PART 1:
Write brief essay each of two pages. In length. Don’t right long introductions-get right to the point and no repetitive conclusions. Support your claims with specific examples or reasons. Why are you saying what you are saying?

1) Choose any one myth and write a background for it. That is, find some information on the people who produce that particular myth and summarize the most significant points. Be careful to correctly cite sources of your information. Please note that you are not asked to write about the myth itself: instead write about the culture of which the myth arose. In other words, of you choose an Apache myth, and then write about the Apache as a people, and not about Apache mythology. Then answer this question: How does this information illumine the myth, or how does the myth explain some facets of the information.

2) Choose one particular element and trace it through three different myth, by element I means something like water, or divine twins, or particular animal, or body part, or song, or any other recurring feature of the stories you have read. Does that element have a similar meaning or function in all three myths? What is it? Or does it function differently in the different narrative? How Make sure you correctly cite the myth you have picked.

3. Updating/Displacement
Choose a particular myth and update or modernize it. Keep the basic structure of the story but alter the elements, details and actors to fit or contemporary culture. Move the setting to North Dakota or Minnesota or Canada or anywhere else (place that is not the original). Obviously an fantastic elements must be made plausible, and the characters be made recognizable to a contemporary local audience. Make the story humorous or satirical if you wish. Your rewrite of traditional narrative must have some sort of point, a point that may be similar to the original or update (move it to the 20 or 21 century but still have the same structure of the original)

PART 2
1. Akongo was not always as he is now. In the beginning the creator lived among men; but men were quarrelsome. One day they had a big quarrel and Akongo left them to themselves. He went and hid in the forest and nobody has seen him since. People today can’t tell what he is like. [from Africa]

2. In the beginning, when there was yet no earth, but water covered everything, a Lama (holy man) came down from Heaven, and began to stir the water with an iron rod. By the influence of the wind and fire thus brought about, the water on the surface in the middle of the ocean thickened and coagulated into land. [from Mongolia]

Hints: Why do we call these myths and what category of myths do they belong to? What elements are similar to other myths you’ve studied? What do the myths suggest about the realities of the cultures that produced them?

PART 1: Write brief essay each of two pages. In length. Don’t righ...