Week 10 Story Lab: Crash Course Myth Videos

    This series of crash course videos on mythology was enlightening. In the first video, "What is Myth?" the video caused me to think about exactly what defines a myth, how myth differs from folklore, what is the purpose of mythology, and other things of this nature. It is nice to step back and think about this big picture of mythology as I have been getting caught up in the little details of reading myths and storytelling throughout the year.

    The second video in the playlist on "Theories of Myth" briefly discusses "euhemerism" or interpreting myths as primitive explanations of the natural world. I think this interpretation is one that lines up with the way I often view myths. Throughout time, many new views on mythology apart from euhemerism have emerged. Anthropologists studied myths to figure out how myths functioned in society (rather than just reading and interpreting the myths). There are many more perspectives to view myths from aside from these two.

    The final video, "The Hero's Journey and the Monomyth" talks about, you guessed it, hero myths. Joseph Campbell noticed recurring events in many hero stories throughout history: the hero journey's away from safety, toward adventure, before coming home again. This is the "monomyth" or a stereotypical hero's journey. I thought this was not only interesting but accurate because immediately upon hearing it, I could think of many examples where the hero does exactly this (Lots of Greek myths come to mind like The Odyssey, Hercules, Perseus, etc.) The illustration below shows a simple version of the Campbell's monomyth.

Image Credit: Reg Harris