190 likes | 284 Views
Who is the woman in this image?. 32. 28. Penelope Athena Sisyphus’ Wife Faustina. 0. Mean = 1.2857. The Ethiopians say that their gods are snub- nosed and black, the Thracians that theirs have light blue eyes and red hair?. 34. Xenophanes of Colophon Theagenes of Rhegium Aeschylus
E N D
Who is the woman in this image? 32 28 • Penelope • Athena • Sisyphus’ Wife • Faustina 0 Mean = 1.2857
The Ethiopians say that their gods are snub- nosed and black, the Thracians that theirs have light blue eyes and red hair? 34 • Xenophanes of Colophon • Theagenes of Rhegium • Aeschylus • Euripides • Plato 28 0 Mean = 2.9643
The poets pretend to know all sorts of things, but they really know nothing at all. 34 • Xenophanes of Colophon • Theagenes of Rhegium • Aeschylus • Euripides • Plato 27 0 Mean = 4.8148
Paradeigms = Myths are 34 • false • instructive models • venerable tradition • dangerous 28 0 Mean = 2.3571
Modern Interpretations of Myth • Two modern meanings of “mythology”: • a system or set of myths • the methodological analysis of myths A monolithic theory of myth vs. the multifunctionalism of myth The autonomy of myth See: Some Theories of Myth Externalist Theories: Myths as Products of the Environment Internalist Theories: Myths as Products of the Mind
Externalist Theories:Myths as Products of the Environment Myths as Aetiology Comparative Mythology Nature Myths Myths as Rituals Charter Myths
Myths as Aetiology • myth as explanation of the origin of things • myth as primitive science • myth as primitive science • What aetiologies are in Trickster Myths?
F. Max MüllerNature Myths Founder of the social scientific study of religion Comparative approach: Study of Vedic peoples of ancient India applied to myths of other cultures (Greece and Rome) For Müller, the culture of the Vedic peoples represented a form of nature worship, an idea clearly influenced by Romanticism Max Müller 1823-1900)
Zeus as the Sky • Dyaus pitr Sanskrit • Dyaus = “he who shines” • pitr = father • Zeus pater Greek • Jupiter Latin • Tiu Vater Teutonic (German) Indo-European
Myths as Ritual • Sir James Frazer’ The Golden Bough (1890-1915) • myths as by products of ritual enactments • stories to explain religious ceremonies • The Golden Bough On-Line: • http://www.bartleby.com/196/
Charter Myths belief-systems set up to authorize and validate current social customs and institutions. Bronsilaw Malinowski (1884-1942) Selected Bibliography: http://www.vanderbilt.edu/AnS/Anthro/Anth206/malinowski.htm
Internalist Theories: Myths as Products of the Mind Individual Mind Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) Collective Mind Carl Jung (1875-1961)
Mircea Eliade (1907-1986) Eliade's analysis of religion assumes the existence of "the sacred" as the object of worship of religious humanity. Myths reflect a creative era, a sacred time, a vanished epoch of unique holiness. More on Eliade: http://www.angelfire.com/electronic/bodhidharma/mircea.html
Structuralism Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908-) Jean-Paul Vernant Pierre Vidal-Naquet
Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908-) • myth reflect the mind's binary organization • humans tend to see world as reflection of their own physical and cerebral structure ( two hands, eyes, legs, etc.) • Left/right, raw,/cooked, pleasure/pain • Myth deals with the perception and reconciliation of these opposites • mediation of contradictions How does a trickster mediate contradictions? For more on Levi-Strauss see http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/information/biography/klmno/levi-strauss_claude.html
Narratology Vlaimir Propp (1895-1970) Propp argued that all fairy tales were constructed of certain plot elements, which he called functions, and that these elements consistently occurred in a uniform sequence. Based on a study of one hundred folk tales, Propp devised a list of thirty-one generic functions, proposing that they encompassed all of the plot components from which fairy tales were constructed.
Feminist Approaches to Myth Marija Gimbutas (1921-1994) Marija Gimbutas was an archaeologist with a scholarly background in folklore and linguistics, making her uniquely qualified to synthesize information from science and myth into a controversial theory of a Goddess-based culture in prehistoric Europe. Joseph Campbell said that, if her work had been available to him, he would have held very different views about the archetypes of the female Divine in world mythology. Primacy of Matriarchy