ANTH 3348 Lecture Notes - Lecture 13: Stith Thompson, Franz Boas, Folkloristics
8 Feb 2017
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Document Summary
Aetiological myths myths that explain the origin of something. Myth does not imply a lie or something that is false. Anthropologists are not necessarily looking at myths to determine how true they are but more to look at how and why people come to believe them. A myth could be described as a story. Variants different versions of a story or myth. Motif a theme in stories, often in stories from different cultures and countries: stith thompson coined motif in his research of tale-type motif , eg. Cinderella there are many versions of a cinderalla story across many cultures. Two of the most central challenges to understanding myths from the anthropological viewpoint is understanding the reality that the myth corresponds to and how is it used in the culture and society. Folklorists are mainly interested in the themes of myths: recently there has been a move towards folkloristics. Folkloristics the study of live performance, how the story is told.
