Hello everybody.
My name is Peter Struck, the name of this
course is Greek and Roman Mythology, so
glad you decided to take it.
Welcome to the course and looking forward
to reading some really great stories with
you in the coming ten weeks.
Now this is a course where you'll need to
be able to get online and access a video
which I see you've already done.
So you've done the first part.
Some of the course will me, me chattering
and sharing ideas that I have in these
video segments.
A good bit of the time of the course is
going to be spent with you and smarter
people like Homer as close virtual reading
their works that are going to be the
centerpiece of what our course is all
about.
There'll be a good bit of time in this
course that is spent reading.
And I think it will be a great pleasure.
Be sure definitely to give yourself enough
time to do the reading.
If you try to crash read it the night
before, chances are you're not gong to
like it.
This is reading that's best done in small
bits and give it the time that it needs to
speak to you in all the ways it's going to
be able to speak to you.
We're also going to have some quizzes and
writing assignments, short quizzes that'll
be graded automatically by the computer.
And then short writing assignments where
you will contribute your own ideas and
also hear back from your peers, other
people taking the course, that are going
to help us in the broader scheme of group
grading, which we're entering into here
with Coursera.
Yeah, it's true.
We'll have peer assessments in this class
where, you'll tell each other what you
think about the kind of writing work that
you've done.
We'll do our best to weigh in on that as
well.
But there are tens of thousands of you,
and there's only a few of us on the
teaching staff.
So, you may not hear from us as directly
as you would want to.
But you're surely going to hear lots of
smart things from other people taking this
course.
The area in which that's most likely they
happen is on the community forum.
Anytime you have a contribution to make,
or a question about what's been going on
in class, you can jump onto the community
forum and you won't need to wait for one
of us on the teaching staff to answer you
on that forum.
Your question, your question is going to
be answered by other people in the class.
That's what's been happening with
Coursera.
We're creating, it's true, learning
communities of people that are, sharing
interests and sharing ideas, sharing
questions, and also sharing answers.
We're going to be reading in this class
about monsters.
We're going to read about heroes.
We're going to read about marriages gone
right.
And wrong, family squabbles, massive
architectonic, earth-changing wars, all
kinds of things.
But most of all what we're going to be
reading about is the question of what it
means to be human.
Sure gods and monsters and animals are in
this, these stories.
But what they're mostly there to do is to
help us focus on what Greek myths tend to
be most interested in.
And that is you and I, as members of a
very definitive species, a unique group of
organisms floating around in the on the
surface of the earth, and trying to make
our way between being born and dying.
These stories give us a way to fill in all
the stuff that comes between.
We're going to be looking at this course,
and some stories that have been told and
retold for many generations in fact
they're are some of the oldest pieces of
cultural DNA to survive in the evidence we
have from the human past.
They're also some of the most widely
diffuse, these stories are so good and get
stuck in the imaginations of so many
peoples that over time they get made and
remade in the images of later cultures who
want to appropriate this early material
and build it into their own culture stuff.
So, learning these strands of human
cultural DNA is going to give you a window
on a broad sweep of what of, of the human
family and the different ways that people
in these groups have tried to answer very
broad and important questions.
Now you'll notice taking a look back,
those of you who are paying attention,
we're out in space.
Isn't that exciting?
And often times, classes that have to do
with mythology, talk about myths floating
around in space somewhere as though
there's some abstraction that just come
down to us on high.
But in this course this is about the only
time we'll spend in space.
Mostly what we'll be doing is looking at
where these myths come from and while we
want to try and find out where they come
from we don't always have specific
answers, but we do know they come from the
planet Earth, they come from to us in the
form of human language and they come to us
spoken by specific human beings, people
who are in our species who over time have
run into questions, have told stories,
have offered answers, have told and retold
different versions of important tales have
become powerful for them at different
points in their lives.
That's the stuff that's going to occupy us
in this course.
Not so much, these environs, that well
spooky may not have too many answers to
offer us.
So, what we're going to look at in this
class is particular slice of the picture
of ancient mythologies.
We know mythologies from many different
cultures across the old world.
The Greeks and the Romans are who we're
going to focus on in this class and it
will be a slice of the larger picture of
mythology is all about.
But I hope you'll agree with me, it's a
wonderful one with all kinds of
interesting kinds of stuff in it.
So we can start off with a relatively
simple question.
Let's lay out in front of us the question
of what is myth.
Straightforward question.
It's answer couldn't be, more difficult.
Myth is one of those deep and highly
valued ideas that cultures use in order to
try to figure out and describe the world,
and like things like love or truth or
beauty, the idea of myth is hot property.
People care about it a great deal.
They offer many different definitions of
it.
Some of those definitions are actually in
direct conflict with each other.
But, nevertheless, it still points to
something that endures over time despite
all the conflicting definitions because
people find having a category like this is
for them extremely valuable. Complex?
Yes.
Important?
Absolutely.
Maddeningly difficult to, to define?
Surely.
One thing I think that we'll find out is
that myth actually operates as a kind of
container into which people toss what is
most valuable in their culture.
And since people's valuations change over
time, what gets tossed into the container
of myth over time is going to change too.
Now, we'll start with a couple of ideas
taking a look at modern English.
The term myth.
Has lots of different definitions.
Let's start off with an obvious one.
You might see a newscaster talk about,
tune in at five:00 today to the evening
news and we're going to explode the myths
about topic x.
And when someone in the contemporary
public discourse talks like that what
they're saying is, we're going to show you
something lots of people believe and we're
going to show that's it's actually untrue.
Myth is by definition a lie, or something
untrue that needs to be exploded and
cleared away.
But then, there are other people who claim
no, no, no, wait a minute, myth is
actually something that is true, and not
only true, it is profoundly true.
Its the most deep and resonant kind of
truth that a human being is capable of.
Myth contains all of this stuff and passes
it down from generation to generation and
people talk about myth in this way,
probably just don't say myth, they say
something like myth, with some extra aura
of authority and meaningfulness surround
it.
So the mythic in this part of the English
language at least exists in a way that
labels something deeply profoundly true.
So, we already have a first incoherence.
Is myth a lie?
Or is myth the most profound truth
possible to human beings?
Second incoherence, among the people that
think myth has some truth to it, there are
some that claim that myth has universal
truths to it.
So when we dig down deep into the hidden
meanings in the stories we're going to be
looking at, what we're going to reveal is
the deep truth about something that is
profoundly common and universal in the
human family.
There are others that claim if myth has
truths in it, that myth is actually a
window into specific, cultural located
truths.
Truths that are located in space and time,
with specific peoples anchored to specific
cultures.
And when we dig down in the deep, hidden
meanings of myth, what we're really going
to reveal is what it is to be a member of
some specific culture.
So if you really want to understand, what
it is to be Irish or to be Native
American, or to be from a Norse-based
culture, or a South Asian culture, or East
Asian culture, what you need to do is dig
deep down into the local myths of those
peoples to get a window on what it is to
be a member of that culture.
So, another incoherence that shows up if
myth is true it's either true about
universals or it's true about cultural
particulars.
Most people are going to agree that it has
something to do with the past, myths took
place in an earlier time, but again this
is never simple.
If there are some people that talk about
the past as a primitive area of
irrationalist kind of fantasies and a
mentality that, you know, maybe they would
say is thank goodness has been displaced,
displaced by more logical, more reasonable
ways of thinking.
These people might toss up science as a,
a, a parallel formation to myth and talk
about science as somehow displacing myth
as a way of looking at the world.
But then, there will be other people that
talk about a primitive idea of myth and
they'll embrace that.
They'll talk about primitive in a very
good way, saying that something that is
primal has to do with a core reality, some
fundamental or rudimentary part of what it
is to be human is going to be revealed
when we look at myths.
So among those that think that, myths are
true.
There are some that will think that, the
there, there are.
Sorry.
There are some that will think that myths
are lies.
Some we'll think they're true.
Some that think among the truths will
think that they are truth about, true
about some specific culture.
Others about general human phenomena.
And then finally this final incoherence
some will embrace its primitiveness as
being a wonderful thing.
Some will embrace, some will try to shoo
it as being something that is negative
that we should, at all, and, and always
try to stay away from.
Now, I want to be careful in this course
to lay out a couple of disclaimers when
they come up.
The first thing I wanted to underline and
I'll make reference to this later on too,
is that the myths that we're going to look
at are, sometimes they are PG, sometimes
they are G, sometimes they are NC17 or R,
or even worse.
We're going to look at some nasty stuff.
There's awful things that's gonna happen
from illicit kinds of sexual
relationships, there's going to be
explicit violence, so it's going to be
very disturbing.
And I say this because some of the young
folks out there might be tuning in to a
methodology class.
Sure, that's a kind of thing that you see
coming out of Hollywood, and it seems to
be pretty tame and same.
What we're looking at in this class is
anything but tame and safe.
So if you're a younger person be sure to
ask your parents if what you're viewing is
okay.
High school and beyond you're probably
fine but, I say this because I am not sure
I would want my own son who is younger
than that, watching, taking this course.
Now to get started on the conversation
about what myth is all about, we've laid
down some general things that are floating
around the contemporary culture, but you
might ask yourself, well, what do the
Greeks themselves think about myth?.
Well, in fact, they did have a word for
it.
You will see behind me, Mythos.
So you will recognize right away.
Look, it already looks like the English
word myth.
And in fact, it looks identical, to the
German word, for muthos, and for an
Italian and an French word.
All these contemporary words are scooped
out of a Greek root that spelled in these
characters, looks like this.
Muthos And, those contemporary ideas are
built on this Greek idea.
So let's have a look at what the Greeks
themselves thought a myth was, a muthos
was.
First of all, they thought for, the oldest
definition we have is that it's speech.
Anything that comes out of your mouth
could count as a muthos.
Any sound or word that comes out of a
person's mouth could count as muthos.
Secondly, and a little bit later in Greek
history, the term comes to label a
specific kind of speech.
It's a speech that is a narrative story.
It has a beginning, middle, and end, a
plot, characters, things that you care
about stuff that you want to hear, okay?
Becomes an idea of a story, then later it
becomes known as a specifically false
story, so the connotation changes slightly
to mean a tall tale, something that's
surely not true, the kind of story that
people like to tell, but it doesn't have
any underlying truth to it.
Then finally, even later in Greek history
some thousand years after some of the
poets we're going to be reading at this
time, there are people that start to turn
to this idea of myth, as being yes a tall
tale but one that has some underlying,
deeper truth to it.
If you look down beneath the surface
there'll be some subterranean messages
that are ready to come out if you dig a
little deeper and look at them a little
more closely.
So this is a good place for us to get
started.
We've had a good look at what myth is, in
a general way from the context of a
contemporary perspective, from an ancient
perspective and what we really framed is
the ideal that myth is going to be much
more than some single, simple definition
is going to allow us to define.
And all these different, sometimes
conflicting ideals about myth are going to
be present in our course.
I'm not going to try to talk you our of
anyone, any of these, and I'm not going to
try to necessarily even really clean up
the picture all that much from the messy
one you see here.
It's just we're all going to get to know
over the course of time a little bit more
about how this messy picture works and
what all its little areas are all about.
Until we get to that point there's lots of
us, lots of time out there for us to do
some reading on our own.
There's going to be a lot of that for you.
I look forward to, in the coming weeks
reading some of the most amazing stories
that I know with you as we move through
the course material.
