Mythmythologyandfolklore 160407062020
Mythmythologyandfolklore 160407062020
Mythmythologyandfolklore 160407062020
Philippine Lower Mythology. A painting in oil that shows creatures of the night and
deities of the underworld. (Joel Magpayo Snr.)
The Nature of Mythology and Folklore
Anituo. a Pilipino
Reconstructionist
religion based on the
Pre-Hispanic beliefs of
the people of what is
now known as the
Philippines prior to the
arrival of Christianity
and colonialism.
The Nature of Mythology and Folklore
Mythology
It is the study of myths and the myths
themselves, which are stories told as
symbols of fundamental truths within
societies having a strong oral traditions.
Folklore
This includes the traditional elements of
the way of life of a group of people and
creative expressions developing
naturally as part of this culture.
The Nature of Mythology and Folklore
Review and analyze the given definitions of mythology and
folklore. Briefly answer the following questions.
• How does mythology relate to folklore?
Rationalism Naturalism
Euhemerism Evolutionism
Freudianism
Jungian archetypes
Structuralism
Historical-critical theory
The Nature of Mythology
Rationalism
– According to this theory, myths represent an early
form of logical thinking: they all, have a logical
base.
The Nature of Mythology
Etymological Theory
– This theory states that all myths derive from and
can be traced back to certain words in the
language.
The Nature of Mythology
Allegorical theory
– In the allegorical explanation, all myths contain
hidden meanings which the narrative
deliberately conceals or encodes.
The Nature of Mythology
Euhemerism
– Euhemerus, a Greek who lived from 325-275 BC,
maintained that all myths arise from historical
events which were merely exaggerated.
The Nature of Mythology
Naturalism
– In this hypothesis, all myths are thought to arise
from an attempt to explain natural phenomena.
• People who believe in this theory narrow the source
of myths by tracing their origins from the worship of
the sun or the moon.
Historical-critical theory
– This theory maintains that there are a multitude of
factors which influence the origin and development of
myths and that no single explanation will suffice.
• We must examine each story individually to see how it began
and evolved.
Topic 2:
Myth and other Allied Sciences
The Nature of Mythology
Myth and Truth
– Myth is a many-faceted personal and cultural
phenomenon created to provide a reality and a
unity to what is transitory and fragmented in the
world.
– Myth provides us with absolutes in the place of
ephemeral values and with a comforting
perception of the world that is necessary to make
the insecurity and terror of existence bearable.
– Myth in a sense is the highest reality; and the
thoughtless dismissal of myth as untruth, fiction,
or a lie is the most barren and misleading
definition of all.
The Nature of Mythology
Myth and Religion
• Religious ceremonies and cults are based on
mythology.
Mircea Eliade
– He defines myth as a tale satisfying the
yearning of human beings for a fundamental
orientation rooted in a sacred timelessness
– Myth provides in the imagination a spiritual
release from historical time
The Nature of Mythology
Myth and Etiology
– Myth should be interpreted narrowly as an
explication of the origin of some fact or custom.
This theory is called etiological, from the Greek
word for cause (aitia).
– The mythmaker is a kind of primitive scientist,
using myths to explain facts that cannot otherwise
be explained within the limits of society's
knowledge at the time.
The Nature of Mythology
Rationalism versus Metaphor, Allegory and
Symbolism
Max Muller
– In Allegorical Nature Myths, he tells that
myths are nature myths, all referring to
meteorological and cosmological phenomena.
The Nature of Mythology
Myth and Psychology
Sigmund Freud
– His discovery of the significance of dream-
symbols led him and his followers to analyze
the similarity between dreams and myths.
– Myths reflect people's waking efforts to
systematize the incoherent visions and
impulses of their sleep world. The patterns in
the imaginative world of children, savages,
and neurotics are similar, and these patterns
are revealed in the motifs and symbols of
myth.
The Nature of Mythology
Myth and Psychology
Carl Jung
– Myths contain images or archetypes,
traditional expressions of collective dreams,
developed over thousands of years, of
symbols upon which the society as a whole
has come to depend.
– An archetype is a kind of dramatic
abbreviation of the patterns involved in a
whole story or situation, including the way it
develops and how it ends; it is a behavior
pattern, an inherited scheme of functioning.
The Nature of Mythology
Myth and Society
Sir J. G. Frazer
– His The Golden Bough remains a pioneering
monument in its attempts to link myth with
ritual. It is full of comparative data on
kingship and ritual, but its value is lessened
by the limitations of his ritualist
interpretations and by his eagerness to
establish dubious analogies between myths of
primitive tribes and classical myths.
The Nature of Mythology
Myth and Society
Jane Harrison
– Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion
and Themis, are of seminal importance.
Harrison falls in the same tradition as Frazer,
and many of her conclusions about
comparative mythology, religion, and ritual
are subject to the same critical reservations.
Bronislav Malinowski
– In Myth as Social Charters, he discovered
close connection between myths and social
institutions, which led him to explain myths
not in cosmic or mysterious terms, but as
charters of social customs and beliefs.
The Nature of Mythology
The Structuralist
Claude Lévi-Strauss
– Myths are derived ultimately from the
structure of the mind. And the basic structure
of the mind, as of the myths it creates, is
binary; that is, the mind is constantly dealing
with pairs of contradictions or opposites.
The Nature of Mythology
The Structuralist
Vladimir Propp
– He divided his basic structure into thirty-one
functions or units of action which have been
defined by others as motifemes, on the
analogy of morphemes and phonemes in
linguistic analysis.
– These functions are constants in traditional
tales: the characters may change, but the
functions do not.
The Nature of Mythology
The Structuralist
Walter Burkert
– He believes that the structure of traditional
tales cannot be discovered without taking into
account cultural and historical dimensions.
– The structure of a tale is ineradicably
anthropomorphic and fits the needs and
expectations of both the teller and the
audience.
The Nature of Mythology
• BIBLIOGRAPHY
Morford, Mark P. and Lenardon, Robert J. Classical
Mythology. New York, USA: Oxford University
Press, 2003
Topic 3:
The Emerging Approaches in Studying
Myths
The Nature of Mythology
• Trace the developing definitions of myth and mythology
through identifying the contributions of various mythologists
throughout time. Complete the given matrix below to
showcase the various periods and contributions that led to the
development of mythology.
Priorities or
Periods Mythologists Contributions
Concerns
The Nature of Mythology
1. Describe the shifts in priorities that had happened in
the study of myths.
Historical Myths
• Atlantis and Tara, Theseus and the
Minotaur, King Arthur and his
knights of the Roundtable, Moses
and his promised Land.
Man, Myth, and History
Myth can intrude upon documented history.
• Independent invention
– made by a story maker
• Diffusion
– borrowing in space
• Inheritance
– borrowing in time
The Psychological Perspective
The Psychological Perspective
Case Study:
Dream Interpretation
Dream account of an American youth to the author of
a syndicated newspaper feature
The Psychological Perspective
Freud and Jung theorized four-fold hierarchy model
in interpreting dreams.
1. The conscious mind – governed by ego, the rational self-
aware aspect of the mind.
2. The preconscious contains materials accessible to the
conscious mind upon demand, such as facts, memories,
ideas and motives.
3. The personal unconscious stores half-forgotten
memories, represses traumas and emotions, and
unacknowledged motives and urges.
4. The collective unconscious is a genetically inherited
level of the mind containing what Jung called the Vast
historical storehouse of the human race,
• a mental reservoir of ideas, symbols, themes and archetypes
that form the raw material of many of the world’s myths,
legends and religious systems.
The Psychological Perspective
Three main classes of dreaming by Freud and Jung.
1. Level 1 is the most superficial class, drawing primarily
upon material in the precious mind.
• Dreams from this level tend to revolve around the events of the day,
and opinion is divided as to whether or not they are particularly
meaningful.
2. Level 2 deals with the material from the personal
unconscious, using predominantly symbolic language,
much of it specific to the dreamer.
3. Level 3 contains what Jung called grand dreams. These
deal with material from the collective unconscious,
operating only in symbols and archetypes.
4. Cosmic Dreams are characterized by extremely
important and extra ordinary dreams that is truly awe-
inspiring and occurs rarely, once in a lifetime.
• They are ones in which the qualities of the universe itself are the
major themes.
• they are an attempt by the unconscious to make sense of the
vastness of the universe and our place within it.
The Psychological Perspective
Death
Crucifix: The cross and the X
here are symbolic, as they always have
been, of the hero's crossing from one
sphere of existence to another—of his
confronting that which takes life but in
so doing defines it.
[Thomas Chimes, Crucifix (1961), oil on canvas, 36 x 36in
(91.5 x 91.5 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Larry Aldrich Foundation Fund. Photograph © 1998 The
Museum of Modern Art, New York. Reproduced with
permission.]
The Hero with a Thousand Faces
Ascension,
apotheosis, and
atonement
Mandalas, general symmetry, a
sense of strangely meaningful
connections, and upward movement
create a sense of apotheosis and
wholeness that is the heroic life or
human adventure.
[Max Ernst, Men Shall Know Nothing of This (1923), The
Tate Gallery, London/Art Resource, N.Y. Reproduced with
permission.]
He who follows the hero gains a true
self through the loss of the illusion of
personal and local self.
• Articulator
– gives voice to the human soul through language
– wild-eyed poet, singer of tales
The Mythmakers
The Mythmaking Process in Samuel Taylor
Coleridge’s Kubla Khan
SHAMAN
Mental State Most Potent
an experience CONCEPTUALIZATION
solitude A guardian spirit Medicine
appeared and gave him WORD
the power to see vision
Physical State through a
PRODUCTION trance-induced
fasting Uttered trance-induced
hunger song song
die a little
The Mythmakers
Shamanism in Tlingit Indian folktale
• Shamanic elements
– Two sets of paraphernalia
– Voyage to the underworld
– Ritual actions
– Retrieval of a lost person
– Instruction by guardian spirits
– Miraculous return from apparent death
The Mythmakers
“All true poetry is based on a mythic
language that is made up of a few
formulae .”
(Robert Graves, The White Goddess)
Overview
• The myth critic is concerned to seek out those mysterious
elements that inform certain literary works and that elicit
dramatic and universal human reactions.
• He examines how certain works of literature project an
image of reality to which readers give perennial responses.
• A critic may study in depth the archetypes or archetypal
patterns that the writer has drawn from the structure of his
masterpiece which influences the reader.
• Mythology tends to be speculative and philosophical; its
affinities are with religion, anthropology, and cultural
history.
Methodologies in Understanding
Myths and Folktales
Overview
• Myths are the symbolic projections of a people's hopes,
values, fears, and aspirations.
• To analyze a myth is to analyze it from the viewpoint of
some theory.
• Theories need myths as much as myths need theories. If
theories illuminate myths, myths confirm theories.
• A theory is to show how well it works when its tenets are
assumed – this on the grounds that the theory must be
either false or limited if it turns out not to work.
Methodologies in Understanding
Myths and Folktales
• BIBLIOGRAPHY
Guerin, Wilfred L. Labor, Earle. Morgan, Lee. and
Reesman, Ieanne C. A Handboook of Critical
Approaches to Literature. 5th ed. Oxford, New
York: Oxford University Press, 2005.
Module 3:
Myths of Creation
Creation Myths
• BIBLIOGRAPHY
Leonard, Scott A. and McClure, Michael. Myth and
Knowing: An Introduction to World Mythology.
United States of America: McGraw-Hill, 2003.