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Especially so in the arts, such as lyric and epic poetry. Greek mythology was a ND continues to be both a model and marvel symbolic engineering. By symbolic engineering, I mean to define a type of character design through allegory and/ or rhetoric. As a way of shaping behavior, conduct, and ritual, mythology, as Oxford Classics professor, Helen Morale s suggests that it “could and did function as an agent of ideology”(Moraines 63).
This technique, as mastered and understood by ancient writers such as, Ovid, Plato, Aristotle himself, and others has trickled down through Western culture; Medieval and Renaissance poets such s William Shakespeare and John Milton infused many of the classical mythological form s and concepts to reinforce their historical interpretations of mundane and the divine. For us in our modern, American times, classical figures are the mythic themes that reinforce our blob sackbuts films, our membrane commerce, and our sports community.
Ancient ideals educate e our modern ideas. When discussing the term, “myth” we can notice strong parallels in our contemporary distinction between the words ‘fact” and “fiction”. In her text, Classical Mythology: A Very Short Introduction, Professor Morale elucidates this when she writes “Our word ‘myth’ derives from the Greek word mouths, which means something like ‘story’, in contrast with logos, which means ‘truthful account” (Morale, 57). For the Greeks as for us, there was a necessary and subtle narrative difference between a tale and a re port.
The value in each lie in their respective abilities to instruct or nurture (ideally) virtuous b behavior. They are both forms of media: poetry and philosophy. How a culture shapes itself depends on the mythological shape it takes. “The myths of different cultures have been given different lances by their reception in scalded Western (and monoester) culture. The SSE of ancient Greece and Rome have become the myths of the Western world” (Morale, 3). We have the term, “Groomsman” for reasons other than wrestling; in the development of Western history it forms the secular counterpart to the Osteoarthritis element.
As incorporate De by Roman poets the likes of Ovid and Virgil however, mythology was to last alongside log ICC in the growth of Western thought and eventually American technology. “Modern tellers of ancient myths are no less creative than were the ancient metaphors and poets” (Morale, 24). Today’s cinema and its filmmakers SE rue a long, sustained cultural imperative to perform ancient tales with advanced tools. Eve ere generation of classical scholars and students adapts their comprehension of myth with the e creative use of their current machines.
For our aesthetic and entertainment purposes, so to s peak, epic films demonstrate how film viewing itself can be “epic”. In today’s world, the movies are where the mythology is. Recent examples include those of mixed acclaim including, Troy (2004), 300 (2007), Clash of the Titans (2010), and Hercules (2014). As a technologically adaptive tedium, film differs from theatre in the sense of having the wider license to c envoy the often spectacular, cosmic imagery that abounds in ancient works such as Homer’s Iliad The Odyssey. Olympian gods, tragic heroes, and Spartan armies all lend their details well to modern counterattacked imagination.
Critics may point that many of theses e depictions stray too far from their subject matter. However, Professor Morale notes “W loafing Peterson 2004 film Troy failed to win the hearts of many modern audiences… The critics were too ‘mythological correct’. They took exception to the deviation of the s rip form the story in Homer’s but the film might be seen in a more positive light as taking place in a long and distinguished tradition of mythological innovation. Peterson endures DOD the nature of myths better than his critics. Is an essentially Euripides film” (Morale, 24).
The classics remain classic because of their dramatic spirit and less because of their dram attic letters. “Not everyone in the ancient world thought an education in mythology was of the good… SST. Augustine in his Confessions, singles out this episode to demonstrate the evils Of students learning from mythological models” (Morale, 24). MIT psychology SST Sherry Turtle, writing in her book on the intersection of technology and culture, Alone Together, quotes Plato when he wrote “that which enchants may also be said to deceive” (Turtle).
Mum chi as it was for the ancients, for us as well, mythology, like technology is enchanting. Reading Ovoid’s Metamorphoses (trans. Rueben, 2004)1 one can see a modern, “selfish” aspect in the myth of “Narcissus and Echo”. Enrapture by his own image, Narcissus cannot turn away FRR mom the screen: “He knows not what he is seeing; the sight still fires him passion. / His eyes are deceived, but the strange illusion still excites his senses My pain is more since we’re not divided by stretches of ocean, / Unending roads, by mountains or walls with impassable gates. / All that keeps us apart is a thin, thin line of water” (Ovid, 113 114).
Some critics argue that this sentiment culturally applies to Westerners in gene real and Americans in particular. Enchanted by his own reflection, Narcissus is perhaps a prime thematic example Of classical mythology reliability to our modern narcissism Americans have a consumer economy which influences a consumer culture. If one could suggest a “consumer religion”, one might equate divine words with brand names. Classical mythology, for all of its highbrow sensibility, forms the basis a multi dude of American consumer brands and their advertising campaigns.