Mythology

What are your fav myths? I love the Fall Of Troy,The Pardoner's Tale and many Norse tales as well.

 

The bible? /versus/images/graemlins/laugh.gif

 

greek mythology is my fave mainly cos of the gods and stuff.

 

CE versions in hyper sf2

 

Western democracy.

 

Are you aware of Joseph Campbell and more importantly his book "The Hero with 1000 Faces"? He was one of the leading experts in all things to do with mythology and in this particular book he puts forward his idea of the "Monomyth", the core basis of which myths (and even more modern stories) are generally based on, in particular the Hero's Journey.

Link:

http://pup.princeton.edu/titles/7803.html

If you've read it then you'll appreciate that the stories being told in things like Lord of the Rings and Star Wars are in fact the same, they're just superficially different and warped to give different emphasis.

In fact countless myths from many different religions are actually telling the same story albeit in different ways.

There's even a video of him talking with Bill Moyers about this topic at Skywalker ranch which was transcribed and published as a book.

 

I'm reading that book right now ,but to me it's hard to understand it because of Campbell's advance vocab.I only got the first three chapters when he talks about the super nataural aid , the belly of the beast and the crossing of the first threshold.

If you need help understanding It started a discussion on it at mythologyweb.com

I also have the VHS set with his teachings

 

I don't really need help in understanding it, first read it about 3 years ago and yes, it's complicated when you first read it but that's because of the time it was written (50's) and the way in which Campbell talks, like you say. If you're into this stuff then try find a copy of Dante's Divine Comedy and Milton's Paradise Lost, both are excellent (if difficult) reads.

If you want a proper difficult read try The Golden Bough, that's hardcore lol

 

La Divina Comedia is hard to come by around here I've found. I managed to grab a copy of the Hell part though. I'll have to look around for Paradise Lost, that one should be no problem I guess. (Oh, btw, I read these books in English, if I wanted the Dutch versions there'd be no problem.) I'll add Hero with a 1000 Faces to the list.

But that all myths are structured around the same kinds of markers is not a great mystery, is it? Hollywood uses the same templates for just about every movie, yet they all turn out different... Ah well, I'll see what he has to say.

 

Dante's books are widely available I've found, especially from good bookstores and online shops.

Also bear in mind that Campbell's book was written in the 50's and that the myths he discusses are centuries or even thousands of years old. It's not like Hollywood came first and then all these myths and stories followed, Hollywood has plundered myths since the early days, following on and developing the monomyth into the modern day.

 

Never really like hollywood's take on myths. The movie based on 'Jason and the Argonuats' was nothing like the story. Since it was made in the 1960s, obviously the movie would have alot missing parts to the story.

Another Movie that came out recently, 'Troy', was well done, but I still wished the movie would have stayed with the original books.They left out an important part of the story, which were the gods. The Olympian Gods were the ones who started the war and the ones who caused Hector to die in the last scene. I was pissed off becuase thats my favorite story. I read that everytime when I was pissed off. The message I get from it is that : vengeance births vengeance.


I'll try to pick up Dante's books, but at this moment I'm not ready for that hardcore stuff.I'm still studying greek poets such as Alcues (I think I spelled his name right), Somonides and Sophocles or Socrates.

I'm also trying to read the bible right now.Not because I'm trying to be Christian its just that I want to be a writer soon and I heard that the bible was well written literature. But at this moment, I have bad thoughts and feelings about the bible and Christianity.Even Joseph Campbell said himself that Christianity was one of the few religions that goes against nature(Which I'm not a big fan of) so I'm reading another book called 'Age Of Myth' by Tom Chetwynd who discusses the authors of the bible (The sumerians, hebrews, jews and babylonians)and how they came to develop the story.The book is boring at some time times ,but I love its introduction when the Chetwyned compares the psychiatrist to the Archeologist. He says the unconscience is the pillar for the conscience and how a psychiatrist tries to dig deep inside you and grab out your emotions the Archeologits digs deep into the earth to pull out Artifacts.

KOV

 

Well, I wasn't necessarily talking about hollywood movies about specific myths, more that hollywood films have used myths as templates for stories. The most obvious one is probably Star Wars as Lucas has talked at great lengths about the "Hero's Journey" that Luke takes for example.

Jason and the Argonaughts and Clash of the titans (talking about Greek myths) were pretty good I thought, besides there is no "one true story" to any myth, buy 3 different translations or books detailing myths and you'll read the same story presented and told in 3 different ways. That's the nature of them. Also why would stuff be missing from the story because it was made in the 60's?

Any film adaptation of a book or story is never going to be 100% faithful to the source material and that's the nature of making films.

Plato's Republic is a good read, his "Allegory of the cave" is pretty much the foundations of The Matrix story but that's getting into more philosophy than mythology.

The Bible being well written? I've not heard it said in that way before, bearing in mind that it was written by many different people over many different ages going through many modifications and re-writes etc but I can kind of see where you're coming from.

 

I was neither talking about movies on myths or myth-like movies, merely the use of templates to create a broad range of things, from Notting Hill to Die Hard.

I found the Bible to be a particularly difficult read and quite hilarious, as far as the Old Testament goes. And I know many aren't happy with me describing it such, you should've seen that Jehova's face two years back. But take the following: some guy's brother has five wives and sixteen goats, aha, and why am I being told this? Because he came over for tea. Aha, he must appear later on then! No, not really... Ezekiel does make up for a lot though and so does a lot of the New Testament.

I've been meaning to get my hands on Gilgamesh as well, any of you read it? I'm wondering how that "book" is put together literarily.

 

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LM_Akira said:

Well, I wasn't necessarily talking about hollywood movies about specific myths, more that hollywood films have used myths as templates for stories. The most obvious one is probably Star Wars as Lucas has talked at great lengths about the "Hero's Journey" that Luke takes for example.



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Also the akira kurosawa film (which I still have to watch : / ) hidden fortress is a good example of this, where "luckass" also said he was influenced.
Speaking of allegories anyone read Moby Dick? Thats mythyish /versus/images/graemlins/laugh.gif

 

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Vortigar said:

I've been meaning to get my hands on Gilgamesh as well, any of you read it? I'm wondering how that "book" is put together literarily.

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Gilgamesh is a good story, it is about a man who is the equivalent of Hercules . Hes done many tremendous physical deeds over his lifetime and has later become the king of Uruk.But the part of the story that really takes a turn is when his best friend Edfu dies.And this suprises Gilgamesh so much that he goes on a long journey,trying to track down Utnapishtim (the man with eternal life) and tries to find the secret to living forever. During the course of this journey, Gilgamesh never goes to sleep and he never eats. Now, you have to remeber that the Sumerians who wrote this story did not believe in the afterlife, so the tone you'll get from this story is this mocking pitiful feel.

 

Yeah, Kurosawa's 7 Samurai (which in fact The Magnificent 7 is a westernised remake of) was a big influence on Lucas to make Star Wars apparently but I've not seen it yet myself.

Moby Dick is definately based upon a mythic story line as Campbell talks at length about the journey of the hero into the "belly of the beast".

I've not got round to reading the Epic of Gilgamesh yet but I will one day. Beowulf's a good example of Anglo-Saxon poetry and mythology but I don't have my own copy of that and tbh probably prefer eastern mythology anyway.