一切神話：神話愛好者討論小組

Mythologies have been the basis of our culture for hundreds, sometimes thousands of years. This is where we still get a lot of our modern ideas, traditions and cultures from today. Whether you are a fan or the Rick Riordan novels (Percy Jackson, the Kane Chronicles or Magnus Chase) or books written by other popular authors, we can find all sorts of mythologies hidden in our every day lives - even in popular games like Pokémon, Zelda or D&D. If you find mythology and myths interesting, come join us and talk about your favorite stories! 

In this ongoing class, we are going to learn about the world by looking at the foundational stories of a bunch of different cultural traditions. The approach in this class is going to be comparative and thematic, not choosing to focus on one location or be geography-based but instead collecting similar stories from mythologies all over the world. We’re going to look at the ways that people’s stories define them, and the ways they shape their culture. We’re going to discuss and learn about gods, goddesses, heroes, and tricksters, and a lot more. Together, we will explore multiple mythologies and how they can be seen in our world today. Each week we will have a planned agenda and discussion points, to which students can enter into an open-ended conversation and share their ideas, thoughts and opinions with one another. 

In our first class we will discuss topics such as "What is a myth?" and go into detail defining this idea, then differentiating it from other similar ideas like "fairy tales" and "folktales". Here we will talk about concepts such as "staying power", "explanatory power" and  "significance". 

Next, we will jump into one of the most difficult and argues topics of mythology: creation myths. Most cultures have some story of how the world and the people in it came to be; we are going to work through several myths of this type, and share stories that you have heard them may be similar to this theme. After we see how the world, and sometimes, the universe was created, we will examine pantheons: the groups of gods that feature in stories from different cultures, and how they function in those cultures. From there, we will take a look at how the universe was destroyed - looking at floods myths and the apocalypse. After we come down from Olympus, Valhalla and all the other mythic mountains, we will start to discuss hero stories from all over the world, mythical places, mythical creatures and even mythical objects. Finally we will finish up with topics in myths as seen in the modern world.