Week 10 Lab

I watched the crash course videos over mythology. Those videos are so good and entertaining. My favorite section was the discussion of Joseph Campbell's "Hero's journey." My storybook is on the nostos of The Odyssey so it's really neat learning about the end of the hero's journey. It is also interesting to note how he synthesized Freud and other psychologist's views on myths and the subconscious to interpret what myths mean to us. I never realized that so much of how I view these influential texts are influenced by Campbell's idea of the hero's journey. I often find myself relating to so many stories and it's because I can see myself in them or learning some type of lesson from them. It never occurred to me that the psychological viewing of oneself in those myths is a relatively new idea in the myth world.

Link: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrWYQjLLbXcigjUCnKKR86F5zrcQqfiP-

hero's journey

Reading Notes: Alaskan stories part B

The things that I focused on for these readings were the anthropomorphism of the animals. One thing a lot of these Native American stories have in common is they seem equally to equate humans to being like a certain animal and then turning them into that animal itself. This includes sometimes adding those animal's flaws as well. My favorite story was the one about the foc who tricked the eagle into dropping two of its eggs for him. It was really cunning of the fox to do that and as a result he got punished for it. 

fox

bibliography:

Myths and Legends of Alaska, edited by Katharine Berry Judson (1911).

Reading Notes: Alaskan Stories Part A

The use of anthropomorphism in these stories is really interesting. Each animal has its own human-like quality with some animals at some point even turning into humans. I focused on the story-telling in these stories and there were almost some Biblical references such as when the crossing of the sea could not happen because of the tide. It almost sounded like Moses splitting the river. Also, it's pretty neat as Raven is somewhat a creation story but also a trickster story.

raven

Bibliography:

Myths and Legends of Alaska, edited by Katharine Berry Judson (1911).