Thursday, December 3, 2020

Week 14 Story Lab: Overview of Mythology

Since the semester is almost over, I wanted to do something a little different for this week. I generally write stories, but I wanted to try a story lab. I chose to do the Crash Course videos for a few reasons, the first of which is that I just genuinely love Crash Course. The second is that I thought it would be fun to take the knowledge I have absorbed throughout the semester and apply it to the three videos I watched. I wanted to see what broad knowledge about myths and mythology in general I could apply to my own writings, as well as the stories I have read through the semester. 



Persephone being taken to the underworld by Hades, as referenced in the first video.

What Is Myth?

  • Some myths are crazy old and exist in many different forms
  • There are many different interpretations of myths
  • The line between myth and religion can be blurry
  • Myth: a special kind of story that that has two primary characteristics- significance and staying power
    • Subject is about something important
    • Stories that have survived centuries
  • Myth of Persephone- Etiological Narrative
    • Daughter of Zeus and Demeter, and wife of Hades
    • Primitive science
  • Types of Myths
    • Creation
    • Pantheons
    • Apocalyptic
    • Heroes
    • Objects

  • Mythology: the systematic study of myth
  • Plato was among the first to equate myths with lying, but if they were philosophical myths they were rational
  • Euhemerism: interpreting myths as primitive explanations of the natural world or as time-distorted accounts of long-past historical events
  • Tertullian and Clement- myth as falsehood and influenced by demons
  • Mythos vs Logos
    • Myths as falsehood vs myths as transcended truth (base for western mythology)
  • Theologies
    • James Frasier and The Golden Bow
      • concept of myths as primitive science
    • Bronislaw Malinowski
      • myth is not symbolic but it is a narrative resurrection of primeval reality 
    • Freud (ugh)
      • we make terrible realities palatable with myths
      • collective human consciousness
    • Joseph Campbell- "The Power of Myth" in the 1980s
      • Mythology is a vehicle through which the individual finds a sense of identity and place in the world
      • Monomyth
    • Claude Levi-Strauss
      • Structuralism: myths betray a complicated and underlying structuralism
    • Mircea Eliade
      • Sacred vs Profane
      • Archaic vs Modern

  • Heroes: tell us something about ourselves and a goal to find our place in society
  • The Hero's Journey: Momomyth
    • 3 Main parts
      • Separation from the world
        • Call to destiny/adventure
        • Refusal of call
        • Supernatural Aid
        • Crossing the threshold
        • Belly of the Whale
      • Trials and Victories of Initiation
        • The road of trials
        • The meeting with the goddess
        • Woman as temptress
        • Atonement with father
        • Apotheosis
        • The ultimate boon
      • Return and Reintegration into Society
        • Refusal of the return
        • the magic flight
        • Rescue from without
        • Crossing back over the threshold
        • Master of the two worlds
        • Freedom to live


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