ENG 4643/5643, Mythology

Study Guide for First Examination (24 February 2005)

I. Identifications. I will provide characterizations of terms from the following list, and you will supply the correct term. You will have a word bank (probably the complete list of terms), but note that the characterizations will usually not be straightforward definitions. They, in fact, may involve some of the myth texts from the Myth and Meaning book. You’ll need to understand the terms, not just memorize definitions from notes.

  • mythos
  • logos
    •
  • sacred time
  • motif
  • mythopoesis
  • animism
  • anthropomorphism
  • science of the concrete
  • bricolage
  • chaos
  • cosmos
  • cosmogony
  • theogony
  • androgyne
  • world-parents
  • earth-diver
  • emergence myth
  • marplot
  • performative languge
  • deus otiosus
    •
  • etiology
  • theodicy
  • numen
  • rite de passage
    •
  • displacement
  • trickster
  • monomyth

 

II. Myth Theory and Interpretation. You will have a choice between two of the following topics for a brief essay suggested by articles from the Dundes anthology. The essay will be worth 25 points.

  • 1. Pettazzoni’s concept of myth’s truth
  • 2. Gaster’s identification of Myth as idea.
  • 3. The patterns which Rooth identified in American Indian creation mythology.
  • 4. The world view of Lajos Ami.

III. The Content of Myth. You will have a choice between two of the following topics for a brief essay based on the myth texts in Myth and Meaning. The essay, which must involve specific myths, will be worth twenty-five points.

  • 1. How myths concretize the concept of numen.
  • 2. Different manifestations of the world-parents motif.
  • 3. The roles of trickster.
  • 4. Creation as a process of ordering.

General Outline of Class Presentations

I. Myth as "prose narrative"

  • A. Sacred or religious
  • B. Set in sacred time
  • C. Populated by non- (or super-) human beings
  • D. True
  • E. Communal
  • F. Traditional

II. Myth as Idea

  • A. Unit of a culture’s worldview
  • B. Human "universal"
  • C. Statement of relationship between real and ideal

III. Myth as Process

  • A. The Mythopoeic Age
  • B. The process of mythopoesis

                1. Science of the concrete

                            a. animism

                            b. anthropomorphism

                2. Reversals

                3. Identifications

                4. Bricolage

IV. Myth themes

  • A. Cosmogony
  • B. Cosmology
  • C. Etiology (including theodicy)
  • D. Theology
  • E. The Hero
  • F. Trickster