Myth in Human History

by Grant L. Voth

Myths provide the keys to truly grasping the ways that principles, rituals, codes, and taboos are woven into the fabric of a particular society or civilization.
It's through myths that we can answer these and other fundamental questions: How was the universe created, and why? What is the purpose of evil? Why is society organized the way it is? How did natural features like rivers, mountains, and oceans emerge?

This entertaining and illuminating course plunges you into the world's greatest myths. Taking you from ancient Greece and Japan to North America and Africa to New Zealand and Great Britain, these 36 lectures reveal mythology's profound importance in shaping nearly every aspect of culture. You'll also discover the hidden connections between them - a comparative approach that emphasizes the universality of myths across cultures.

Along with the stories themselves, you'll encounter fascinating characters, including Herakles, the ancient Greek hero whose life illustrates the idea that all heroic stories have a similar structure; Loki, the shape-shifting trickster who introduces the concept of time into the Norse realm of Asgard; and King Arthur, the Celtic lord and founder of the Knights of the Round Table.

Myths, according to Professor Voth, are "gifts from the ancestors to be cherished." His enchanting lectures are the perfect way for you to celebrate these cherished gifts, inviting you to develop your own interpretations of these age-old tales, as well as to ponder the role that myths - both ancient and everyday - play in your own life.

(Great Courses, #2332)

Genres: History, Mythology, Nonfiction, Audiobook, Religion, Philosophy, Education

Audio CD

First published January 1, 2010

About the author

Dr. Grant L. Voth is Professor Emeritus at Monterey Peninsula College in California. He earned his M.A. in English Education from St. Thomas College in St. Paul, MN, and his Ph.D. in English from Purdue University.

Throughout his distinguished career, Professor Voth has earned a host of teaching awards and accolades, including the Allen Griffin Award for Excellence in Teaching, and he was named Teacher of the Year by the Monterey Peninsula College Students' Association. He is the author of insightful scholarly books and articles on subjects ranging from Shakespeare to Edward Gibbon to modern American fiction, and he wrote many of the official study guides for the BBC's acclaimed project, The Shakespeare Plays.

Before joining the faculty at Monterey Peninsula College, Professor Voth taught at Virginia Tech and Northern Illinois University and for several years served as a consultant on interdisciplinary studies programs for the National Endowment for the Humanities. He has led travel-study tours to countries including England, Ireland, France, Greece, and Turkey, and he is a frequent guest lecturer for the internationally acclaimed Carmel Bach Festival in Carmel, California.

Reviews

[Travis · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was a DVD lecture series that I watched. I took longer to get through it than I probably should have, which is part of why I ended up giving it a low rating; I think there were some interesting myths and stories that were explored in this series, but aside from the well-worn ones from Greek or Norse myth, I recall relatively few of them.

But a bigger part of the problem is that the lecturer used outdated theoretical frameworks for major sections of the series, in particular theories about the Goddess and the monomyth. Actual historical and anthropological studies have pretty thoroughly debunked the idea of prehistoric matriarchal, female focused cultures; there is certainly evidence that hunter-gatherer cultures tend to be more egalitarian in various ways, but that isn't the same thing. And the theory as presented in the lectures isn't even internally coherent: it is claimed that there were once goddess worshiping cultures, that then were invaded by male sky-god worshiping peoples, with the movements of Semitic peoples and speakers of Proto-Indo-European cited as proof. But that only works if you assume the thoroughly incorrect idea of civilization as a single, linear development growing out of the Middle East. And the first example myths that are presented as proof of this changeover, of earlier female goddesses of great importance being downplayed in favor of invading male sky gods, come from Africa and China, which don't fit that narrative at all, and have no similar pattern of settled people invaded by outsiders to build from.

The monomyth idea is just bunk. The fact that the theories rely so heavily on the work of Freud and Jung should be the first clue; while their ideas called attention to the workings of the mind in innovative ways, there is no scientific basis to their thoughts, and no modern psychology builds from their theories. Another major problem with the monomyth idea is that it over-emphasizes commonality; in focusing so much attention on how you can distort a given story into the template(s) they provide, it ignores all of the interesting details of stories and what they say about the concerns and interests of the cultures they come from. Frustratingly, the lecturer acknowledges that the monomyth theory is controversial, but in giving it so much attention and referencing it so often, he gives it implicit validity. The monomyth frameworks can be used as tools for analyzing myths, and especially for providing a point of comparison between myths, but asserting that they are depict a single underlying narrative to all myths is on oversimplification.

I also take issue with the idea of psychological interpretations of myths. I think you can do psychological readings of myths in perfectly valid ways, as long as it is properly framed as a way to read the myth in a way relevant to modern society. Asserting that it is somehow the "true" meaning of a myth ignores the fact that these readings are build from a conceptual framework and are concerned with issues that would have been almost entirely alien to the originators of the myths.

[Beauregard Bottomley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Professor Voth shows how we each should look at myths and why they matter today as much as they have helped us navigate this journey that has no knowable central overriding authority directing us, and it is up to us to give our own situation meaning as we see fit, and often with an aid of myths.

We are thrown into the world with no ultimate guidance except for what we find along the way through our own devices. The meaning we give to this life is for us to determine by ourselves and for ourselves.

Myths have historically provided us clues to why are we here (mystical), our place in the universe (cosmological), our role in society (sociological), and what it means to us (psychological). This lecture explores each of those four meaning interpreters and gives insights for how to apply them.

Professor Voth explains the psychological either through Freud interpretations (we repress our unconsciousness) or Jung and Otto Rank (the collective consciousness is out there and we need to discover it). It really doesn’t matter that I’ve read enough of Freud to know he’s full of it, or after having read Jung’s Red Book know he is just as full of it. The fact of the matter regardless of one’s belief in those paradigms we can use their paradigms to better understand our place in the universe. As Professor Voth will say Gilgamesh kills the monster outside of himself as well as the beast within himself, thus telling us that we have psychological states within us just as vital to understanding our own meaning about ourselves and myths give us glimpses into discovering those states.

Myths makes us feel our truths. When Wittgenstein confusingly says: ‘The world is the totality of facts, not of things’ and ‘and the world is all that is the case’ he negates the importance of what our feelings (emotions, passions, hopes, fears, wants or desires) have in determining our meaning for our place in the universe and he would have been wise to start with his last sentence from his Tractatus instead: ‘whereof one cannot speak, thereof one best remains silent’, and remained silent concerning the priority of facts for determining our world.

The world we live in is complex and how we find our meaning can even be more complex. I suspect that if I had watched this great course 10 years ago I would have not enjoyed it because I thought the world was made of facts, but now I realize a better place for me to look sometimes is in the feelings that make us who we are. My wife and I both enjoyed this presentation and I recommend it highly.

[Bettie · Rating 4 out of 5]

and

LECTURE 1: Myth and Meaning ☑
LECTURE 2: The Continuing Importance of Myth ☑

LECTURE 3: Creation Myths ☑
LECTURE 4: Mesopotamian Creation—Enuma Elish ☑
LECTURE 5: Hebrew Creation Myths ☑
LECTURE 6: Emergence and World-Parent Creation Myths ☑
LECTURE 7: Cosmic Egg and Ex Nihilo Creation Myths ☑
LECTURE 8: Earth-Diver and Dismembered God Creation Myths ☑

LECTURE 9: Mesopotamian and Hebrew Flood Myths ☑
LECTURE 10: Other Flood Myths ☑

LECTURE 11: Myths of Cosmic Destruction ☑
LECTURE 12:Greek and Norse Pantheons ☑
LECTURE 13: The Great Goddess Remembered? ☑
LECTURE 14: The Goddess—Inanna and Dumuzi ☑
LECTURE 15: The Goddess—Isis and Osiris ☑
LECTURE 16: The Eclipse of the Goddess ☑
LECTURE 17: Shamans and Vegetation Gods ☑
LECTURE 18: Sky Gods and Earth Goddesses ☑
LECTURE 19: Creator Gods ☑
LECTURE 20: Gods and Goddesses of India ☑

LECTURE 21: Hero Myths ☑
LECTURE 22: Mythic Heroes—Gilgamesh ☑
LECTURE 23: Mythic Heroes—King Arthur ☑
LECTURE 24: Mythic Heroes—Jason and the Argonauts ☑
LECTURE 25: The Monomyths of Rank and Campbell ☑
LECTURE 26: Mythic Heroes—Mwindo ☑
LECTURE 27: Female Heroes—Demeter and Hester Prynne ☑
LECTURE 28: Female Heroes—Psyche and Beauty ☑

LECTURE 29: The Trickster in Mythology☑
LECTURE 30: Tricksters from around the World ☑
LECTURE 31: Native American Tricksters ☑
LECTURE 32: African Tricksters ☑
LECTURE 33: Mythic Tricksters—Eshu and Legba ☑

LECTURE 34: The Places of Myth—Rocks and Lakes
LECTURE 35: The Places of Myth—Mountains
LECTURE 36: The Places of Myth—Sacred Trees

#23 TBR Busting 2013. Adobe and audio combined.

[محمد · Rating 5 out of 5]

كورس رائع جدًا ومفيد عن الأساطير ومعانيها. من أساطير التكوين مرورًا بالبانتيون ومن ثم الإلهات والآلهة -الفرعونية، الهندية، النوردية، إلخ..- بعدها يدخل المحاضر في الأبطال والبطلات ومن ثم المحتالين ويختتم بأماكن الأسطورة (الجبال، البحيرات، الصخور، الأشجار). أفضل تعريف للأسطورة هي قصة يخبرها المجتمع/الثقافة عن نفسها لنفسها.

[Alex · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was pretty good, but it was difficult to digest as an audio book. It felt like many university courses in which you are bombarded with so much information and so many examples that it’s hard to recall much when you’re done.

Starting with a series of lectures on creation myths automatically put me on guard, as I find creation stories to be the least interesting of all myth types. This is of course personal preference, and while the professor did a good job of going over a lot, I just wanted the series to get to the good stuff - gods, goddesses, heroes, tricksters, and the value of myth itself.

When it got there, it was all fascinating, but like I said - and maybe this is just my own poor attention span and memory showing itself - it was loaded with so many names and regions that it was hard to follow at times.

As an overview of these types of myths, it was good. It does put some names into your head and some of the myths are truly memorable, such as the one about the coyote who burns his own anus as punishment only to realize that it’s a part of him, but there was too much of the Jungian approach at times. Even though the professor says he’s only using it as an analytical tool to test the idea of the mono myth, I found it distracting at times and wished he would have mentioned that there’s an inherent problem in applying 20th century tools to 4000 year old stories.

Anyway, despite the criticisms above, I did like this in the end and would recommend it if you’re REALLY into myth and want to learn more about it. If not, just listen to the Mythology podcast on the Parcast network for a more entertaining approach to simply re-telling mythological tales.

[Charlene · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent course. I really enjoyed learning about the various stories ancient (and even current) people constructed to explain the world around them. From our 21st century lens, it is easy to see the people who came up with these myths as stupid or foolish. But, many of these myths are brilliant and imaginative. Considering their scientific knowledge at the time they made these myths, they actually seem quite reasonable. We only know now, from our current Monday morning quarterbacking of the last 5,000 years, that there are better explanations. We know this because people have already come up with stories that turned out not to be true. We know now that being a good or bad person won't make it rain. We know a lot more about testing hypotheses. But we didn't know as much when these myths were created. If we lived in these times, even the least religious among us might construct these very myths to explain what we saw happening around us.

This course left out many of the Greek myths. This was an excellent choice, since it leaves room for lesser known myths and Greek myths are covered in other courses.

[Annie · Rating 4 out of 5]

The course compares myths from different cultures along certain themes, such as creation myths, flood myths, great goddess, creator god, mythic heroes, and tricksters. It was hard to keep track of the characters from the obscure myths from Africa, Japan, China, Mesopotamia, and Sumeria (compared to the more familiar myths from Greek, Norse, and Egypt). It would have been better if the author started with an introduction of the gods and goddesses of those unknown myths. Then the comparison of the various myths would have been easier to follow.

[Patrick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating and refreshingly wide-ranging. The lecturer is outstanding.

[William Adam Reed · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wanted to listen to these lectures because I wanted to learn more about the myths from around the world that were outside of the Greek and Egyptian myths, which I knew pretty well. This course of 36 lectures certainly did that, delving into myths from Africa, North America, and a few Asian cultures as well. Professor Voth is very well qualified to teach this class and his lecturing style is easy to listen to with no distracting speech patterns. I did learn a lot about myths from around the world, but for some reason they didn't stick in my memory for very long. I guess I need more exposure to these myths to form a more lasting impression.

Some of these lectures were a great deal more interesting to me than others. Professor Voth uses five lectures to discuss the trickster and various trickster myths from around the world. These were not very compelling for me; the trickster myth could have been covered in one lecture, it ran out of gas for me quickly. I think a lot of these myths became too intertwined for me really to understand the cultures that they represented very well. If the lectures were organized by regions and each of the lectures contained myths from that region, I would have had a better chance to retain the information, instead in many of the lectures, there are stories from several cultures.

There were some fascinating lectures. I enjoyed the three lectures on Mythic Heroes and the two lectures on Female Heroes. In fact, the lectures that discussed Demeter, Hester Prynne, Psyche, and Beauty were the best in the course. I also really enjoyed the comparative lectures on the mono myth and how the sky gods and earth goddesses theories related to each other.

There was a lot of variance in the qualities of these lectures and the course guidebook is a step below most of the other course guidebooks, so three stars seems the right rating for my experience. I would listen this again in a few years though.

[Ann · Rating 2 out of 5]

Decided to be done at 53%. There was some interesting content, I really appreciated the categorizing that he did, it laid everything out very nicely. His thoughts are easy to understand, he ties a lot of the works together, refers to previous lectures, etc. My main reason for being done is that a lot of his analysis of the myths are from a psychological point of view, speaking of the development of civilization/humanity/politics through the lens of the world’s mythology. I’m not saying that doesn’t have its place or hold any interest for me at all, but it does tend to suck the mystery and charm out of the stories. It’s not why I love mythology or what I care to focus on, so I’m just setting it aside for now.

[David Grossman]

Very informative and entertaining survey of Mythologies across time and place, with sensitive discussion of the individuals' distinctions between myth and religion. Relatively less emphasis on Greco-Roman mythology due to extensive coverage elsewhere, but this comes up often enough when especially pertinent to discussion. While I can only remember a small % of the specific material that was covered, it was very enlightening for me. I strongly recommend this as a survey of (often preliterary) literature across the world, full of colorful explanations for what we then (and often now) don't know about our lives, what comes before, and after.

[Gebo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating course on myth, but one that is intensely multicultural and focused on similarities cross culturally. Would highly recommend listening to this after A FEW world mythology classes. As someone who’s had a lifelong interest in the topic, it was still a bit too much for me at times. He does rather heavily focus on the monomyth which may or may not be problematic depending on your historical bent, but he regularly notes it’s controversial and offers alternative explanatory paradigms as well.

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

The 18-hour audio course Myth in Human History, from The Great Courses series, and taught by Professor Grant L. Voth is an excellent resource for creating mythic stories.

He uses monomyth theory extensively, particularly in chapters 25 and 26, a theory that justifies jamming stories into awkwardly fitting molds based on obsolete psychology (Freud and Jung). But he nonetheless has a lot to offer, not the least of which is enthusiasm.

[Kim · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love most of The Great Courses lecture series I've purchased, and this is no exception... however, I should post a note (for as much my own edification and as a reminder as anything else): this is not appropriate listening for younger lovers of myths. Even myths with which I thought I was quite familiar have some kind of cringy parts, particularly where the tricksters are concerned, but this could be said for many of them.

[Amy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Myth in Human History is an extremely interesting examination of myths and tales that include or speak to roots in mythology (such as myths that are still considered religions, like christianity; fairy/folk tales that make use of mythological tropes, such a Beauty and the Beast; and modern/classic literature that are rooted in mythology, such King Arthur). I very much enjoyed and learned from this series, and it is something that I would recommend to others.

[Nick Rolston · Rating 4 out of 5]

A tour de force through an incredible variety of myths across the world, discussing the deep similarities and unique aspects of these tales and how they were influenced by context and each other. It is fascinating to learn how monotheism developed in the Jewish culture and how the influence of the male sky God came to be, along with views into the lives of our ancestors across the world.

[R. · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was an interesting look at Mythology as a whole. The similarities between cultures that run through their myths has always interested me so looking at it from that higher level perspective is really nice. It's difficult to find something that doesn't focus in detail on one singular culture so if you're wanting that higher level broader understanding this is the one for you!

[Emma · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating tales and themes any writer would want to listen to and would get insprired by.
Well told.
Multicultural: not only the Greek and Roman gods, but also African, native American, Asian and Australian myths.

[Trina Dubya · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed reading different cultures' mythologies when I was a child, and this lecture series provided a deeper look into the stories I'd loved. It connected cultures from around the world with common threads.

[Ryk Stanton · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best Great Courses audios I’ve heard. The canned applause at the beginning and end needs to go, in my opinion, but this was a knowledgeable instructor who was obviously invested in his material. I feel as if I learned something, and that’s exactly what I wanted.

[Helen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I never liked mythology before, but this Great Course made it so interesting!! The lecturer is a fantastic storyteller, who makes the tales come alive. He also adds theory, so the myths can be compared. I changed my view of religion because of this course!

[Jon Stonecash · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a meta-approach to myths. It explores the patterns that occur in myths around the world. Very interesting.

[Kaci · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyable series. Disagreed with his interpretation of the Bible most of the time, but I sort of expected that.

[Shannon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Little dry at times, but great overview.

[Innastholiel]

Giving up on this for now.

[Ions · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great! Probably one of my favorite Great Courses lectures

[Chrissy · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Freudian analysis section was quite annoying, but the rest was interesting.

[MaryAnn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Audible

[Cookie M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent series. Helps put world myths into perspective tive.

[Jennifer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Love the comparisons within different myths. I definitely learned quite a bit, and confirmed thoughts about how the different civilizations are related.