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Greek Mythology And The Concept Of Mythology

Decent Essays

According to the definitions provided by Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, the lexeme “myth” is considered to be “a story from ancient times, especially one that was told to explain natural events or to describe the early history of a people” or “something that many people believe but that does not exist or is false.”
In this way, the ancient mythologies were considered to be figments of the collective mind of those people who were trying to explain themselves the world mechanisms calling upon imagination. Thus, for them, mythology was the key in explaining the existence of the world they lived in. Going further in time, the emergence of Christianity and the development of science have modified people’s old perception about the way in …show more content…

From William Blake’s point of view, in terms of visionary dynamism, Greek mythology was dead. On the other hand, as a static force, it constitutes the foundation on which the concept of myth continues to evolve. Even in his personal mythology the Greek model is used as point of departure in the creation of his pantheon. Blake’s deities are associated with natural phenomena, mental faculties, feelings, emotions, psychological categories and so forth; a fact that is characteristic for Greek gods.
When Blake created his divinities, he imagined them as anthropomorphic figures whose actions are similar with those made by human beings. Also, he provided no glossary to explain their etymological sources of their names or tell us what these entities represent. It is true that there were edited some dictionaries that tried to explain what are the significances of Blake’s characters but the reader may construct his own glossary based on his knowledge, critical perception and why not his reception of Blake’s …show more content…

In Blake’s Notebooks, Why was Cupid a Boy is a poem that ends with the following lines: “Twas the Greeks’ love of war / Turn’d Love into a boy, / And Woman into a statue of stone - / And away fled every joy”. (Blake, 479) Here, the gender of Cupid is pronlematised, being viewed as a metamorphosis process. The myth put in accord with the idea that war as destroyer of art, suggesting the fact that it is also the destroyer of love. As an effect, the gender of the mythical entity suffers mutations which also affects human emotion and makes the sexes to be against each other.
The Art is viewed a continually evolving process. Considering this idea, the artists used the ancient models as prototypes in realizing their works which are, in fact, mimetic representations of what existed before. The human mind is not capable to unravel the mystery about the gift given by gods to the ancient artists, thus the so-called masterpieces created by the next generations are inspired from the ancient artistic

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