Mythotopia: Web-Based Learning and Innovative Approaches to Myth 2023 CLASSICAL ASSOCIATION CONFERENCE (original) (raw)
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Mythical History and Historical Myth: Blurred Boundaries in Antiquity (2019)
Department of Philology, University of Patras (Conference & Cultural Center, Room I 10), 28th June - 1st July, 2019
The complementary and overlapping spheres of Myth and History are part and parcel of the entire ancient Greek and Roman world. Yet, on many occasions it is hard to disentangle one from the other; instead, they are often projected as one, concrete entity. This Conference aspires to delve deep into the intricate notions of Myth and History in both the ancient Greek and the Roman world. In particular, the Conference welcomes papers asking opportune questions, and – hopefully – reaching enlightened answers, leading to a better understanding of intentional or incidental amalgamation of the mythical and the historical parameters, as well as the perception of History at an early stage of its appearance as a science.
1. Greek Mythographic Tradition (10,000 words) Jordi Pàmias (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona) The opening chapter of Part Two will address mythographic (and paradoxographic) tradition in ancient Greece, the origins of the genre of mythography, and its evolution. Among individual mythographers discussed will be Hesiod (to whom the Catalogue of Women is ascribed), Acusilaus, Pseudo- Apollodorus (author of the Bibliotheca), Eratosthenes, Parthenius, Antoninus Liberalis, Greek scholiasts. 1. Introduction The first section of this ‘Cambridge History of Mythology and Mythography’ (Part One: Myth) opened with four chapters dealing with Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Anatolian, and Semitic mythologies before turning to Greek myth. This second section (Part Two: Mythography), instead, starts with ‘Greek Mythographic tradition’. Although those ‘high civilizations’ were well acquainted with written sources, Greeks seem to deserve the honour of primacy in the task of recording myths (by writing). A Greek word, mythography appears to be a ‘Greek’ creation. Under which conditions should it be so? To start with, the word ‘mythographer’, unattested before the fourth century BCE, is rarely used in Greek (‘mythography’ is first used by Strabo in the first century CE). In fact, as a genre, delimiting its borders with other literary genres poses a major problem (Calame 2016: 403). In late archaic and classical Greece, those works that we are accustomed to call local history, universal history, ethnography, genealogy, and mythography, overlap at the base. And the Greek themselves did not make a distinction: for them such activities are named with generic terms such as historiē ‘inquiry’ or, simply, logoi ‘accounts’ (Fowler 2001: 96–97). We can thus say that mythography seems to be an ‘exogenous’ category in Greece. However, research conducted in the last decades (and especially the major contributions by Fowler 2000 and 2013) has made it clear that prose writers collected accounts dealing with the past ever since the sixth century BCE. From before the time of Herodotus (fifth century BCE), the ‘father of history’, a burgeoning writing activity was going on in the Greek cities...
The Mythos as MythUs summer school program studies myth and popular narrative, from antiquity to the present, as being humanity’s voice, long-shared, with which to respond to harsh realities; to times of crisis; and to distress that impacts entire communities. In such times of transition and upheaval myth and narrative serve to ameliorate the inimical stereotyping, bigoted notions, and segregation that these challenging circumstances inevitably bring. In its role of healing, narrative has been not just preserved but also transformed, in all its oral, written, digital, and, of late, even contemporary literary forms, not just in terms of its atavistic world of archaic symbolism but in fact most markedly through being called on in confronting, via poetic means, problems, ideas, and emotions that are communal as well as individual -- as a result of which transformative therapeutic dimension, narrative continues to update, on an ongoing basis, in altogether dynamic ways. This Summer School is a blended-learning program that consists of an online preparation class and a ten-day live attendance summer school of face-to-face classes in Athens as well as fieldwork on the island of Antiparos, Cyclades, and five group and/or guided tours in and around Attica and Athens. The program includes 9 modules divided into 3 groups, each focusing on a different topic: Topic 1: Myth in Ancient Greek and other Ancient Cultures Topic 2: The Role of Myth in Response to Dread, Disruption, and Disaster Topic 3: Narrating in Modern and Contemporary Society Each student will select a Topic of study on the basis of the module and syllabi descriptions provided below. The series of introductory, in-person lectures will include all students, but each module will have different preparatory work, readings, and seminars/workshops. The Program is open to Bachelor's, Master and PhD international students, as well as Greek English-speaking ones, with an interest in myth and its contemporary research and applications, and a study background in Humanities and Social Sciences, focusing on Classics, Folklore Studies, History and Cultural Studies. The instructors of the courses include world-famous scholars of Classics and Folklore, notably Carl Lindahl and William Hansen. Internationally recognized experts from Greece, Italy, the USA, and Sweden are also on the team: Marianthi Kaplanoglou, Aphrodite Nounanaki, Sophia Papaioannou, Ioannis Konstantakos (Athens), Christos Zafiropoulos (Patras), George Katsadoros (Univ. of the Aegean), Gail Cooper (USA), Camilla Asplund Ingemark, Dominic Ingemark (Uppsala), Licia Masoni (Bologna). See more details on the website of the summer school: https://sites.google.com/view/mythos-as-mythus The period of applications has started and the final deadline is 10 March 2023. Cuncti adeste!
Review of: Ali Naci Asan 2014 "Der Mythos vom erzürnten Gott...", WZKM 106
The book under review represents an important contribution to modern studies on myths of Anatolian origin. In other words, on texts that scholars agree have a native background, but of which only later copies dated in Middle Hittite and New Hittite – with an exception in Old Hittite (KBo 25.107) – are preserved. One of the most remarkable contributions to find in Asan’s book is, in my opinion, the way the author has oriented the research. Accordingly, Asan brings together a comparative study of the different sections of TM with other texts belonging to the same group, and structures the volume around varied passages of the myth and its associated texts.This methodology is possible because we are confronted with a group of texts which share the same topos: the rage and disappearance of gods, as well as the catastrophic consequences that follow their vanishing.
Classical Mythologies (syllabus: Yale, 2012)
Prerequisites: None! (Except for an interest in ancient culture and stories and the abilities to write cogently, read critically, and ask interesting questions of texts and images.)