Ccis 396

Study Questions

The following study questions are aimed at helping you perform targeted learning.  I will not test or quiz you over random minutia that is in the Morford book.  In that way would lie frustration and madness.  Instead, these study questions are meant to help you focus your learning. I have written them so that you know what I have deemed to be the most pertinent information in each chapter.  That said, the quiz and test questions will be drawn from these study questions and only the most general knowledge that is to be gleaned from your readings.

Answering these questions is STRONGLY encouraged, but is NOT required.  I am not going to force you to do extra work on top of the 40-60 page reading requirement for most days.  However, a sure way to succeed in this class and know the material more in-depth is to answer each of the study questions as you read and take notes.  

In a way, these questions also double as a study guide for your quizzes and exams.  

Chapter 1:

1. Identify the three basic types of myth and be able to recognize the scope and focus of each of these subdivisions.

Pure myth, Legend, folktale

Pure myth/True myth: A kind of narrative whose stories primarily deal with the gods and the relations of humankind with them.

Legend/Sage: A fanciful narrative that has its roots in historical fact.

                -The Trojan War

                -Davy Crockett’s Bear-slying abilities

                -Completing a Halo campaign with all Skulls on

Folktale: Also a fanciful narrative that exhibits adventures, fantastic beasts and where to find them, ingenious strategy on the part of the hero or heroine, and the success of the hero/ine in the end.

The lines between categories can blue. In fact, very rarely do we ever find a myth that is entirely one form of the other. Many of the stories that we will encounter are a combination of all three elements.

2. Recognize the relationship between myth and truth, religion and etiology respectively.

Myth is a creative expression of self, the divine, and existence.

Truth inherent in mythology pervades beneath the superficial understanding of discrete facts and is a gateway for deeper understanding of the ancients and how they viewed the world around them.

The religious aspect of mythology may seem obvious. –Gods, Rituals, Prayers, Offerings, miracles.

Etiology comes from “aitia” in Greek, a word that means “reason” or “cause”

This perspective suggests that mythmakers used their stories to explain the origins and causes of events in the natural and supernatural world.

3. Identify Freud and Jung and recognize the main tenets of their respective theories of the psychological importance of myth.

Freud:

Myth is psychological metaphor through which human thought and behavior can be understand

Oedipus Complex

Dream-work-the mind revives its energy and fulfills latent desires through imagery and dreams.

Jung:

Myths projections of the collective unconscious of the human race. Myths can reflect personal or social desires and issues that are projected within an individual’s dreams.

Archetypes: traditional expressions of collective dreams; symbols upon which society has come to depend.

Eg. Great Mother, the Wise Old Man, the Shadow, the Tower, Water, the Tree of Life.

Anima: the archetypal image of the female that is within every male

Animus: the archetypal male that is within every female

Both are instinctual tendencies

4. Identify the general theories about the link between myth and ritual and the construction of a society’s social charter.

J.G.Frazer (1854-1941)-Classicist who suggested that myth is a social expression linked to specific secular and religious rituals of a given tribe.

This ritualist perspective states that: “myth implies ritual and ritual implies myth…they are one in the same.”

Myth was very closely connected to social action

Myth was a symbolic roadmap to understanding a society’s social charter.

Social Charter: The set of beliefs, qualities or ideas that constitute a society’s sense of identity and purpose for existing.

5. Recognize the basic tenets of structuralism as an approach to myth and identify Levi-Strauss and Propp’s specific contributions to this theory of myth interpretation.

Structuralism: An approach to myth interpretation that focuses on breaking down a myth into its constituent parts.

Levi-Strauss: Analysis of myths show that: “Myhts are used as a means of resolving conflicts between contradictory ideas of a society that cause its members distress.”

-Love and hate, life and death, Burger King or Wendy’s, Coke or Pepsi        

Propp: Fathered the discipline of structuralism.

Based his theories on his own work with Russian folktales and suggested that a basic narrative has 31 traits.

These recurrent plot elements are called motifemes, and occur in different combinations in all folktales that he studied.

6.  Identify the important aspects of gender and sexuality in myth including the following: feminism and myth, the role of women in ancient society, sexual violence in myth and the role of heterosexuality and homosexuality in myth.

Gender perspectives: Feminsim-1960s movement that led to large-scale re-evaluation of myths in literary studies.

Role of Woman in Ancient Greece: Personal Liberty, Citizenship, Status

Sexual Violence: Preoccupation with Eros and the nature of desire, Rape

Sexual Identity: Heterosexuality: Odysseus and Penelope Homosexuality: Zeus and Ganymede, Achilles and Patroclus, Sappho of Lesbos

Chapter 2:

7. Identify the geography and timeframe of the Minoan civilization and recognize its basic political and social structure and its influence upon the development of myth.

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