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Key terms: aetiological insights into myth anthropological insights into myth Aphroditecosmological insights into mythHeracleshistorical insights into myth Homerlegendmetaphysical insights into mythnostalgiaOdysseusoral storytellingPoseidonpsychological insights into mythsociological insights into mythTelemachusTrojan Warurban legends

What Mythology Isn't

• False stories

• Just stories about gods and heroes

Some Questions to Ask about Mythology

• What cultural Insights does a myth tell us about the society that tells a particular story?

• What Roles do these myths play in this society?

• What functions do these myths serve?

Yet Do I Marvelby Countee Cullen

Yet Do I Marvelby Countee Cullen

I doubt not God is good, well-meaning, kind,And did He stoop to quibble could tell whyThe little buried mole continues blind,Why flesh that mirrors Him must someday die,Make plain the reason tortured TantalusIs baited by the fickle fruit, declareIf merely brute caprice dooms SisyphusTo struggle up a never-ending stair.Inscrutable His ways are, and immuneTo catechism by a mind too strewnWith petty cares to slightly understandWhat awful brain compels His awful hand.Yet do I marvel at this curious thing:To make a poet black, and bid him sing.

Honore Daumier [French Realist Illustrator, 1808-1879]

Sisyphus on the Webhttp://www.mythweb.com/teachers/why/other/sisyphus.html on the Sisyphus mythhttp://stripe.colorado.edu/~morristo/sisyphus.html An exerpt from Albert Camus’ Myth of Sisyphus.http://sisyphustracks.com/ “Sisyphus Tracks.” An internet alternative to great roots musichttp://www.livinglogic.de/Python/sisyphus/ Sisyphus software.http://www.uh.edu/~jbutler/anon/projectsysisyphus.html Project Sisyphus (designed to facilitate sharing ideas and experiences among faculty teaching introductory geoscience courses)http://ksi.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/KAW/Sisyphus/ Sisyphus Projects. Knowledge Acquisition, Modeling and Management.http://www.embl-heidelberg.de/~rost/Papers/sisyphus.html#Abstract “Sisyphus and protein structure prediction” by Burkhard Rost & Sean O'Donoghue in BioInformatics 1997 13, 345-356http://www.pippinsoft.com/kds/kdsLarge.html Plant Sisyphus. An internet game in javascript.http://www.zillions-of-games.com/games/sisyphus.html a gamehttp://www.sluh.org/sisyphus/ The title of St. Louis High School’s literary magazinehttp://www.sluh.org/sisyphus/sisstory.htm more on the magazine http://home.sol.no/~anrej/Church/Prometheus/Sisyphus_Island.html Sisyphus Island. Part of a literary-philosophical journeyhttp://www.dungheap.com/taleEnd/aboutS.html Sisyphus the Dung Beetlehttp://www.geocities.com/Athens/9366/sisyph1.htm A Hindu comparisonhttp://violet.umf.maine.edu/~sharkey/bpj/whitehead.html a poem by Gary J. Whitehead in the Beloit Literary Journalhttp://www.cloudnet.com/~edrbsass/sisyphusrap.htm Sisyphus, a rap versionhttp://journal.law.mcgill.ca/abs/461desbi.htm?french=1 abstract from “From Sisyphus’s Dilemma to Sisyphus’s Duty? A Meditation on the Regulation of Hate Propaganda in Relation to Hate Crimes and Genocide” By Jean-François Gaudreault-DesBiens* in the McGill Law Journalhttp://www.cloudnet.com/~edrbsass/sisyphusandteaching.htm Sisyphus and Teaching Pagehttp://www.cloudnet.com/~edrbsass/sisyphus.htm “On Sisyphus and Teaching” by Edmund Sasshttp://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A11471-2001Dec7 “Playing Sisyphus”, an op-ed piece by Jim Hoagland in the Washington Post December 9,2001 also appears as http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/50042_hoagland.shtml “Remember the Myth of Sisyphus” another op-ed piece by Jim Hoagland in the Washington Post December 11, 2001.http://www.unesco.org/courier/2001_09/uk/dires.htm “Adam Michnik, the Sisyphus of Democracy”http://www.unesco.org/courier/2001_09/uk/dires.htm “Teaching Sisyphus to Juggle” an essay on teaching by Jim Burke from Educational Leadership Volume 57 Number 8 May 2000http://www.artcyclopedia.com/artists/sisyphus_painter_the.html The Sisyphus Painter on the Internethttp://www.cbass.com/Sisyphus.htm “The Myth of the Sisyphus Revisited” By Richard Winett, Ph.D. on Sisyphus and athletic traininghttp://vassun.vassar.edu/~sttaylor/FAMINE/Punch/Burden/Sisyphus.html “The Modern Sisyphus” an 1844 political cartoon by Richard Dolye (about the Ireland problem)http://www.speedbump.com/sisyphus.html a Sisyphus cartoonhttp://www.winnlederer.com/private/sisyphus.htm ”The Redemption of Sisyphus’ Watercolor Drawing, 1999

What do these myths mean?

• Metaphysical Insights: what it means to be human (typical characteristics and limitations of humans, their relationship to a larger reality or principle)

• Psychological Insights: the struggles of individuals to become mature human beings and useful members of society

Urban Legends

• Like the oldest myths, Urban Legends are oral tales

• Like myths urban legends contain both fact and fiction

Alligators in the Sewers

Alligators in the Sewer?

– http://www.unmuseum.org/sgator.htm

– http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/legends/bl-alligators.htm

Intrepreting Alligators in the Sewers

– Psychological Insights: the struggles of individuals to become mature human beings and useful members of society

– Anthropological Insights: culture (the values and principles of a society)

– Social or Sociological Insights: groups that people belong to or participate in (values about group behavior, standards for admission)

Myths and Legends as True Stories

• Mythology is made up of stories that are important to a society

• As a result of this importance, the stories become “fossilized” and are not updated to incorporate advances in science and technology

• It is easy to look at mythological stories and point out that they contain outdated science and technology, but this fact does not speak to the fundamental truths they represent for the societies that tell them

Myth and Science

• Aetiological Insights: explaining the origin or cause of a custom or a fact of the physical universe

• Cosmological Insights: the universe as understood by the best science available at the time

• Historical Insights: verifiable historical events reflected in mythical stories

The Trojan War :An Example of Myth

The Judgment of Paris

Pierre Auguste Renoir 1841-1919

The Choice of Achilles

The Capture of Troy

The Story of Odysseus

The Coming of Age of Telemachus

Insights Provided by the Myth of the Trojan War

• Historical Insights

• Anthropological Insights

• Metaphysical Insights

• Aetiological Insights

• Cosmological Insights

• Sociological Insights

• Psychological Insights

Myth and “Many Voices”

• the experiences of Odysseus do not sum up the experiences of all Greeks

• when you are looking at a culture from the outside, it is easy to think that you are seeing elements that resemble your own views and values

• it is only with caution that parallels can be drawn with the experiences of different cultures

Other Myths in this Chapter

• Raven and Petrel (Pacific Northwest) pg. 7

• Gitxsan myth (British Columbia) pp. 8-9

• Epic of Gilgamesh (Babylonia)

What terms would you add?What terms would you delete?

Key terms: aetiological insights into myth anthropological insights into myth Aphroditecosmological insights into mythHeracleshistorical insights into myth Homerlegendmetaphysical insights into mythnostalgiaOdysseusoral storytellingPoseidonpsychological insights into mythsociological insights into mythTelemachusTrojan Warurban legends