Module 3: Descriptions and the Traditional Hermeneutic

Introduction

  • Dr. Les McTighe's presentation for Introduction to Mythology students at Elgin Community College.
  • Humanities 205, sections 701 and M71 (dual credit).
  • Module 3: "Descriptions and the Traditional Hermeneutic."

Module 3 Overview

  • Frontispiece: Statue of Sophocles, playwright of Oedipus Rex. The lectures will provide specifics of Sophocles' Oedipus Tyrannus.
  • Urge to keep current with recorded presentations due to concentrated late-start environment.

Beginnings of European Literature

  • European literature begins with Grecian literature, but what were the origins of the Greeks?
  • Linguistic theory of European origins is favored due to focus on literature.
  • Early 19th-century linguists studied European languages comparatively.

Linguistic Theory

  • Europeans initially focused on their own artifacts, a chauvinistic approach.
  • Linguists sought a basic language underlying European languages.
  • They identified Sanskrit, native to South Asia, as a key language.
  • Sanskrit is considered the earliest of Indo-European languages. Old Greek, Latin, Germanic, and Slavic languages derive from Sanskrit.
  • Linguists posit a common language spoken when Europeans were one people.

Proto-Indo-European Language

  • Linguists call the family of languages with Sanskrit as its progenitor, the Indo-European family.
  • Indo-European family is the largest family of languages on Earth.
  • Early Sanskrit literature suggested that these people did not originally inhabit India.
  • They inhabited the area between the Caucasus Mountains and the Black Sea, considered a paradise.

The Indo-European People

  • Early Sanskrit speakers are called Indo-European people.
  • Linguists speculate about a proto-Sanskrit language called PIE (Proto-Indo-European).
  • Before Sanskrit, they were wandering herders, with cattle as their economic base.

Cattle

  • Cattle provided milk, skin for infrastructure, and bones for tools.
  • Speculation suggests they didn't willfully kill cattle, allowing them to die naturally.
  • Bulls were occasionally sacrificed in important religious ceremonies.

Social System

  • Organized social system mirroring their herding practices.
  • The Indo-Europeans were the first to form an agreement with horses.
  • Horses were foundational for their social system.

Caste System

  • Early social structure resembled an 18th-century European caste system (patriarchal).
  • Social ranking determined by birth.
  • Fathers determined if offspring were their sons, granting status to the mother.
  • Few female children were kept or claimed.
Original Castes:
  • Warriors: Possessors and breeders of horses, responsible for protecting cattle and the tribe.
  • Producers: Fed and bred cattle responsible for the milking and the upkeep of the herd.
    Note: These two were the only castes in the early days of the tribe.
  • Servants: Followers picked up along the trail, not related to the group, served the producers and warriors, but were not allowed to participate in the religious and cultural life of the group.

Tribal Structure

  • Servants: Provided genetic diversity to strengthen bloodlines.
  • Servant women could move into higher castes through sexual relations with tribesmen - males could not.
  • Marriage Ceremony: If a servant woman had a son claimed by a warrior or producer, she became a member of the tribe.

Aesthetic

  • Preference for bright and shining phenomena; the color white was considered essential.
  • Children with light hair, light skin, and light eyes were favored.
  • This resulted in tribe members having light features and servants having darker features.
  • White people represented a minority worldwide.

Indo-European Heartland

  • Around 2000 BCE, the Indo-European folks settled in the area between the Caucasus Mountains and the Black Sea, also known as the Indo-European heartland.
  • They could not make a success of the farming that they envisioned that they would have, and participated in migration.
  • Migration occurred in cadres (mixtures of warriors, producers, and servants).
  • Linguistic theorists propose that a fourth caste developed: professionals.

Professionals

  • Theorized origin: sons of servant women born with disabilities.
  • Hidden in women's camps, taught "women's work" (linguistic skills, storytelling, herbal medicine).
  • Blind sons became storytellers or singers; the elderly of the females were honored for their knowledge of herbal medicine.
  • These disabled sons were the first to hold actual jobs and were later accepted because of the warrior and producer fathers accepted them.
  • The status of males performing verbal/medicinal tasks was regarded as superior to any woman's because they were male.
  • Disabled individuals clustered together, having sexual partners among the servant caste and were less exacting in their choice of aesthetic partner.
  • For these reasons, it became its own caste of disabled males: professionals.
  • Professionals were sent out by members of the tribe to communicate to strange tribes that were attempting to usurp the land or authority of the group.

Indo-European Success and Spread

  • The Indo-Europeans has domesticated the horse and were skilled at warfare, used the war chariot which instilled fear into neighboring adversaries.
    • Indo-Europeans migrated west around 2000 BCE searching for a place to thrive and farm.
    • Some went to Northern Europe (Germanic, Slavic tribes), others to France and Spain (Celtic Indo-Europeans).
    • Italic Indo-Europeans migrated to Italy but faced resistance from the Etruscans who had a somewhat better culture than them.

Greek Migration

  • Groups wandered from the Indo-European heartland into Greece; called the Double Peninsula. Because it contained an Upper Peninsula and the Lower Peninsula, the Peloponnesus.
  • The Indo-European Greeks migrated into the Northern part and then later up North and then into the Peloponnesus.
  • They had contact with the indigenous people who they thought were dark and not very bright.
  • There was a conquest of the indigenous people in all areas of Europe by the Indo-Europeans with the exception of the Etruscans and Italy.

The Minoans and Mycenaeans

  • The earliest of the Greeks first migrated into the Northern part of Greece and then Acadia and in on the North and then into the Peloponnese.

  • They had a rough time adjusting to the new environment and got down to the Mediterranean and say ships from the island of Crete that were owned by an early trading tribe called the Minoans.

  • The name comes from the family of Minos, so we call them the Minoans.

  • The Greeks hadn't ever seen a ship before, so they thought they were, of course, animals and tried to warn them off.

  • The Greeks were able to conquer the Minoans but quickly understood the Minoans use of infrastructure and making of artifacts was superior to the Greeks.

  • The Greeks began to learn how to build from the Minoans.

  • The Minoans helped them build the first actual Greek city settlement called Mycenae.

  • After this city, the earliest Indo-Europeans that came to the Double Peninsula were known as the Mycenaeans.

  • When the collapse occurred in the mainland area of Mycenae and there was a cataclysmic accident of Minoan civilization, the Mycenaeans step into palace of the Minoans and occupied their depot of trade.

  • They had learned how to construct rudimentary ships and build the Mycaenian towns.

*The Mycenaeans were learning the trading ways from the Minoans, but they resented paying attention to them, as evident with the story of the Minutoar.

  • Histories speculate this Collapse of Minoan Civilization happened approximately around 1300 BCE.

Trojan rebellion

  • One Minoan trading partner was on the Western Coast of the Aegean Sea in Northern Breeze, which was a city called Ilium, or what the Greeks called them, the Trojans or Troy.
  • The Trojans rebelled again Mycenaean economy around 1250 BCE and the Mycenaeans put an end to it.
  • Therefore, the Mycenaeans began to have more and more trading influence and began to move north. They had feelers out and new that there were situations that they might care for.

Mycenaean down fall

*There were more migrations from the stomping grounds in the Indo-European heartland. The migrating Indo-Europeans had been in the Indo-European heartland and their ability to put into effect and have metallurgical and other skills was something to fear.
*These migrants had the new ability to smelt iron which is lighter than bronze.

  • Wikenians were using bronze equipment, which made metal equipment inferior to those smelting iron.

*These spies came back to Mycanai and a a conference with was the with the Mycanian leaders. And it was decided, agreed upon, to rather leave the advances that they had experienced in my canine and migrate to another place.
**The Mycenaeans moved into the non-urbanized portions of Etruscan Empire and to the island of Sicily.

Arrival to Dorian Greeks

  • They found the new new new Indo Europeans arriving which are to be the new Greeks,
  • They were made by ruins and a few servant cast that were dealt with rather hard, it was discovered that there were groups of elderly individuals that the Dorian Greeks tried to communicate with
  • The professional cast had facility with language and were able to communicate and have a good life with the new individuals (the Dorian Greeks) who wanted to be dominating the group of people in society.

*They were able to communicate with The Dorian Greeks event though The Dorian Greeeks Mycenae and spoke some 500 years removed from old Sanskrit based dialects.
*The Mycenaean professional cast people were able to communicate share the their stories and entertainment with the professional Dorian caste.

*They developed pottery and the Greeks began to have 2 important artifacts after their time in Greece, the Dorian people created:
*Dorian Pottery:

  • Skilled at the manipulation of clay and ceramics.
    *However, the Manage 205 class wants to focus here on the literature, the culture, and stories
    The Dorian Culture was filled with stories and it was important because it came to be in European genre and written about often.
    The Dorians also did not have any type of reading devices because they did not have a facilitator or group from those from anyone that had a symbolic or abstract means of keeping records or writing and information.

*The Maikinians may have gotten information (to which they shared it with the Dorians), From The Minoans. The Dorians had no ability to write anything.
*Instead, most of the literature and culture about the Dorians was written about in Stories. Most importantly the cultural time or what is known as the " Heroic Age."
*This Era took 1000- 750 BC in Greece.

During this heroic age, some people had a chance to learn and produce some literary works
and or have a way in which to become European literature.*They had long poems with main characters aka "heroes."

The Greek like to win and be victorious during hard times and battle. They love to fight and that's what the professional cast loved because it meant stories about fighting.
These heroic poets had a bit of output but One name was a particular standout amongst the the others in the Greek Society.
He was blind and epic and he was known as

Epic Poet Homer

  • Homer lives and is around approximately September. Before common era
    *He was responsible for a number of different shorter poems called, odes.
    Two of some are known as the Iliad, and the Odyssey.
    *He had a main character in each.
    *Achilles as a hero, from the Iliad/Ilian the original name of old Troy.
    *The Iliad is a complex of stories told about the Trojan War around 1200 BCE
    *Homer and his group Mycenaean popularizes his stories

The Iliad with Achilles as the main Hero.
The Odyssey emphasizes themes of war and journeys where Odysseus at that the main warrior in the Trojan Horse Story
The plot of the Odyssey goes that Odysseus was the main reason for the Trojan Horse victory and the way back to to Ithaca things don't go to plan. Odysseus had many accolades and takes four months where as it ends up taking him 10 years for his Journey home. And resume the title of Tyrannos as king in Ithica.

**Main livery efforts that were from the heroic age was from Homer with his iliad and odyssey.
**There some other celebrated figures the professional cast as well specifically for religious and second order questions.

The most important man of the cast that had stories that answered second order questions, as Homer did, was:

Hesiod

  • Hesiod is very significant because he is or was oriented in Mythology that was in relationship to answering religious oriented questions.
    It's for this reason he is highly thought of because religious studies is highly affiliated with the humanities.
    He lives just as at the end of the heroic Period approximately around the 8th/ 9th century. And worked about a 100 years after the Homer
    Is a poet of a different type and uses similar types of literary formats as homer like, epic poems.

**He goes into depth about dealing with more second hand order questions that were of a religious, mythical way of dealing with themes.
**Hesiod is the first Greek Theologian of his kind in that he offers detailed insight with Mythology.
**Hesiod is known as an individual of expertise in dealing with stories from nonhuman forces and the sources to the origin of human existence.
**He talks about these Gods by offering rational arguments called the TheOye.
*He's an advocate of polytheistic worship as he is with Non human forces and is against essentially a singular view of creationism.

*Hsiod teaches a number of things about second order questions, such as; Where do humans come from? Where did God come from?.
What's essentially the origin of the universe?

  • He has many poems aside from this about daily life as a farmer because that's what he was! A farmer and also good for some practical advice.

Theogony is a well known lengthy poem associated with his name/ career in this time period. He's singing about dynamic power of force and the idea that the gods were at one point existing in ideas of thought.
Hesiod addresses by singing to the singer, Muse to dedicated works such as theogony too.

  • Therefore, the Theogony serves with Zeus answering second order questions and the whole aspect/ point about it is to serve to be the end heroic age which leads on to the beginning of european writing. The essential basics of it
    We want to know that the Greeks used about telling stories. This way you know what it and what kind of a person it was that was making it! that artifact, or that huminidic that made it.
    Then you acquired the knowledge about the story itself. This is with the four (4) order story process, that's what we have now to switch years two. Were are going to now talk about the practical part of all of this study.
    And we begin the any myth, with the college level humans that move in what we use to study the humistics world.
    The introduction requires and the acqiures data/ knowedge to preform this properly! Were you can acquire that data about the stories and argue that data to provide evedence!

    • Before the second order questions, it's important what their basic question and basic basic questions you asked about the story.
      You make a descrition of it! What is this that you are viewing?
      A descrition In Huminitics 205 Means that it is essentality MUCH MUCH more orgazined with 4 first order question. The first questions that must be answered with questions.
      The Basic first order questions are to be answered before hand, the basic order is important
      Remember and repeat these question. This is how you study these.

1) What was the myth called by the individulas who first recited or write it?
A). In other words what was the FIRST title? What was the fist title that was ascebed? What did that individulas who has first recited the story call it?
2) What was the earlist litarary genra, the earlist litarary FORM earlist STRUCTURE? In this case we don't want to be that particular.
A)What litarary organisation type was it? B) Poetry or Prose? C) Epic or Lyric.
3) Where was the myth first REcited or WRitted down?
4) First to have cultural CONTEXT!!!!!!
Culture Contex: Great tool! To be to sit the artifact or the homoetic. Where did the origin have it that made it! At the cultural contex goes all the way to the artitfact which gives better sense and order
Forst with NEW is when we have A NEW story.
IN other words The Myth MUSTTTMust have the basic characateristics of the story, must have charactistic of an emotion must have charastics if needed. Bining midlle and end doesn't need to have it though, either ordal or it has to be written.

The Four order Qestion that were stated were as follows. *Oral, writen or Multi- Typical: has two sense in which interpert!