CL Myth, Literature, Ideology, Fall 2015
Özlem Öğüt Yazıcıoğlu
Office: TB 475, E-mail: ozlemogu@boun.edu.tr
Tentative Syllabus
(Changes and additions will be made; A “Suggested Reading List” will be provided
on the first day of classes)
Course Description: This course focuses on both myths and approaches to myths. We will
study parts from some of the most influential ancient epics, which played a significant role in
the dissemination of myths that still continue to inform philosophical, social, cultural and
ideological definitions of truth, as well as our understanding of the sacred, the heroic, the
rational, the emotional, and the magical. We will explore and discuss various links of myths
with religion, ritual, performance and narrative.
Course requirements:
Preparation: You must come to class having read the particular material assigned for
each particular day of class, as indicated on the course plan.
Class performance: Regular participation in class (discussions; pop-quizzes; response
papers; group work).
Term paper: Your term paper must study a contemporary text (novel, novella, short
story, play, a set of poems) with respect to its employment of myth and in the context of
critical approaches to myth. Details concerning the length and the format, as well as the
deadlines for the submission of an abstract including a title, bibliography, outline and the
complete paper will be announced at the beginning of the academic term.
Assessment:
Midterm exam
Class performance (written and oral)
Final exam (comprehensive)
30 %
30 %
40 %
Required Texts: The course package will be available at the photocopy shop in the library as
of September 15, 2015.
Reading Schedule
Week 1
28 Sep.-30 Sep.
Introduction (on the definitions of myth and an overview of
Various theories of myth)
Parts from The Epic of Gilgamesh
Week 2
5 Oct.-7 Oct.
Parts from Hesiod’s Theogony and Works and Days
Week 3
12 Oct.-14 Oct.
Parts from Euripides’ The Bacchae and
Sophocles’ Antigone and Oedipus the King
Week 4
19 Oct.-21 Oct.
Plato on Myth (Parts from Republic, Phaedrus, Laws)
Week 5
26 Oct.-28 Oct.
Ovid, parts from Metamorphoses
Week 6
2 Nov.-4 Nov.
Parts from Genesis
African cosmology and creation myths
Week 7
9 Nov.-11 Nov.
Parts from Carl Gustav Jung’s The Spirit in Man, Art and
Literature)
Parts from Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces
Week 8
16 Nov.-18 Nov.
Parts from René Girard’s Violence and the Sacred
Week 9
23 Nov.-25 Nov.
Parts from James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young
Man and Ulysses (with reference to Homer’s Odyssey, T.S.
Eliot’s “Ulysses, Order and Myth”) and Eliot’s “The Wasteland”
Week 10
30 Nov.-2 Dec.
Claude Lévi-Strauss’ “The Structural Study of Myth”
Parts from Claude Lévi-Strauss’ Myth and Meaning
Week 11
7 Dec.-9 Dec.
Roland Barthes’ Mythologies
Week 12
14 Dec.-16 Dec.
Roland Barthes’ Mythologies continued
Week 13
21 Dec.-23 Dec.
Louis Althusser, “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses”