Story Lab: Crash Course Myth Videos

For this assignment, I watched the three Overview of Mythology videos from Crash Course on Youtube. 

In the first video, I found it interesting how the Crash Course teacher described the study of mythology as drawing upon elements from many different fields including religion, literature, anthropology, and history. He then goes on to note that in mythology readers will often encounter several different versions of the same story and also several different interpretations of certain stories.  Defining the term "myth" can be quite difficult, which is discussed at length in the video. Crash Course decides to define a "myth" as a story having "significance" and "staying power." Finally, the teacher points out that there are several different theories involving the academic study of myths.

In the second video, the teacher describes different theoretical approaches to mythology and ways of analyzing myths. He mentions that the critical analysis of myths has been going on since about the mid 500s BCE! Some early thinkers (including Plato) conceptualized myths as falsehoods. Some early Christian leaders latched on to this idea and fit it into their religious views. Others thought of myths as simply a form of primitive science, which seems to be much too narrow of a definition. The teacher then goes on to tell us that mythology as a study didn't began to really grow until the 18th and 19th centuries. Many modern anthropologists attempt to connect myths to the lived experiences of humans in unique cultures. Some psychologists have seen myths as human projections of the unconscious. Other modern scholars tend to look at myths by focusing on their structures. 

The final video covered heroes and the hero's journey. Heroes are included in the myths of almost all societies, and "hero" can be a hard term to even define. The Crash Course teacher discusses scholar Joseph Campbell's theory of "The Hero's Journey" and it's notable influence on the field of mythology. One of Campbell's central ideas involves the notion that heroes can tell us a lot about ourselves.

I really enjoyed learning more about mythology, defining myths, theories of mythology, and the concept of a "hero" from these videos!

Public domain image by Wikimedia user "Salamander724"

Source: Wikimedia