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TTC - Myth in Human History Taught by Grant L. Voth

Course No. 2332 (36 lectures, 30 minutes/lecture) Monterey Peninsula College

A warrior embarks on an ocean voyage to retrieve a mysterious fleece and prove his worth. A young man catches the spinning sun with a lasso to slow it down and lengthen the day. A giant boar raises the earth from beneath the sea with its enormous tusks.

These are just a few of the thousands of myths belonging to cultures from around the world. They are tales of powerful gods and goddesses, of fearless heroes facing down frightening monsters, of ingenious tricks and epic battles.

But these powerful stories do more than just widen our eyes, catch our breaths, and stretch our imaginations. They are the keys to truly grasping the ways that principles, rituals, codes, and taboos are woven into the fabric of a particular society or civilization. It's through myths that we can answer these and other fundamental questions:

* How was the universe created, and why?

* What is the purpose of evil in the world?

* Why is human society organized the way it is?

* How did natural features like rivers, mountains, and oceans emerge?

Grasping the deep-seeded truths behind myths is an illuminating and rewarding journey. One that reveals provocative new insights into the powerful—and entertaining—ways that beliefs are passed on from generation to generation. One that helps us make sense of how ancient people, or people with whom we're not familiar, built the cultures in which they lived.

And it's a journey you can experience and own with Myth in Human History. This entertaining and illuminating course, delivered by engaging storyteller and award-winning Professor Grant L. Voth of Monterey Peninsula College, plunges you deep into some of the world's greatest myths.

Taking you from the islands of ancient Greece and Japan to the plains of North America and Africa to the shores of New Zealand and Great Britain, these 36 lectures offer you a comprehensive survey of some of the world's most enduring myths and the diverse cultures behind them. By the close of the final lecture, you'll find yourself looking at and understanding world mythology—including the myths of contemporary culture—in startling new ways.

Learn the Four Ways to Read Great Myths

It's difficult to grasp the essence of a culture—whether it's one that belongs to the distant past or one that thrives to this day—without understanding its particular myths. For hundreds of years, anthropologists, archaeologists, historians, sociologists, psychologists, literary critics, and others have studied myths to better understand how cultures view the world and their unique place in it.

In order to do this, however, it's essential first to know how to read a myth and tease out the meanings hidden underneath its entertaining plot and imaginative characters. In Myth in Human History, Professor Voth teaches you how to do just that, allowing you to approach, read, and interpret great myths from four key perspectives.

* Metaphysical: How do the myths explain the mysteries of human existence?

* Cosmological: How do the myths explain the intricate workings of the universe?

* Sociological: How do the myths explain the existing social and economic order?

* Psychological: How do the myths explain the process of psychological development?

Explore Hundreds of Captivating Stories ...

So what about the myths themselves?

There are thousands of myths in the world—enough that surveying the greatest of them may seem like an impossible task. But one of Professor Voth's strengths as both an expert in world literature and a teacher is his ability to organize these myths into several groups based on their particular subject or focus.

To make learning about world mythology all the more accessible, Myth in Human History is structured into five distinct units based on these groups.

* Myths about creation and destruction: These myths seek to explain the origins of the world and, in some cases, its eventual destruction. You'll explore stories from the ancient Egyptians, Mesopotamians, Greeks, and Aztecs, as well as Hebrew creation accounts from Genesis.

* Myths about gods and goddesses: Central parts of mythology, these figures are creators and overseers, personifications of nature, and powerful symbols of reality. You'll meet Zeus, Brahma, Odin, and others, as well as the God of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

* Myths about heroes: These mythological figures are larger-than-life models of cultural values, performing tasks that most of us cannot. Here, you'll follow the adventures of Gilgamesh, Jason and his Argonauts, Demeter, Cupid, and many others.

* Myths about tricksters: Deceitful and malicious, these characters are nevertheless instrumental in challenging and redefining the order of things. Among the tricksters you'll come across in this unit are the Greek Hermes, the Sumerian Enki, and the Hawaiian Ma-ui.

* Myths about sacred places: Mythological sites, whether real or imagined, mark the place where the sacred bursts into the everyday world. You'll tour such sacred places as the Hebrews' Mount Sinai, the Norse cosmic tree Yggdrasil, and the Tibetan "Castle Lake."

By approaching myths in these units, you'll be better able to understand mythology's profound importance in shaping nearly every aspect of human culture. You'll also discover the hidden connections between them—a comparative approach that emphasizes the universality of myths across cultures, as well as the idea that different civilizations approach the fundamental issues of life in ways particular to their own values and experiences.

... and Meet a Wealth of Fascinating Characters

Along with the stories themselves, you'll encounter fascinating characters; some celebrated, some maligned, some even feared. Among the hundreds of intriguing figures you'll find in these lectures are

* Herakles, the iconic ancient Greek hero whose life illustrates the idea of the monomyth—that all heroic stories have a similar structure;

* Loki, the shape-shifting trickster who introduces the concepts of time and aging into the Norse realm of Asgard; and

* King Arthur, the Celtic lord and founder of the Knights of the Round Table, whose life and adventures continue to resonate into the 21st century.

You'll also meet unfamiliar characters drawn from cultural myths often overshadowed by those from more widely known Western mythologies. These include

* Spider, the principal trickster of the Lakota and Dakota peoples responsible for creating space, inventing language, and naming animals;

* Mwindo, whose transformation from arrogant young warrior to responsible ruler celebrates the cultural values of the Nyangi from eastern Zaire; and

* Inanna, the Sumerian goddess of agriculture, whose rise coincided with the birth of the Agricultural Revolution in the ancient Near East.

Throughout the lectures, Professor Voth draws intriguing connections between characters from various world mythologies. You'll learn what aspects they have in common, how their presence is felt in similar and different ways, how they've shaped similar cultural ideas and concepts (such as honor and justice), and more.

An Engaging Tour, a Master Storyteller

Along with its wealth of intriguing myths and captivating characters, what makes this course such an engaging tour of world mythology is Professor Voth's immense depth of knowledge and his storytelling abilities.

A veteran Great Courses professor, he has the ability to draw you into each myth, and, in doing so, celebrates the same enchanting oral tradition that helped to spread so many of these myths. With almost every myth in the course, he first tells it as a story to be listened to and savored. Then he explains how different readings and interpretations shed meaning on how to understand the myth's role in larger culture. And, finally, he invites you to develop your own interpretations of these age-old tales, as well as to ponder the role that myths—both ancient and everyday—play in your own life.

Myths, according to Professor Voth, are "gifts from the ancestors to be cherished." They have been with us for thousands of years and will continue to be with us for thousands more. Myth in Human History is the perfect way for you to celebrate these cherished gifts, to learn more about them than you ever thought possible, and to discover how mythology—perhaps more than any other aspect of culture—has the power to shape human history.

About Your Professor

Dr. Grant L. Voth is Professor Emeritus at Monterey Peninsula College in California. He earned his M.A. in English Education from St. Thomas College in St. Paul, MN, and his Ph.D. in English from Purdue University.

Professor Voth has earned a host of teaching awards and accolades, including the Allen Griffin Award for Excellence in Teaching, and he was named Teacher of the Year by the Monterey Peninsula College Students' Association. He is the author of insightful scholarly books and articles on subjects ranging from Shakespeare to Edward Gibbon to modern American fiction, and he wrote many of the official study guides for the BBC's acclaimed project, The Shakespeare Plays.

Before joining the faculty at Monterey Peninsula College, Professor Voth taught at Virginia Tech and Northern Illinois University and for several years served as a consultant on interdisciplinary studies programs for the National Endowment for the Humanities. He has led travel-study tours to countries including England, Ireland, France, Greece, and Turkey, and he is a frequent guest lecturer for the internationally acclaimed Carmel Bach Festival in Carmel, California.

Course Lecture Titles

1. Myth and Meaning

2. The Continuing Importance of Myth

3. Creation Myths

4. Mesopotamian Creation—Enuma Elish

5. Hebrew Creation Myths

6. Emergence and World-Parent Creation Myths

7. Cosmic Egg and Ex Nihilo Creation Myths

8. Earth-Diver and Dismembered God Creation Myths

9. Mesopotamian and Hebrew Flood Myths

10. Other Flood Myths

11. Myths of Cosmic Destruction

12. Greek and Norse Pantheons

13. The Great Goddess Remembered?

14. The Goddess—Inanna and Dumuzi

15. The Goddess—Isis and Osiris

16. The Eclipse of the Goddess

17. Shamans and Vegetation Gods

18. Sky Gods and Earth Goddesses

19. Creator Gods

20. Gods and Goddesses of India

21. Hero Myths

22. Mythic Heroes—Gilgamesh

23. Mythic Heroes—King Arthur

24. Mythic Heroes—Jason and the Argonauts

25. The Monomyths of Rank and Campbell

26. Mythic Heroes—Mwindo

27. Female Heroes—Demeter and Hester Prynne

28. Female Heroes—Psyche and Beauty

29. The Trickster in Mythology

30. Tricksters from around the World

31. Native American Tricksters

32. African Tricksters

33. Mythic Tricksters—Eshu and Legba

34. The Places of Myth—Rocks and Lakes

35. The Places of Myth—Mountains

36. The Places of Myth—Sacred Trees

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