While sending, use the Subject Line: “JANE SMITH. COMPARATIVE FOLKLORE.

JOURNAL+MIDTERM.” You may write down and edit your Midterm answers in the Word
file but copy them into the body of email (to avoid opening dozens of attachments). Copy
each question above your answer and underline it. Highlight your key points and
conclusions in boldface in all answers and assignments. Each answer should be about
one-page length, double-spaced. Since you have 1 page only, prioritize the most important
ideas: outline the key points first, and add your examples/clarifications later.
 1. What do the ‘Nature’s tales’ from the plant and animal kingdoms (as per biosemiotics)
teach us about communication, folklore and storytelling?
The folk tales that invoke natural beings such as plants and animals are metaphors for the

ways in which we, as humans, are dependent on the natural world and its plants, animals, and

natural forces to teach us how to live correctly. Folklore focuses on animals because they

represent the values that humans have seen in different animals that can be applied to revival

techniques or symbols for how to mature as humans. In Russian myths, animals can show

examples for how to create desirable societies or those that do not function, which would be

represented within the victory of defeat of each animal in the story.

The community structure of baboons give an example of how proper communication can

be done amongst humans. When baboons live communally and share the work of the community

equally, they live well and comfortably. However, when hierarchies begin to be built up based on

the amount of prestige and power a baboon holds, the community as a whole begins to suffer.

The baboons with lower status are made to feel miserable because they are belittled and denied

resources by those with higher status, while those with higher status are continually stressed to

the point where they do not sleep well. This cause their immune system to decrease due to the

amount of continuous stress that protecting their status from the other tired baboons requires.

The values expressed in each story have universal values that are hidden behind the

characters and plot of each story. For certain stories in Russian mythology, the wolf is an

example being both a helper to humanity and a danger to its any violent enemies. These

examples give the examples for how humans should organize themselves, and humans are

reminded of this through the symbology of animals based on wolves, baboons, trees, etc.
 2. What did you learn about the mythological world-models, their origin as per symbolic
anthropology, influence on transcultural folklore, and continual impact on the media today?

The mythological world-models are classical models of how humans see the world as

created and how we ought to relate with this enchanted world. Some of these models are based

on the initial creation of the world: Animatism, the cosmic mother, and the primordial child are

all models of the world being imbued with magic power through the metaphor of birth. Other are

based on the power that exists in the world: totemism, animism, and ancestor worship all hold

that landscapes, animals, and dead ancestors all hold magic power that protect people from the

danger and promotes a cosmic harmony amongst all the forces of the world. Indigenous cultures

around the world hold these beliefs but through their immediate environments, such as the

American Indians and Indigenous Siberians holding a belief in animism.

According to the thought of Levy-Bruhl, the symbolic relationship that humans had with

the world through these frameworks is from the idea that the world is magical and anything can

change into anything else because of it. This view held that power could appear anywhere in the

world and that everything was created by the same cosmic force that underlies reality. In this

way, conduct of animals in the world or the power that minerals can be replicated for humans,

too.

The impact of these world models in contemporary media is that we have a high

propensity for fantasy and sci-fi genres of media. Both of these hold a mythical view of the

world, be it magic crystals (fetishism), the natural environment coming alive and attacking or

aiding the protagonists (animism), or the need to restore harmony with the natural forces of the

world (cosmic energies). These models allows authors and screenwriters to create new fantastical
world that can both be very new but also follow common motifs within a collective memory of

primitive human culture.

3. Select any two subsequent phases of the journey, which follow one another. Explain their
functions in the Masterplot as a whole, and how these phases are logically linked together.
The hero’s journey requires a sequence of events that must occur for the protagonist of a story to

overcome the trials and tribulations that come with the mythical world of the story. This

paradigmatic framework is named the "masterplot” and it is a poetic and artistic process of

imbuing a symbolic structure into the story, rather than an objective scientific analysis. Two

necessary phases of the journey are the entry into the wonderworld and the violation of the

taboo.

The wonderworld is world that that the protagonist enters to become the hero, and it

operates under different laws than the “real” homeworld that the protagonist lives at the

beginning of the story. Upon entering the wonderworld, the hero is confronted with the wholly

different laws, landscapes, and beings that inhabit this world and have otherworldy and even

incomprehensible characteristics at first. The outskirts of the wonderworld is a mythical maze

that must be traversed with caution before arriving to the wonderworld proper. On one hand, the

entrance is situated in a natural area, such through forests, mountains, or space and planets. On

the other, wonderworlds can appear in the homeworld humans normally inhabit, except changed

by a disaster, natural or human, that inverts the rules of the world familiar to the hero.

The violation of the taboo is the entrance into a forbidden area within the wonderworld,

be this a sacred cave or room or the invocation of a taboo figure in speech or art. This comes

about from the ancient belief that humans were surrounded by an enchanted reality and these

beings would react, often violently, when invoked. These beings hold more powers than humans

and are connected through these sacred areas, image, or words which are too powerful for
humans to know. The hero’s job is to become mentally prepared to handle this forbidden power

and truly become the hero who resolves the conflict.

 4. Explain the origins and narrative functions of magic/fantastic beings. What can they do in the
story and why? What values, foreseeable or unexpected, they may promote in the tales of folklore?

The origin of magic beings comes from the ancient beliefs of early humanity, that nature

was alive, could judge human actions, and was full of beings beyond the animals and plants that

are affirmed by modern science. With nature being able to look back at humans and their

conduct within the world, humans had to act ethically so as to not to anger the magic beings and

have them seek retribution.

The appearance of magical beings within stories is a recognition of the greater power and

age these beings have in the world over humanity. These could be emotions such as courage,

fear, love, etc. or natural forces such as the sun, the wind, chaotic changes in nature, etc., all of

which precede humanity or human self-awareness. These beings act as a dialogue of ethics,

where their actions show different ways humans do and should act in the world. Norstein’s

animation short, “Fox and Rabbit”, shows the examples of the multiple forest animals aiding a

rabbit who had been robbed of his home by a jealous fox. Where the strong bear, bull, and wolf

gave up helping the rabbit after one try and much boasting of their own strength, the final

animal, the rooster, fought the fox multiple times with courage and dedication, becoming the

animal who succeeded in helping the rabbit get his house back. The example here is that strength

comes from dedication to a cause even if one is not naturally strong like a bull or bear, and this

will be the way to solve problems.

In other cases, animals show other values that may not be heroic, but which allow

humans to survive in unforgiving situations. One of these is an African bird which scares

meerkats away from their food by mimicking meerkat’s natural predators with its cry. This value
demonstrated by this bird is that of a trickster who shows humans how to survive in the wild if

they use their knowledge over brute force.

5. Choose one topic (discussed in the lectures or the textbook this semester), which you found to be
the most interesting. Explain in detail why, and what you have learned on this subject.

I came to enjoy the debate between Levi-Strauss and Levy-Bruhl and their different

outlines of pre-modern conceptions of reality. Wherein Levi-Strauss had come to see pre-modern

logic as a divide between oppositional logics, such as man-woman, young-old, etc., Levy-Bruhl

saw how all beings existed isomorphically and diffused into one another; everything is

everything else. Levy-Bruhl’s anthropology brings with it a conception of change that actually

allows for a greater approximation of objective prorrrrrcesses of the world: the genie is the lamp

and the lamp is the genie.

The Burhlian framework offers a better model for how humans actually view themselves

symbolically when consuming media. The protagonist in a character is symbolic of certain

values such as heroism or power. In sports, sports team and their fans are the same, because the

victory of the team is the victory of the fans and the fans feel stronger from that symbolic

relationship where they feel as much a part of the game as the team.

A translation of this view that incorporates modern scientific thought can be explained

with how animals are born from the chemical remains of other dead animals and plants and

eventually evolve into new animals from a direct line of now extinct beings, and that each

“individual” animal is always dependent on the transformation of other living beings into

food/energy. In this way, the symbiotic relationship between a human and the gut bacteria within

the human stomach are not separate beings, but dependent on each other for their mutual

survival. There is no human without the bacteria that creates it, so the human is the bacteria as

the bacteria is the human.