What is a Myth?
Hello y’all! I’m taking an MOOC and it’s on Greek and Roman Mythology. I’m going to be posting the notes here, and I hope y’all like them! If you could please help me by donating to my fundraiser to help get me back to Iowa for the school term, that would be great! everyone who donates gets a small gift from me!
So what is a myth?
A Myth is by definition a lie, or something untrue that needs to be exploded and cleared away.
there are some people who claim it to be true. it is the most deep truth that people say is true.
There are others that claim if myth has truths in it, that myth is actually a window into specific, cultural located truths.
A better thing to be asking is: well, what do the Greeks themselves think about myth?.
They had a word for it called Mythos.
They thought -so the oldest definition- is that it’s speech. anything that comes out of your mouth could count as a mythos.
The terms comes to label a specific kind of speech. a speech that is a narrative story. then later, it becomes known as a specifcally false story, so the connotation changes slightly to mean a tall tale, then finally, it becomes this tall tale that has some underlying truth to it.
