CLAS 110 Lecture 1: Week 1
Lecture 2
● Questions
○ What is myth? How is it distinguished from other types of stories?
Myth Legend Folklore
characters divine huan/semi-
human
Ordinary
people/animals
belief fact fact fiction
time Remote past Recent past Present or past
place Other or earlier world World or familiar
to readers
Any world
attitude secular
■ Myth -- Form, Context, Function
● Medium of communication can vary
● Stories in which the meaning/content is held in metaphors and
symbols
● Content: religious, social, political values and meanings that
connect the individual to society and the cosmos
● Function
○ Explain the natural world, divine realm, society
○ To make bearable the tragedy of living
■ Ex.: afterlife
■ To understand and integrate one’s experience in a
border framework
Logoi-- ‘rational’ arguments about the earth, cosmos, gods,
society, mankind-- relying on logic and straightforward prose
■ The origins of writing and the transmission of stories
● From ca. 8000 BCE tokens used as markers of quantities of
goods
● By 3400 BCE hollow clay balls (bullae)(the hollow clay balls used
to store tokens with depiction of transaction) and tokens
(currency)
● Proto-cuneiforn
○ By end of Late Uruk period (3100 BCE)
○ Pictographs (not letters)
● Cuneiform (mid 3rd millennium
○ Stylus blunter, used to press wedge shaped lines into the
clay
○ Instead of an ideographic script, like proto-cuneiform,
Document Summary
Stories in which the meaning/content is held in metaphors and symbols. Content: religious, social, political values and meanings that connect the individual to society and the cosmos. Explain the natural world, divine realm, society. To make bearable the tragedy of living. To understand and integrate one"s experience in a border framework. Logoi-- rational" arguments about the earth, cosmos, gods, society, mankind-- relying on logic and straightforward prose. The origins of writing and the transmission of stories. 8000 bce tokens used as markers of quantities of goods. By 3400 bce hollow clay balls (bullae)(the hollow clay balls used to store tokens with depiction of transaction) and tokens (currency) By end of late uruk period (3100 bce) Stylus blunter, used to press wedge shaped lines into the clay. Instead of an ideographic script, like proto-cuneiform, cuneiform uses syllabic script. Cuneiform is a script, not a language. Recovered from numerous tablets from numerous periods and places.
