Nathaniel Roberts

6/15/15 Review Questions
1. What purposes did myths serve to ancient peoples? All ancient people had some form of myths. The main purpose of myths were to help rationalize natural phenomena. They tried to give an explanation of the origin of the universe, this including the Sun, Moon, Earth, and stars. Another purpose may be to provide moral lessons. The reasons myths were made was to explain physical changes.

2. How do creation myths differ from nature myths? Creation myths explain how the earth was created. The myths usually involve gods and animals with battles between two forces. Nature myths were created to explain natural phenomena that happen. Such as why the stars moved or why the sun rose and set, or even why there were spots on the moon. These two myths were very similar but have slightly different meanings
3. What types of works make up the literary genre of folklore?
The most common works of folklore are legends, folktales, and fairy tales. Legends are stories of human beings, but there is no real evidence supporting that they are true. Folktales are ancient stories that has no known author. A fairy tale usually happened “a long time ago” and involves someone of royalty. These three are the major types of work making up folklore.
4. What are the characteristics of fables?
One type of folktale is a fable. A fable usually consists of the main character being a talking animal. The purpose of the fable is used to show the moral of the story, with the author very clearly outlines at the end of the story.
5. How are folktales and fairy tales related?
Folktales is an expression of culture. They show the reader how culture was in that time period. Fairy tales include folkloric characters that are imaginary, and usually involve the main character being in some royal position.

Critical Thinking Questions
1. Early in this unit, you read the story of Daedalus and Icarus. There are at least two lessons to be learned from this myth. What might those be? There were many things you could have gotten from the story, but what I got out of it was this. The first is to always listen to someone who was more knowledge and experience. The second lesson is curiosity can sometimes be very dangerous and can lead to death. There are many more lessons you can abstract from this reading but these two were the obvious.
2. Which do you believe is more meaningful reading, mythology or folklore? Why do you think this is so? I believe that both mythology and folklore are meaningful to read. If I was to pick the most meaningful it would have to be folklore, because it teaches culture. Culture is something I