Week 6 Story Lab

Mythology

Crash course videos:



1) What is Myth?

This video was great for me to listen to because it helps separate my mind from thinking all these stories are fake or not true. Instead, myth originates from the Greek term mythos, which means story. Whether or not the stories are true is up to the person and that leads into religion. It was very interesting to learn that many of the story tellers we know of like Homer are just retelling stories they have heard from people before them and interpreting them for current times. It makes me wonder how the stories were formed in the first place.

2) Theories of myth.

This video talks about the theory of myth, which kind of helps me with my question of how these myths are formed. Some people like Plato thought of myths as lies with creatures that did not make any sense and were primitive thoughts. A new word I learned, euhemerism, which means interpreting “myths as primitive explanations of the natural world or as time-distorted accounts of long-past historical events.” Plato made more philosophical stories like Zeus originally being man and then being so epic in real life that he turns into a God. Christians were quick to pick up this type of thinking and thought of all other stories as written or told by demons.

The actual study of mythology did not begin until the mid 1800’s when people found several similar languages from India, China, and Europe all deriving from the same language called proto-indo-european. Myth is all from different interpretations of stories in history. They have been retold a thousand times, who know how much they have changed?

3) The Hero’s Journey and the Monomyth

Like our heroes today there are many patterns in the mythology heroes. What I love about heroes is no matter what culture you go to all around the world there are always stories of heroes. The heroes of such stories also have similar parts, for example, there is usually some kind of call to adventure that originally the hero did not want to go on. Along the way there is some kind of near death experience and they get their way out. There are challenges along the way that make the hero the badass they become. Finally they return home after their long journey, which is not very common for heroes today. In mythology there is usually a story beyond saving the damsel in distress or killing the bad guy. Then they live happily ever after! It is easy to notice people like a story with a good ending.