CLASS102 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Ave Class 102, Sophocles, Trado
13 Dec 2016
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Class 102 : September 7, 2016 – The Nature/Interpretation of Myth
• What is myth
o Various types of myth
▪ Allegorical
Nature of Myth
• Names of the great heros of classical myth are familiar, while the deeper stories are usually not.
o Myths evolved from preliterate cultures.
o Traditional/sacred.
• What is a myth? Often has an anonymous author, universal or archetypal (specific), displayed in
many forms (not just a narrative), visual narrative etc. Metaphorical, Religious meanings.
o Fundamentally, myth is a story w/ narrative and plot.
What is a myth?
• Traditional tales
o Lat. Trado, had oer
• Haded oer orall ad trasit ultures sese of itself: past isdo, eories, ad odels.
o Oral transmission will create constant changes in the myth.
o Variants in the narrative elements:
▪ Oedipus in Sophocles and Homer: Anth.p235-6; Odyssey 11. 275-285
• I Hoers ersio he still rules / his other i Thees.
• I “opholes ersio he stas out his ees ad aders, eiled.
o A myth is the complex of all variants.
▪
• Hence a th has olletie iportae.
• Myth that is written down in a literary form uses a story that preceded it.
o “opholes Oedipus plas.
▪ Dooed to kill his father ad arr his other adopted… eds up killig his
actual father at a crossroads, and gets the hand of a widowed queen, his
mother.
▪ Oedipus Rex
• Mythos is contrasted with logos
o –logy: a reasoned account offered by somebody who stands by it.
o Setting: “i illo tepore = th orld/tie
▪ Lit. In that time. (Once upon a time)
▪ Set in a Greek context, who were throughout the Mediterranean / Aegean.
• Myth is a traditional story with collective importance.
o Oral, no identifiable author, many variants possible, culturally important.
• Not everything commonly called myth is myth. Religion is not myth, and myth is not Greek
religion.
o Historical figures are often mythicized.
o > Feast of the Olympians
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