Mod 5, Chapters 13, 14, 15,select any 3 questions:
- Compare the Priestly source and the J-E source as they describe the flood; then compare what you find here with what is said about the creation story in Chapter 5. What might these differences tell you about the thinking of each culture?
- How is the story ofRagnarokoptimistic for believers? Describe the battle atRagnarok. Who wins, Who loses? Why? What does this tell us about the beliefs of the people?
- Identify three animals in theProse Edda. How are they similar to or different from the animals encountered in African creation tales (Chapter 9)? What general conclusions about the Norse world view might we be able to support based on our reading about the animals inSnorri?
- Read the story of the birth of Moses in the Bible (Exodus 2:1-25) and identify the elements of the "family romance" in it. What does Moses do later (Exodus 3-14) that completes the "family romance" concept?
Or
Identifyand describe two examples of
monomyth
found within current/pop culture or traditional myth narrative.
- Which two psychologists was Campbell synthesizing? Which elements of the hero's adventure correspond to the theories of these scholars?
INTRODUCTION TO Mythology: Contemporary Approaches to Classical and World Myths INTRODUCTION TO Mythology Contemporary Approaches to Classical and World Myths FOURTH EDITION Our cover juxtaposes photographs of two Chinese works representing different mythological perspectives: an ancient scroll illustrating a famous Taoist tale and a remade vase by contemporary artist Ai Wewei. The scroll, attributed to 12th century C.E. painter Zhao Boju, focuses on the eight im- mortals of the Taoist tradition. Its painting is from the southern Song dynasty tradition which perfected Chinese landscape representation, and in this case integrated it with “The Eight Immortals Cross the Sea,” which was a well-known story describing the battle be- tween these eminent fi gures with great spiritual power and the Dragon King of the East- ern Ocean. The immortals eventually move a mountain over the Dragon King’s palace to defeat him and incorporate into the world the power of the surrounding mountains. The painter employs a bipartite landscape scheme, showing activities on earth interrupted by the emergence of the Dragon King at the upper right. The vase on the cover is by Ai Weiwei, who has worked in a range of media. He is a sculptor, a painter and has even made a music video parodying the K-pop artist Psy’s “Gangnam Style.” A highly politicized artist, Ai has been beaten and imprisoned in China for art protesting the corruption of the Communist regime that led to the death of thou- sands of children when an earthquake struck shoddily constructed schools in 2008. Ai has also used his art to showcase the plight of AIDS patients in China, who are denied their civil rights as well as adequate medical treatment. Ai has been infl uenced by the work of Marcel Duchamp who noted that artists could change the value of ordinary objects just by reformulating them as works of art and put- ting them into museums or galleries. Though he has many famous works, Duchamp is also known for creating an artwork out of a urinal. These so-called “readymades” have inspired Ai’s work with valuable vases from neolithic (10,000 B.C.E. to 8,000 B.C.E.) and Han dynasty (206 B.C.E.–220 C.E.) vases. He destroys these vases in various ways: he has made a video of himself dropping one and breaking it; he has also dipped some into in- dustrial paint, and, as in the case of the Han vase on our cover, he has painted vases with industrial logos. In making such works of art, Ai destroys the value of the traditional objects as such, but remakes them into very different works whose signifi cance is in the protest they rep- resent, thus expressing his view that his government has destroyed the traditional values built into Chinese culture. It is possible, then, to see Ai’s work as the continuation of the mythological tradition that emerges from the inspiration of Nü Kwa who created human beings out of clay, as explained in Chapter 10. About the Cover INTRODUCTION TO Mythology Contemporary Approaches to Classical and World Myths FOURTH EDITION Eva M. Thury Drexel University Margaret K. Devinney Temple University New York • Oxford OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offi ces in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Copyright © 2017, 2013, 2009, 2005 by Oxford University Press Published by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016 http://www.oup.com Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Thury, Eva M. Introduction to mythology: contemporary approaches to classical and world myths / Eva M. Thury, Drexel University; Margaret K. Devinney, Temple University.—Fourth edition. pages cm Includes index. Summary: “Integrating original texts with explanations, interpretations, and theory, Introduction to Mythology: Contemporary Approaches to Classical and World Myths, Fourth Edition, introduces students to a wide range of myths drawn from sources all around the world and approached from various critical perspectives”—Provided by publisher. ISBN 978-0-19-026298-3 (paperback : alkaline paper) 1. Mythology. I. Devinney, Margaret Klopfl e, 1941– II. Title. BL312.T48 2016 201′.3—dc23 2015020917 Printing number: 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper For titles covered by Section 112 of the US Higher Education Opportunity Act, please visit www.oup.com/us/he for the latest information about pricing and alternate formats. http://www.oup.com/us/he http://www.oup.com Preface ix Timeline xix PART 1 Introduction to Studying Myth 1 1 What Is Myth? 3 2 Ways of Understanding Myth 18 PART 2 Myths of Creation and Destruction 25 2A Creation 27 3 Greece: Hesiod 29 4 Rome: Ovid (Creation) 48 5 The Bible: Genesis (Creation) 56 6 Mesopotamia: Enuma Elish 64 7 Icelandic/Norse: Prose Edda (Creation) 85 8 North America: Stories from the Zuni, Hopi, and Navajo (Southwest); and from the Iroquois League (Northeastern Woodlands) 97 9 Africa: Uganda and Nigeria 121 10 China: Nü Kwa, Kuan Yin, and Monkey 130 11 Mesoamerica: Popol Vuh 158 2B Destruction 181 12 Rome: Ovid (Flood) 185 13 The Bible: Genesis (Flood) 196 14 Icelandic/Norse: Prose Edda (Ragnarok) 204 PART 3 Heroes and Tricksters 211 15 Theory: Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces 217 Dave Whomsley 16 Mesopotamia: The Epic of Gilgamesh 225 Contents 17 Applying Theory: A Lévi-Straussian Analysis of the Epic of Gilgamesh 262 G. S. Kirk 18 India: The Ramayana 273 19 Icelandic/Norse: Prose Edda (Heroes) 292 20 Arthurian Legend: The Holy Grail 307 Donna Lynne Rondolone 21 Africa: The Mwindo Epic 349 22 Greece: Oedipus the King—Sophocles 387 23 Theory: The Structural Study of Myth 439 Claude Lévi-Strauss 24 North America: Raven 456 25 African and African-American Trickster Stories 467 26 Greece: Prometheus 483 27 Applying Theory: Different Versions of Myths 490 PART 4 Ritual and Myth 499 28 Theory: The Forest of Symbols 505 Victor Turner 29 Greece: Demeter and Persephone 519 30 Egypt: Isis and Osiris 538 31 Applying Theory: Meals in the Bible 554 Mary Douglas 32 Icelandic/Norse: The Rituals of Iceland 566 H. R. Ellis Davidson 33 Greece: Heracles and Dionysus 585 PART 5 Dreams and Myth 605 34 Theory: Man and His Symbols 609 C. G. Jung 35 Applying Theory: How to Perform a Jungian Analysis 629 PART 6 Folktale and Myth 641 36 Theory: The Morphology of the Folktale 647 Vladimir Propp 37 Applying Theory: A Proppian Analysis of The Wizard of Oz 665 38 Germany: Grimms’ Household Tales 676 39 Rome: “Cupid and Psyche” 695 Apuleius 40 Applying Theory: Highlighting Different Aspects of the Same Tale Using Multiple Analyses 714 PART 7 Contemporary Myth 723 41 Daniel Boone: Building the Myth around the Man 727 Richard Slotkin 42 Stagecoach and Firefl y : The Journey into the Unknown in Westerns and Science Fiction 743 Fred Erisman 43 Harry Potter: A Rankian Analysis of the Hero of Hogwarts 757 M. Katherine Grimes 44 The Vampire as Hero: The Undead in Contemporary Tales 771 Eva M. Thury PART 8 Literature and Myth 787 45 Poetry and Myth 793 46 “Yellow Woman”: Native-American Oral Myth in a Contemporary Context 819 Leslie Marmon Silko 47 Narrative and Myth 831 Glossary of Gods, Heroes, and Antiheroes G–1 Additional Works Cited B–1 Credits C–1 Index I–1 Preface This fourth edition of our text incorporates into its cover design motifs that illustrate some of the ways we fi nd mythology interesting: it represents a time-less tradition, and yet one that is ever being remade and reformulated to be completely fresh. This edition includes a new chapter on Arthurian legend, focusing on the story of the Holy Grail throughout its history. The chapter on Native American mythology has been expanded to include not only southwestern tribes, but also those of the Northeastern Woodlands. Comparing the experiences and belief systems of these geographically widely separated groups provides interesting insights into the power of myth in a culture. Also in this edition, we have added the story of Sun Wukong, the Monkey King, to the chapter on Chinese creation myths, emphasizing the creative aspects of this trickster fi gure who is the source of the popular manga series Dragon Ball Z. We delight in continuing and expanding the multiple perspectives we have been able to provide in this book for tradi- tional stories, suggesting that they are in some ways eternal and immutable, while show- ing how we see them differently because of the world we live in and the particular kinds of insights that have become available to us as a result. From the beginning of our work on developing a mythology textbook, we felt we could not produce a work on mythology that did not recognize contemporary perspec- tives and beliefs as the cultural context for any study of mythological texts. In our view, this mitigates against the view that mythology is to be viewed as ridiculous stories told by uneducated peoples as they struggled to make sense of their world—a perspective we often hear from our students at the start of a mythology course. Rather, we wanted our book to show the kinds of meanings that scholars, artists, and thinkers of all sorts fi nd in mythological texts today. And that meant presenting the original texts of myths along with twentieth-century interpretations of them by scholars in a variety of academic fi elds. It has, over the years we have worked on this book, been a challenge to shape and struc- ture the material we wanted to include into a coherent and meaningful whole. In various forms, the text you see today has been through many stages of scholarly review. At every stage of this review process, there were readers who suggested trimming the contents, while at the same time proposing additions to what was already here. It took fortitude and patience to consider and reconsider the suggestions of competing