in a non-linear way. Binary structure of human mind.
Walter Burkert
1931-2015: Combined structuralism and classical. Four theses:
1. Myth belongs to the more general class of traditional tales
2. the identity of of a traditional tale is found in a structure of sense within the tale itself
3. tale structures are founded on basic biological or cultural programs of actions
4. myth is a traditional tale with secondary reference to something of collective importance
comparative study
Distinction between early oral storytelling and later written texts. Comparisons between similar stories in unrelated cultures. Also tracing the movements of a story in a geographical region (contact between cultures). Less serious attention to classical myths. Joseph Campbell (1904-1987)
Joseph Campbell
1904-1987: popular comparative mythologist
Late Bronze Age (Mycenaean Age)
1600-1150 BCE: Three distinct regional civilizations, Crete, the Cyclade, mainland Greece. A complex society
Iron Age
1150–700 BCE: This is when archaeological evidence suggests Ascra existed. Where Hesiod is from
Ascra
Archaeological evidence suggests it existed during Iron Age (1150-700 BCE). Hesiod’s Works and Days takes place here. His brother Perses gets disputed farm inheritance after the king rules against Hesiod
Panhellenic
Self recognized as “Hellenes” city-states believe in the same gods and rituals. Cultural unification
Uranus
(sky) Created the titans with Gaia, she birthed them but he shoved them back into her (buried them). One of the titans Kronos castrated him, threw his genitals into the sea and accidentally creates Aphrodite. The blood also creates the furies, giants, and Meliai
Chaos
“Yawning Void”: Could mean many things; void, beginning, first principle. Ovid’s interpretation: all things that exist but un-ordered and confused
Hymn to the Muses
Hesiod claims the muses came to him and told him stuff, but the muses also lie
First catalogue
The first gods: out of Chaos came the elemental gods Gaia, Tartarus, Eros (love), Erebus, and Night. Gaia created Uranus (sky), Mountains, Pontus (ocean). Night created Day and Aether after a union of love with Erebus
Aristophanes’ Birds
5th Century alternative creation myth: “There was no race of immortals before Eros caused all things to mingle. From the mingling of couples, Urano, Ocean, Ge and the immortal race of all the blessed gods came to be.”
Gaia/Ge
Mother Earth: archetypal fertile female goddess. Created Uranus equal to herself. hieros gamos “sacred marriage” of earth-mother and sky-father. Union of earth and sky
Oceanus + Tethys
Created thousands of Oceanids
Hyperion (sun god) + Theia
Helius: also a sun god
Selene: goddess of the moon
Eos: goddess of the dawn
Apollo and Artemis
Sun and moon (Pheobus/Pheobe “The Bright One”)
Aphrodite
Born from the foam around Uranus’ severed genitals. Eros and Desire are companions.
Cronus
Couples with Rhea to create olympians; Hestia, Demeter, Hera Hades, Poseidon, and Zeus. He fears the prophecy that his kids will overtake him so he swallows them. Rhea tricks him so Zeus can grow up far away and return one day to kill him
Birth of Zeus
Taken to Mt Dicte on Crete, or alternatively Arcadia. Fed milk from goat Amalthea. This myth attempts to link Zeus with Rhea, the near eastern goddess of fertility
Zeus’ War
Frees his uncles the Hecatoncheires (hundred-handers) who were imprisoned by Uranus in Tartarus. Fought the Titans with the help of the Olympians and others. Defeats Typhoeus (child of Ge and Tartarus, embodiment of social anarchy) and brings order to the world/creates the “Kosmos”.
Zeus’ Marriages
Myths that show ideas of patriarchy, men containing and controlling female reproduction and thus taking their power. Zeus eats his first wife Metis while she is pregnant with Athena so she is born from his head. He fears prophecy that says he will one day not be king
Prometheus
Fore-thinker, unlike his brother Epimethus (after thinker). Titan and trickster god, in a battle of wits with Zeus. Created humans from clay and gave us fire
Zeus V Prometheus
Prometheus tricks Zeus into eating bones hidden in animal fat (Etiological: greeks sacrificed animals and the animal would be eaten after). Zeus is mad takes away fire from humans. Prometheus steals back the fire for us. Zeus punishes him by having an eagle peck out his liver each day, creates Pandora and “made women a curse for mortal men”
Pandora
“The all-gifted”: Hephaistos (the lame god?) creates a woman out of clay, decked out by Athena, given to Epimetheus (prometheus’ brother), she opens the box and releases misery, diseases, and evils. Only thing left in the box is hope. Like Eve and original sin. (allegory: Pandora and the box are symbols of procreation, “the womb is a source of chaos and woe”)
James Frazer
The Golden Bough (1890). 3 stages of human development:
1. magical practices
2. formalized ritual
3. scientific reasoning
Enuma Elish
“The Epic of Creation” oral Babylonian creation myth from 2000 BCE similarities in male deities/feminine deities opposition. Marduk is equivalent to Zeus
Genesis
similar structure: hymns, catalogues, and dramatic tales appear. But more differences: two creation myths instead of one, and one god unchallenged with creation of humanity at the centre.
Titans
To the greeks they were powerful symbols of danger, rebellion, social anarchy. Modern art paints them as providers or symbols of strength/ingenuity (Atlas/Prometheus)
