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)