CLAS 203 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Etiology
24 Mar 2015
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Explains society to itself, its concerns and values. Continually regenerated over time through various media. Classical myth is mostly concerned with literary myth. Myth has a plot, characters, and a setting: time: past or unreal, place: real, surreal, past real. There are various ways of classifying myth: by principal character, by function. Myth classification: by character: divine myths or myth proper". Myth comes from the greek word mythos: utterance, story, or plot. It is not limited to the greeks but is a universal phenomenon among human beings. It is as old as language itself, the earliest written myth: the epic of gilgamesh (approximately 7th century b. c. ) Classical myth is a story that, through its classical form, has attained a kind of immortality because its inherent archetypal beauty, profundity and power have inspired rewarding renewal and transformation by successive generations : Underlying theme: the attempt of mortals trying to undo" the line between mortality and immorality.
