神话世界.pptVIP

Chapter 1 The World of Myths 蔡海燕 goddy0223@163.com Today’s content: I. Mythical Geography神话地理 II. The Beginning of the World III. Meaning of the Myths神话 I. Mythical Geography By experience, not by the scientific fact, when we look around and above us, we seem to stand at the very center of a circular plane, vaulted by the sky, across whose spacious arch the sun travels by day and the moon by night. To ancient Greeks, the world was flat and round, a disk whose central point was in their own native land, in central Greece, at Delphi. Beyond those lands to which Greek civilization penetrated lay distant lands inhabited by strange people and monsters. Far in the North lived a good and happy people, the Hyperboreans, and to the south “the blameless Ethiopians”. Beyond all lands, and circling the disk of earth, ran the Stream of Ocean, a great and mysterious river without a farther shore. II. The Beginning of the World Greek account of the beginning of this world, is in one respect quite unlike the account that is found in the first chapter of the Bible. The Greeks believed that the natural world came into being by birth or generation, and that even the gods whom they worshiped were the children and successors of an earlier and more elemental race of beings. The earlier theogony神谱 The new theogony Chaos According?to?Greek?myths about creation, the formless god Chaos was the foundation of all things. From Chaos came Gaea (“Earth”), and Eros (“Love”). Chaos produced Erebus and Night. From these two were born Aether and Day. Chaos also produced the bottomless depth of the underworld, known as Tartarus. Gaea Uranus Gaea first bore Uranus, the god of the heavens, and after him produced the mountains and sea. Then Gaea and Uranus were united by Eros and became the parents of the Titans. They also gave birth to the Cyclopes, one-eyed giants, and the Hecatonchires, the hundred-handed giants. The Castration of Uranus Uranus?tried?to?block any successors from ta