Despite my terror that I wouldn’t have enough material to fill the lecture, this ran more or less to time – I’m thinking I either have to add a bit more in in future, or else try to get the ‘discussion’ elements to run for longer.
Cosmogonic myth can be a slippery concept, but examining the etymology pins it down to something manageable: kosmos (universe) + gignesthai (to be born). Hence, the myth of origins – the Biblical ‘Genesis’ also comes from this Greek root. The best-known account is Hesiod’s Theogony (birth of the gods), which explains how the universe came to be from the beginning to the present day, and it was on this account that the lecture focused.
The aim was that students would come to understand the meaning of cosmogonic myth and grasp the outline of this text, but also become aware of variant versions (i.e., the Homeric Hymns, Plato, Aristophanes), and how their different periods and genres of composition may have affected the myth represented. These questions will become especially important for the comment questions on the exam. Similarly, once the narrative came to focus on the Olympian gods, it was important to understand how & why different texts include different gods in the Olympian pantheon.
Several important elements were identified in this kind of myth: that it was ain aetiology of the universe’s creation, characterised by generational change until a supreme god ends the pattern of succession with an act of violence and cunning. That within this narrative, male and female play distinct roles (violence vs. cunning) resulting in the subordination of the female to the male; and that as the universe becomes more ordered, gods and men become increasingly separate (this relationship will be explored in more depth in the first seminar).
Tags: cosmogony, gender, Greek gods, Greek literature, Greek myth, Hesiod, teaching
