Friday, March 27, 2009
Blog #3: The Study and Creation of Myths
I discovered that the experience of creating a myth and studying myth is intertwined. Creating myth is different in that it requires a lot of creative thought. I found it was more difficult to write than the poetry assignment because I have more experience in reading a vast canon of poetic works. Myth, on the other hand, is a genre I have less experience with. My biggest challenge in writing the myth was finding a starting point. I felt that our study of myth helped me to ground my own myth in a starting place. The first step I took was thinking about whether I wanted my myth to fall in one of the categories we learned about (feminine divine, creation, sacred places, etc.). I decided to go with a contemporary take on a myth. Writing the myth has enhanced my study of myths by giving me the perspective of “myth creator.” I think the only difference is that the myths we studied were created/written under a different context. Older/ancient myths were created to answer questions that humans didn’t know the answer to. However, that did not make this experience any less significant. From this experience, I’ve learned that it can be a challenge to ask students to write a genre they are unfamiliar with. So it is crucial to provide them with enough support and background context for them to draw models to work from. If we had not been able to study myths before hand, it would have been even more difficult to come up with ideas. I also learned that creative writing, which some teachers are reluctant to include in their curriculum, is very useful and can enhance the study of more traditional forms of literature.
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I completely agree with you on writing a myth is much harder without knowledge of what myths are. Having those steps in learning about different myths and cultures, then presenting a certain myth type and now creating our own is a nice ease into a good creation.
ReplyDeleteIt is so much harder to write a myth, we're all used to writing poems, maybe short stories and papers, but to create our own mythological story had me rather nervous (and I'm still working on mine).
So are you going to write a creation myth? That'll be really neat reading it. I think that may be the hardest type of myth to make because one has to really think outside of the box-- but one can also be as abstract and random as they want because before the "thing" was created, there was nothing... neat!
Having said that, do you know which type of "thing" is going to be created? Earth, Space, Man and Woman, etc? That's the fun part, you're going to be able to be so creative on any aspect of... well anything.
Have fun, I can't wait to read your myth :)
I can actually understand what you mean about the fact that studding myths and creating one is related to some level. Honestly I have never been the one that was interested in myths, sure I thought we could learn a lot from them, specially about different cultures and history, but that was it! Nothing more. But now I think of them differently, I actually think some of the myths that we had to read form out book were funny and unbelievable. I love our assignment of myth creation, it seems that this time we have total control over, and these type of assignments don’t come along often. And I hope that one day I, too, can challenge students with such an assignment.
ReplyDeleteHey Denica!
ReplyDeleteI agree with you about how studying myths and creating one are intertwined. I felt they really are since I wondered how one can possibly write a myth without knowing what myths are. It's like saying I'm going to write about a water molecule and not know what they are composed of. I also found creating a myth difficult for a number of reasons that you also included here in your blog. It's pretty much what you are most comfortable with and which demands familiarity and comprehension. That's why I wrote in my blog that, myths, in many ways, reflect our understanding of not only mythology but the inherent knowledge they convey. Also, I think your myth sounds really cool! I can't wait to read it fully through your website. Your contemporary take is so original, so kudos to you for attempting it! Good luck with everything!