Posts Tagged ‘mythological theory’

To the Mountain!

May 4, 2011

It’s a new term here in Oxford, and the fact that I’d only given 4 lectures out of my Faculty stint of 12 caught up with me this week – I have 4 to do on Euripides’ Bacchae, and 4 on Greek Literature of the 5th Century BC. This Monday saw me (despite a hideous computer virus that caused me to lose several hours’ worth of work) starting the Bacchae course with a lecture on Greek Maenads.

One of Euripides’ last plays, detailing the opposition of the Theban king Pentheus to Dionysus’ establishment of his rites in the city, the play is unmistakably ‘Dionysiac’, made more so by the meta-theatricality of its performance in the Theatre of Dionysus during the City Dionysia festival. But how far is it actually connected with, or does it reflect, the realities of his cult in the ancient world? Whether you follow Seaford in pinning your colours to the flag of initiatory ritual, or Dodds, Henrichs and Bremmer in trying to make sense of the play through the lens of (or even by reconstructing) Maenadic cult, the question remains: how far does the play inform our understanding of Dionysiac ritual, and vice-versa? How far is it “to do with Dionysus”, how far does it reflect general cultural concerns about women’s cults and place in society, and how far is it just good drama?

The first lecture focused on Maenadic ritual, reading the Bacchae against several Hellenistic inscriptions and documentary evidence in Plutarch, Pausanias and Diodorus Siculus. Where there were crossovers, a terminology of Maenadism could be established: their rites were called orgia and hiera, tended to be biannual, took place outside the city in the mountains, used ritual implements such as the thyrsus, and featured dancing and ritual invocations such as “Euoi!”, that celebrated the god as epiphanic and present in manic possession. Maenadic cult took place in many areas of the Greek world, including Magnesia, Miletus, and Attica/Delphi, but its spiritual home was Thebes where the daughters of Cadmus were held up as paradigmatic Maenads.

There were, however, fundamental differences. Our evidence points to a civic-sponsored ritual, to the existence of thiasoi (bands) that included men, and to the eating of raw flesh (omophagion) being a toned-down mimicry of the Maenadic sparagmos in the Bacchae. The myth exaggerates and explains the ritual: it gives a more extreme version of events – the dramatic and threatening aspects of which are then further highlighted by the playwright. It warns against the rejection by the city of a cult which, in ‘real time’, had become an accepted and beneficial part of the civic framework.

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Greek Mythology – seminar 3

December 8, 2009

Incest

Greek myth (and perhaps even more so Roman, if we read Ovid) was full of intra-familial unions. This deserves comment, as the incest taboo is one of the most fundamental in just about any society. Even before the genetic problems of such intercourse became common knowledge, children of incest appear to have been considered in some way transgressive. This seems to have been one of the areas by which myth demonstrated, by means of negative exempla, the norms of human behaviour.

One group looked at father/daughter incest, and the myth of Thyestes and Pelopia. In some sources, Thyestes raped his daughter, unaware of who she was. In others, he received an oracle that he could avenge himself on his brother Atreus if he got a son (Aegisthus) on her, and another (in Hyginus) suggests she consented to this out of a sense of duty. Even so, the story ends with her killing herself when her son’s parentage is discovered, suggesting that not even the will of the gods can override the shame of such an act.

The second group looked at mother/son unions, and the myth of Oedipus is the obvious paradigm for this. Do we believe in Freud’s Oedipus complex? And why is there so much more ancient literature on this myth than other tales of incest? Have we sanctified and valorised the mother-son bond as a result of Western Catholicism? There are interesting parallels in the primordial myths, not only of Greece, but also of other cultures – mother/son intercourse tends to be the preserve of the early gods – Oedipus seems in that respect to transgress into the divine sphere.

The last group examined brother/sister incest, with the myth of the Aeolids. The Odyssey suggests the children of Aeolus were all happily married to each other; later versions highlight Macareus and Canace’s illicit affair, Aeolus’ wrath, and her suicide. What is allowable in the world of the ‘apologoi’ is less so in other genres. But again, cf. Zeus and Hera, a model picked up by the Ptolemies in Hellenistic Egypt. Mortals should not emulate the gods – where they do so, however unwittingly, it leads to death and the subversion, rather than continuation, of the oikos.

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Greek Mythology – seminar 2

November 5, 2009

Human Sacrifice

In the second of our ‘thematic’ seminars, we looked at myths of human sacrifice in Greek literature. This was again divided into 3 elements, on which each group of students had to make a presentation: the issue of virgin sacrifice (studying Iphigenia, Polyxena, and Macaria); ‘customary’ sacrifice (e.g. the sacrifice of Greeks by the Taurians); and masculine self-sacrifice (Menoeceus). As a theoretical basis, students were encouraged to use Burkert’s Homo Necans, though in my session at least, few took on board his analysis for anything other than a description of Greek sacrificial ritual against which to compare the sacrifice of human beings.

By far the most interesting discussion came from comparing the first and the last issues – particularly in the idea of consent. What does it mean to sacrifice yourself, rather than to be sacrificed? Comparisons with soldiers in battle can be made, particularly in the case of Menoeceus, but also with Iphigenia in Euripides’ IA (but not, interestingly, IT) and Macaria. Representation of the sacrificial virgin similarly changes over time, from Iphigenia trussed up like an animal in Aeschylus, to her willing death at the end of Euripides’ career, bringing her into line with his other extant sacrificial virgins of both sexes.

But this still leaves Iphigenia in the IT, and her sacrifice of Greek sailors in ‘revenge’ for the Greeks’ sacrifice of her…and it is interesting that in Herodotus, the goddess to whom these Greeks are sacrificed is said to be Iphigenia herself…

An interesting argument was had towards the end on the relative ‘value’ of sacrificial victims, particularly Iphigenia vs. Polyxena. Some students seemed to think that Polyxena could be easily killed because she was a slave, whereas Iphigenia’s sacrifice had value because she was a princess. But I wonder, does this not defeat the object of sacrifice in the first place? It is not a ‘sacrifice’ unless something meaningful is given up…this opened the door for discussion of Polyxena’s ‘meaning’, both to her own people and to the Greeks, and the status and value of other victims.

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Greek myth 5: The Theban cycle part 2

November 5, 2009

This lecture continued our exploration of the House of Labdacus, from the death of Oedipus to the sack of Thebes by the Epigonoi. I wanted to start to do more with this course this week, moving away from a straightforward narrative and identification of themes to a more detailed explanation of the representation of the myth in various texts, and to think about why it might have been manipulated in these ways – but without just giving the answers to the students (never an easy task!).

Yet even on its most superficial reading, the myth still makes some interesting points. For example, in the epic Thebaid, Oedipus curses his sons because they, like he, violated some sort of taboo – this contrasts markedly with the expression of the curse in tragedy, which seems to occur simply because they mistreated him, and may show the hero as remaining the transgressive character he appears in Sophocles’ OT.

The violation of taboos and the transgression of social norms seems to lie at the heart of this myth – even taking aside the violation of divine imperative, crossing of gender boundaries, parricide and incest of the last lecture, we see the cycle continuing in curses, treason against one’s fatherland, fratricide, desecration of the dead, violation of the will of the gods and the demands of the state, multiple suicides, vengeance, and matricide in the second half of the myth. If myths are, as Csapo (2005) states, representative of social ideologies, norms of behaviour must be defined in this myth through the exploration of their extreme opposites.

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Greek Mythology: seminar 1

October 20, 2009

Mortals & Immortals

The seminars in this course are differentiated from the formal lectures, in that students gather in small groups to discuss a mythological theme, rather than learn about a particular myth. Each group is sub-divided into three presentation groups, who are expected to research ahead before the session and produce a presentation on one aspect of this theme, which is then discussed by the class.

There are 5 of these sessions, and the first looked at the different kinds of relationship that existed in myth between gods and humans. Each presentation group studied a different kind of relationship: tutorial relationships (focusing on representations of Odysseus and Athena); adversarial relationships (Heracles and Hera); and divine-mortal ‘doubles’ (Iphigenia and Artemis).

Questions to look at included ‘How are gods and mortals represented as interacting?’ ‘What kinds of myths are told about these pairings?’ and ‘What are the results?’

This worked better in some groups than others. Some students clearly knew their primary texts, and could compare myths both intratextually and with other, similar stories. Some quoted verbatim from the secondary literature and made no attempt at exegesis or comparison. All seemed to take away that these are potentially volatile mythical relationships, and not consistently represented across sources – nor, indeed, are these types of relationship mutually exclusive. I think in future I will focus more on the primary sources, with one or two items of ‘general’ bibliography to help students understand some of the theory behind these stories.

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Greek Mythology

September 30, 2009

Readers may notice there is a new page attached – it contains teaching materials for my new module, Greek Mythology, which I am running at Nottingham (for 2nd & 3rd year Undergrads) this semester. The first lecture was yesterday, and from a personal perspective, it feels good to be teaching again.

I went into the session with 4 main ‘objectives’: that students would come out able to understand the definition of ‘myth’ (if indeed, such a thing can be said to exist) and its relation to other types of story, e.g. folktale; that they would understand something of how the ancient Greeks viewed their own myths; that they would be able to identify different ways of transmitting myths, and the significance of variant versions; and be able to establish an overview of a number of key critical theories.

The main question that needed to be answered here was ‘what is a myth’? We discussed several ideas of what students thought a myth was, and how to relate those conclusions – especially in that they tended towards a ‘fictional’ definition – to the face-value acceptance much of Greek literature displays towards its myths. The importance of myths to society was a major point that came up and related well to a potted history of mythological theory. This was also demonstrated by a short comparative discussion on the Robin Hood myth, what it means, the different versions of it, and who therefore has a claim to ‘mythmaking’.

Ideally, students will have come away with the understanding that mythology is far more complex than simply a collection of stories. Which, by the way, we will begin looking at next week, with a lecture on cosmogony and the gods.

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