CLASS 40 Lecture 7: Greek Myth Lecture Notes - up to midterm #1
Document Summary
Classics 40 greek mythology: what is myth. Two big reasons to study greek myth: weirdness. different and unusual. Window or time travel into a different culture. Ex. story of athena: fact that zeus has daughter athena something in their belief system that is unusual. Power: zeus came to power by overthrowing his power. Which is why he swallowed all his children: part of story still affects us today. Having your own children, and feeling a certain threat that they no longer need you. What do myths do: tale - story, explains - natural world (ex. Stories can explain things about nature - mysterious), human experience: lessons - moral conduct, body of knowledge that gets passed on. How and why is this important? stories change over time but relatively stable and underlying is the fact that in the ancient world they did not have technology to store information.
