The Digital Dialects Greek section features free to use games for learning Greek. Included are games for learning numbers and vocabulary. Fun online quizzes for kids. The premier encyclopedia on mythology, folklore, and religion. Age of Mythology is a mythology-based, real-time strategy computer game developed by Ensemble. Norse Myths & Realistic Illustrations of Norse mythology by Howard David Johnson, Norse mythic art prints. Kids learn about the goddess Aphrodite of Greek Mythology including her symbols, special powers, birth, love, marriage to Hephaestus, beauty contest, Trojan War, and. Edith Hamilton loved the ancient Western myths with a passion--and this classic compendium is her tribute.
About Mythology - Crystalinks Mythology. We exist/experience in a holographic universe replete with creation myths about gods/aliens who came from the sky to create the human experience/experiment for any number of reasons - saying they would return return at the end of the illusion of time. As a collection of explanatory stories, mythology is a vital feature of every culture. Many sources for myths have been proposed, ranging from personification of nature or personification of natural phenomena, to truthful or hyperbolic accounts of historical events to explanations of existing rituals. Although the term is complicated by its implicit condescension, mythologizing is not just an ancient or primitive practice, as shown by contemporary mythopoeia such as urban legends and the expansive fictional mythoi created by fantasy novels and comics. A culture's collective mythology helps convey belonging, shared and religious experiences, behavioral models, and moral and practical lessons. Rival classes of the Greek myths by Euhemerus, Plato, and Sallustius were developed by the Neoplatonists and later revived by Renaissance mythographers.
The nineteenth- century comparative mythology reinterpreted myth as a primitive and failed counterpart of science (E. Recent approaches have rejected conflict between the value of myth and rational thought, often viewing myths as expressions to understand general psychological, cultural, or societal truths, rather than as inaccurate historical accounts. Read more. Relation of Myths to Other Narrative Forms. In Western culture there are a number of literary or narrative genres that scholars have related in different ways to myths.
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Examples are fables, fairy tales, folktales, sagas, epics, legends, and etiologic tales (which refer to causes or explain why a thing is the way it is). Even in the West, however, there is no agreed definition of any of these genres, and some scholars question whether multiplying categories of narrative is helpful at all, as opposed to working with a very general concept such as the traditional tale.
Non- Western cultures apply classifications that are different both from the Western categories and from one another. Most, however, make a basic distinction between .
Within this figurative spectrum, there will be similarities and analogies between myth and folktale or between myth and legend or between fairy tale and folktale. In the section that follows, it is assumed that useful distinctions can be drawn between different categories. It should, however, be remembered throughout that these classifications are far from rigid and that, in many cases, a given tale might be plausibly assigned to more than one category.
Allegory has been used widely throughout history in all forms of art, largely because it can readily illustrate complex ideas and concepts in ways that are comprehensible or striking to its viewers, readers, or listeners. In this allegory, Plato describes a group of people who have lived chained in a cave all of their lives, facing a blank wall (5. The people watch shadows projected on the wall by things passing in front of a fire behind them and begin to ascribe forms to these shadows, using language to identify their world (5.
According to the allegory, the shadows are as close as the prisoners get to viewing reality, until one of them finds his way into the outside world where he sees the actual objects that produced the shadows. He tries to tell the people in the cave of his discovery, but they do not believe him and vehemently resist his efforts to free them so they can see for themselves (5.
This allegory is, on a basic level, about a philosopher who upon finding greater knowledge outside the cave of human understanding, seeks to share it as is his duty, and the foolishness of those who would ignore him because they think themselves educated enough. Myths, in contrast, are not presented as fictitious or untrue. Unlike myths, however, fables almost always end with an explicit moral message, and this highlights the characteristic feature of fables- -namely, that they are instructive tales that teach morals about human social behavior. Myths, by contrast, tend to lack this directly didactic aspect, and the sacred narratives that they embody are often hard to translate into direct prescriptions for action in everyday human terms. The context of a typical fable will be unspecific as to time and space; e.
Unlike myths - but like fables - fairy tales tend to be placed in a setting that is geographically and temporally vague and might begin with the words . One view of the problem is that of the American folklorist Stith Thompson, who regarded myths as one type of folktale; according to this approach, the particular characteristic of myth is that its narratives deal with sacred events that happened . The latter view is taken by the British classicist Geoffrey S. Kirk, who in Myth: Its Meaning and Functions in Ancient and Other Cultures (1. But these typical folktale themes occur also in stories normally classified as myths, and there must always be a strong element of arbitrariness in assigning a motif to a particular category. As with the notion of folklore, the notion of folktale has its roots in the late 1. From that period until the middle of the 1.
European thinkers of a nationalist persuasion argued that stories told by ordinary people constituted a continuous tradition reaching back into the nation's past. This definition of folktale introduces a new criterion for distinguishing between myth and folktale- -namely, what class of person tells the story- -but it by no means removes all the problems of classification. Just as the distinction between folk and aristocracy cannot be transferred from medieval Europe to tribal Africa or classical Greece without risk of distortion, so the importing of a distinction between myth and folktale on the later European model is extremely problematic. A distinction is thus sometimes drawn between myths (set in a semi divine world) and sagas (more realistic and more firmly grounded in a specific historical setting). This rather vague use of saga is best avoided, however, since the word can more usefully retain the precise connotation of its original context.
If the word saga is restricted to this Icelandic context, at least one of the possible terminological confusions over words for traditional tales is avoided. Examples can be found in the ancient world (the Iliad and Odyssey of Homer), in medieval Europe (the Nibelungenlied), and in modern times (the Serbo- Croatian epic poetry recorded in the 1. Among the many non- European examples are the Indian Mahabharata and the Tibetan Gesar epic. The relation between epic and myth is not easy to pin down, but it is in general true that epics characteristically incorporate mythical events and persons. An example is the ancient Mesopotamian epic of Gilgamesh, which includes, among many mythical episodes, an account of the meeting between the hero Gilgamesh and Utnapishtim, the only man to have attained immortality and sole survivor (with his wife) of the flood sent by the gods.
Myth is thus a prime source of the material on which epic draws. Legends. In common usage the word legend usually characterizes a traditional tale thought to have a historical basis, as in the legends of King Arthur or Robin Hood. In this view, a distinction may be drawn between myth (which refers to the supernatural and the sacred) and legend (which is grounded in historical fact). Thus, some writers on the Iliad would distinguish between the legendary aspects (e.
In particular, because of the assumed link between legend and historical fact, there may be a tendency to refer to narratives that correspond to one's own beliefs as legends, while exactly comparable stories from other traditions may be classified as myths; hence a Christian might refer to stories about the miraculous deeds of a saint as legends, while similar stories about a pagan healer might be called myths. As in other cases, it must be remembered that the boundaries between terms for traditional narratives are fluid, and that different writers employ them in quite different ways. Radcliffe- Brown, however. Both ask not what the origin of any given social behavior may be but how it contributes to maintaining the system of which it is a part. In this view, in all types of society, every aspect of life- -every custom, belief, or idea- -makes its own special contribution to the continued effective working of the whole society. Functionalism has had a wide appeal to anthropologists in Britain and the United States, especially as an interpretation of myth as integrated with other aspects of society and as supporting existing social relationships.
Instead, the term parable, or illustrative tale, is used. Familiar examples of such narratives are the parables of the New Testament. Parables have a considerable role also in Sufism (Islamic mysticism), rabbinic (Jewish biblical interpretive) literature, Hasidism (Jewish pietism), and Zen Buddhism. That parables are essentially non- mythological is clear because the point made by the parable is known or supposed to be known from another source. Parables have a more subservient function than myths. They may clarify something to an individual or a group but do not take on the revelatory character of myth. In modern usage the.
Greek aitia). Accordingly, an etiologic tale explains the origin of a custom, state of affairs, or natural feature in the human or divine world. Many tales explain the origin of a particular rock or mountain. The etiologic theme often seems to be added to a mythical narrative as an afterthought. In other words, the etiology is not the distinctive characteristic of myth. In the middle of the 1. British governor of New Zealand, Sir George Grey, was confronted by. Maori, who were hostile to the.
British. He learned their language, but that proved insufficient for an understanding. In order to be able to conduct. Maori's mythology.
Lesson Plans and Activities. The following lesson plans and activities are designed to build such skills as creative writing, observing, vocabulary development and art appreciation.