Students will create a 1 page-long typed response to one of three review prompts. Responses must be in MLA format.

Purpose:

• Explore in writing what you have read and what we have presented in the modules.

Instructions:

• Reply to only 1 of 3 topics/questions located below.
• Students are to submit their assignment by Sept. 8th, 11:59 p.m.using the submission link on this page.
• Use citations and supporting evidence from texts/videos found in Modules 1-5.
• Restate the chosen topic/question in the first few sentences of your response.

Topic/Questions:

1. Compare and contrast any one of the two creation myths (or both) to any other myth, legend, epic, fairy tale, etc. we have read.

Readings Creation Myths

Let us begin…at the beginning!

For the next two weeks, we will be covering the humanities in Creation & Empire mythologies. In the following week, we will look at the formation of empires and societies. We will look into why they come to be and our role in society. During our first week, this week, on this topic, we will look at mythologies that surround how people came to be on this planet and their experiences. When we are born and flow through into our childhood and adolescence, one of the very first things we ask about ourselves is how we came to be. We are interested in our bodies and their formation and use our surrounding environments to shape our little selves. We are going through our unique conscious experience with the surrounding world.

So what exactly are creation myths?

To say it simply, they tell us where we came from, and where are bodies are produced from. Creation myths answer the question of our existence.

Check out this excerpt from Introduction to Mythology: “Creation myths address the most fundamental concerns of existence. Just as children ask, “Where did I come from?” adults continue to try to fathom the beginnings not only of their own existence, but also of all of their surroundings. At the same time, these stories represent a way of knowing and a way of structuring experience. That is, they focus our attention not just on the origin of aspects of our world, but on the priorities and categories that seem important to the tellers of the creation myths. We learn a great deal about the daily lives of people and the hopes and fears that they experience, from the ways they structure their stories of how the world came to be.” (23)

We are urged to seek out the meaning of our beginning, middle, and end. The creation myths tell us how we begin. All cultures have a type of creation myth, they are our primary myths. They explain who we are in relation to the world and are used as an explanation during the ‘pre-scientific’ age. “The largest group of creation myths has roots at least as early as the Neolithic civilizations of the Fertile Crescent. These myths, from Egypt, Mesopotamia, India, Greece, and the followers of the *Abrahamic *God, tell of creation from nothing (ex nihilo) or from chaos, or from some sacred substance by a single sky god, *supreme being, or *father god. The group shares several dominant characteristics besides creation by the sky father. The creator is always male and all-powerful, and the world he creates is hierarchical. Humans-especially men- are the creator’s representatives there.” (Leeming 85)

This week we will read two myths, one from Aztec mythology and the other from Norse Mythology. As you read these myths, take into consideration the basis of creation myths and what they answer.

Aztec Creation Myth

The Aztec Empire, c. 1345-1521, covered most of northern Mesoamerica. The historic region of Mesoamerica comprises the modern-day countries of northern Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, Belize, and half of Mexico. Watch the video below for an introduction to the Aztec Empire.

Keep in mind the ideals and experiences of the Aztec people as you read the following:

Norse Creation Myth

Norse Mythology is from the Viking Age, c. 790- c. 1100 CE. Watch the Video below for a brief introduction:

Now that we know a little more about the origin, please read the following:

Fairytales

Any reader of fairy tales will recognize certain patterns in the tales that are also found in world mythology. Characters are miraculously conceived, heroes and heroines descend to places that resemble mythic underworlds, and young heroes go on dangerous quests and are detained by femme fatales or challenged by monsters. Certainly, those connections between myth and fairy tale suggest an article and symbolic language common to the human psyche. On the other hand, they also suggest a conscious attempt on the part first of oral storytellers and later of the literary collectors who gathered and studied those oral tales to make use of the old sacred stories, motifs, and symbols in a still moralistic but generally secular context, with particular versions reflecting the moral and mannerly priorities of particular societies. In fact, it is difficult to differentiate between the sacred world of myth and the moralistic world of the fairy tale.

Leeming, David. Oxford Companion to World Mythology. Oxford University Press, 2009.

The Elves and the Envious Neighbor
Japan

Once upon a time, there was a certain man, who, being overtaken by darkness among the mountains, was driven to seek shelter in the trunk of a hollow tree. In the middle of the night, a large company of elves assembled at the place; and the man, peeping out from his hiding place, was frightened out of his wits. After a while, however, the elves began to feast and drink wine, and to amuse themselves by singing and dancing, until at last the man, caught by the infection of the fun, forgot all about his fright, and crept out of his hollow tree to join in the revels.
When the day was about to dawn, the elves said to the man, “You’re a very jolly companion, and must come out and have a dance with us again. You must make us a promise, and keep it.”

So the elves, thinking to bind the man over to return, took a large wen that grew on his forehead and kept it in pawn; upon this, they all left the place and went home.

The man walked off to his own house in high glee at having passed a jovial night and got rid of his wen into the bargain. So he told the story to all his friends, who congratulated him warmly on being cured of his wen. But there was a neighbor of his who was also troubled with a wen of long-standing, and, when he heard of his friend’s luck, he was smitten with envy, and went off to hunt for the hollow tree, in which, when he had found it, he passed the night.

Elves, mistaking him for their former boon companion, were delighted to see him, and said, “You’re a good fellow to recollect your promise, and we’ll give you back your pledge.”

So one of the elves, pulling the pawned wen out of his pocket, stuck it onto the man’s forehead, on the top of the other wen which he already had. So the envious neighbor went home weeping, with two wens instead of one.

Source: A. B. Mitford, Tales of Old Japan, vol. 1 (London: Macmillan and Company, 1871), pp. 276-77