Abstract

One can find mythologies with similarities even among highly diverse and geographically-separated cultures. These parallels include the gender of important entities in the stories, and because gender is a form of symbolism like any other, it serves an equally key role in the tales. There is no obvious reason why such similarities should exist since these groups of people would have had no contact with each other during the time these myths were formed, but there are multiple instances of female mother goddess figures and war-like male gods in different stories. Clearly, a male entity provokes different ideas than a female one, so a different gender within a story would cause a different resulting tale. The parallels between the stories can be attributed to multiple causes working together rather than from a single element. These aspects include the universality of certain concepts within human experience, the background of the culture in regards to whether it originated as an agrarian group or a hunter and herding population, the association of certain ideas with a specific gender, and the commonality of the human psyche. These elements combined with one another result in a number of different societies demonstrating very similar myths with the same genders fulfilling parallel roles within the stories.

Semester/Year of Award

Spring 2012

Mentor

Rick Mott

Mentor Department Affiliation

English and Theatre

Access Options

Restricted Access Thesis

Document Type

Bachelor Thesis

Degree Name

Honors Scholars

Degree Level

Bachelor's

Department

English

Department Name when Degree Awarded

English and Theatre

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