What is Myth Dean Stevens Peer Teaching Classical

What is Myth? Dean Stevens Peer Teaching Classical Mythology Unit

What is Myth? • • • Fact or Fiction? μύθος Characteristics of Myth Culture Specific or Universal? Why Myth? Is Myth Science? Religion? Something Else? • Theories/Classification of Myth?

Characteristics of Myth • • Supernatural Stories involving gods, and/or heroes Originally Oral Tradition Cultural World View/Prehistory Can change, No Set Story Can have several versions Can be contradictory Written myth is the end of a very long evolutionary process

Myth in Greek Culture • • Anthropomorphic Polytheism Humanism Individualism Competitiveness

Anthropomorphic Polytheism

Humanism • Protagoras: “Man is the measure of all things…” • Bonnie Tyler: “I need a Hero…”

Individualism • What about me? ? ? Achilles is about to kill Penthesileia, the Amazon Queen at Troy: Large Athenian amphora, c. 540 BC, found at Vulci in Etruria.

Competitiveness • Achilles: Glory or Obscurity?

Are Myths Universal? • Flood Myth • Hero Archetypes • Creation Myth

Why Myth? • To Entertain • To explain the unexplainable • Retelling Prehistory

Why Myth? : Ancient Greeks 6 th Century BCE Scientific Observation • Theagnes of Rhegion (c. 525 BCE): --Gods are symbolic of natural processes • Anaxagoras : gods can’t be taken literally • Xenophanes: gods are immoral and are fashioned in our own image • Euhermerus of Messene 300 BCE: Fiction: Gods were mortal kings

Why Myth? : Modern Interpretation • 2 types of Theories: External/Internal • External: Environmental • Internal: Comes from within us

External Theories of Myth • Nature Myth Theory • Ritual Myth Theory • Etiological Theory

Internal Theory • Freudian Theory • Wish fulfillment/violation of taboos • Dionysos is Id—repression of Dionysos leads to perversion and violent outbreaks • Explains tragedy. • Doesn’t Explain ancient cultural roots of many myths

Internal Theory • Carl Jung • Archetypal Myths • Myths similar to dreams • Claude Levi-Strauss • Structuralism: World is a reflection of mind’s binary organization (good vs. evil, light vs. dark) • Myth deals with reconciliation of opposites • Divine will versus human ambition

Classifying Myth • Cosmology/Cosmogony/Creation Myth • Hesiod Theogony

Classifying Myth • Allegory/Symbol • The Castration of Uranus: fresco by Vasari & Cristofano Gherardi c. 1560