Mythology Blog Fall 2019

Satan, frozen in Hell For today I continued reading Dante's Inferno. I continued to struggle to understand parts of what I was reading so I went online to search for some explanation videos. After that, I tried reading it and it made more sense but it's still a strange book. I like the idea of how he travels down the different levels and matches the punishments to the sins. In one of the videos, I saw they talked about how Dante was Italian and therefore really hated the greeks and that's why there are so many greek people in Hell and I thought that was funny. How Dante was so petty he wrote a book where he punished them lol. Anyways, it was really cool to see how Dante mixed religion with mythology. I wasn't expecting to see all the mythological creatures in this book but it worked out really well. The order of Hell is interesting, as well as how Dante classified sins from least to most sinful. I have no idea what I'm going to write about for my story this

Map of Dante’s Inferno I had a hard time understanding today’s reading. I have never read it before and I know it’s a really popular book so I decided to try it. I can follow along most of what is being said, but there were a lot of parts where Virgil is explaining stuff to Dante that I didn’t get. I think it’s really cool how they go from level to level and see all the different people that have been condemned to Hell. I wasn’t expecting to see the philosophers and poets there but it makes sense why they’re there. Today’s reading: Dante's Divine Comedy , translated by Tony Kline (2002).

Tlaloc In this week's videos, they talked about a lot of different flood myths from all over the world. I had heard they flood myth from the Bible, but all the other ones were new to me. I thought they were really interesting. I could see a lot of similarities between all of them which is wild especially when they come from different continents. I really like the American ones about the Aztec, Inca, and Maya. Even though I did a lot of research on Aztec mythology I had not read the one about the flood. Maybe if I had I could have used it in my storybook. Link to videos:  http://mythfolklore.blogspot.com/2017/12/crash-course-myth-flood-stories.html

Jewels Once there was a lady that was very ugly, in spirit and appearance, that gave birth to a pair of twins both girls. Their father had passed away during the girl's second year of life and the mother had to raise both by herself. As they grew older, one of the girls, Evelyn, became the spitting image of her mom, and the other, Flor, became the spitting image of her father. Unfortunately for Evelyn, this meant that she developed the same ugly character that her mother possessed. Flor grew to be a very beautiful and charming child just like her father. Because of this both her mother and Evelyn grew to be very envious of Flor and treated her poorly. Her mother instructed her to do all the household chores while Evelyn got to go hang out with her friends. One day while Flor was mowing the lawn her mother told her to take out the trash immediately. She grabbed the trash bags and took them down the street to the local garbage bin where she met an old lady asking for chang

Medio Pollito. Image source For today's reading, I accidentally read the first part of Lang's Fairy tales II instead of reading the second part of Lang's Fairy tales I. These were interesting I had never heard of any of them so it was a lot of learning. I thought the one about the half chicken was kinda funny. The plot was a bit mean but I guess that's life. The story about clever maria really confused me I didn't get much of what was going on in that one. The one about the seven-headed serpent was kinda boring since it was basically all like background info, hardly any action took place. The one about the girl spitting diamonds from her mouth was also boring to me. All in all other than the chicken one I wasn't really interested in these stories. Story source: The Green Fairy Book by Andrew Lang, illustrated by H. J. Ford (1892).

A shower curtain of what I imagine Kiza would look like.  For this weeks readings I read Lang’s European Fairy tales. I chose to read them because I wanted to read the story about “puss in boots.” It was nothing like I expected it definitely did not have the same plot as the puss in boots movies I watched. But I really liked how the cat helped get his master rich. It made me really curious to find out what would happen when the king and princess find out that they were lying the whole time. That story was followed by the dirty shepardess one I think, which was super similar to a previous story I had read although I don’t remember the title right now. It had the same “salt” predicament followed by the prince almost dying because he would only be happy by marrying the princess. In the end they married and the daughter pulls the salt trick on her dad to prove what she meant by her original statement. Then was the story about Kiza the cat which I really liked as well. That story