"Myths, Ancient and Modern" Lecture

I. "Mythos" refers to spoken word or speech

A. Myths were transferred orally
B. Different from a historical tale or "logos" which is verifiable

II. Generally the origins of myths are unknown yet they have a claim to truth
(which the purely fictious narrative lacks).

A. Myths arise from storytelling
B. They are dependent on speech for the arrangement of "facts"
C. These are mythical accounts of events

III. Myths' claim... Myths:

A. Refer to the Origins of the Universe
B. Claim to reveal historical facts
C. Make emotional valuations
D. Concern themselves with moral, physical, ontological issues
E. Describe psychological truths
F. Convey beliefs, superstitions, rituals
G. Convey social ideas and literary images
H. Use symbols, allegories, reason, philosophy, and ethical values

IV. The "Truth"

A. The capacity to tell a true tale is the privilege of the gods, not "men".
B. Myths are divine tales told by gods to humans, (men, who told them to their fellow humans).
C. Many men acknowledged the divine origin, "sing goddess..." "tell me, muse..."
D. Myths are allowed to "tell lies without abdicating truth". "We know enough to make up lies which are convincing, but we also have the skill, when we will, to speak the truth." (The muses to Hesiod)
E. The inclusion of divine lies in the myths does not affect their being essentially a true tale.
F. When Greek Myths are told neither

A system nor
A doctrine nor
A religious doctrine nor
Instructions for performing rituals or magic
Emerge - only a tale

G. The authorities were POETS

V. Categories of Greek Myths

A. Divine myths refer to gods, creation, origin
B. Heroic myths refer to kingdoms on earth, heroes, heroines

VI. Basic Features

A. Myths are stories delivered to men by gods
B. Myths have a claim to truth
D. Cannot be verified
E. Myths include cosmology, theogony, and natural phenomena
F. Myths differ from:

1. Legends which include stories of heroes and historical events
2. Folk tales which refer to stories of notable individuals that may be of unknown family, period of time and country.
3. Fairy tales which are told tales with or without fairies
"One man's myth is another's folktale, saga, legend, or fairy tale..." (G.S. Kirk, The Nature of Greek Myths)

G. In myths, the listener (reader) "lives the literature" but may not "know the literature" (Carols Parada)

Eight short definitions of myth and Bibliography
(Selected from Carlos Parada, Brown University)
"Myths are prose narratives which, in the society in which they are told, are considered to be truthful accounts of what happened in the remote past." (William Bascom, The Forms of Folklore quoted by J. Fontenrose)

"By myths I understand mistaken explanations of phenomena, whether of human life or of external nature." [James G. Frazer, Introduction to the Library of Apollodorus]

"In general one may say: --that myth, such as it is lived by archaic societies, constitutes the story of the deeds of Supernatural Beings; --that the story is considered absolutely true (because it refers to realities) and sacred (because it is the work of Supernatural Beings); --that myth always concerns a 'creation'; it tells how something has come into existence, or how a way of behaviour, an institution, a way of working, were established; this is why myths constitute paradigms for every meaningful human act; --that in knowing the myth one knows the 'origin' of things and is thus able to master things and manipulate them at will; this is not an 'external", 'abstract' knowledge, but a knowledge that one 'lives' ritually, either by reciting the myth ceremonially, or by carrying out the ritual for
which it serves as justification; --that in one way or another one 'lives' the myth, gripped by the sacred, exalting power of the events one is rememorializing and reactualizing" (Mircea Eliade. Towards a Definition of Myth).

"We may then define myth proper as the result of the working of naïve imagination upon the facts of experience" (H. J. Rose, A Handbook of Greek Mythology).

"Myth proper may be defined as a prescientific and imaginative attempt to explain some phenomenon, real or supposed, which exites the curiosity of the myth-maker, or perhaps more accurately as an effort to reach a feeling of satisfaction in place of uneasy bewilder-ment concerning such phenomena" (H. J. Rose, in The Oxford Classical Dictionary)

"True myth is an explanation of some natural process made in a period when such explanation were religious and magical rather than scientific" (T. B. L. Webster, Everyday Life in Classical Athens quoted by G. S. Kirk).

"True myth may be defined as the reduction to narrative shorthand of ritual mime performed on public festivals, and in many cases recorded pictorially on temple walls, vases, seals, bowls, mirrors, chests, shields, tapestries, and the like" (Robert Graves, The Greek Myths).

"On est convenu d'appeler 'mythe', au sens étroit, un récit se référant à un ordre du monde antérieur à l'ordre actuel et destiné, non pas à expliquer un particularité locale et limitée (c'est le rôle de la simple 'légende étiologique'), mais une loi organique de la nature des choses" (Pierre Grimal, Dictionnaire de la Mythologie Grecque et Romaine).

Selected bibliography
WALTER BURKERT, Greek Religion (Verlag W. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 1977. English edition: Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts 1985).

E. R. DODDS, The Greeks and the Irrational (University of California Press, Berkeley & Los Angeles 1951).

MIRCEA ELIADE, Das Heilige und das Profane, 1957 (Rowohlt Taschenbuchverlag GmbH, Hamburg 1957, Swedish edition: Verbum, Stockholm 1968); Towards a Definition of Myth, in Yves Bonnefoy's Greek and Egyptian Mythologies (The University of Chicago Press 1991).

JOSEPH FONTENROSE, The Ritual Theory of Myth (University of California Press, Berkeley & Los Angeles 1966).

ROBERT GRAVES, The Greek Myths (Penguin Books 1986).

ERIK IVERSEN, La fortune des dieux égyptiens du Moyen Âge au XVIIIe siècle, in Yves Bonnefoy's Dictionnaire des mythologies (Flammarion, Paris 1981).

KARL KERÉNYI, The Religion of the Greeks and Romans (Thames & Hudson 1962, Swedish edition: Natur och Kultur, Stockholm 1962).

G. S. KIRK, The Nature of the Greek Myths (Penguin Books 1986); Homer and the Oral Tradition (Cambridge University Press, London 1976).

MARK P. O. MORFORD & ROBERT J. LENARDON, Classical Mythology (Longman, New York & London 1985).

MARTIN P. NILSSON, The Mycenaean Origin of Greek Mythology (University of California Press, Berkeley, Los Angeles, London 1972); Homeros, den grekiska epikens ursprung och utveckling
(Norstedt & Söners Förlag, Stockholm 1935).

SIR ARTHUR QUILLER-COUCH, On the Art of Reading (Cambridge University Press 1925).

H. J. ROSE, A Handbook of Greek Mythology (Routledge, London and New York 1991).

ANTONIO RUIZ DE ELVIRA, Mitología clásica (Editorial Gredos, Madrid 1995).

C. SCOTT LITTLETON, The New Comparative Mythology (University of California Press, Berkeley, Los Angeles, London 1982).

JEAN SEZNEC, Moyen Âge et Renaissance: la survivance des dieux antiques, in Yves Bonnefoy's Dictionnaire des mythologies (Flammarion, Paris 1981).

ARNOLD J. TOYNBEE, A Study of History (Oxford University Press, New York & Oxford 1987).

JEAN-PIERRE VERNANT, Greek Mythology, in Yves Bonnefoy's Greek and Egyptian Mythologies (The University of Chicago Press 1991).

PETER WARREN, The Aegean Civilizations (Phaidon Press, Oxford 1989)

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