Discuss the impact of television on myth, legend, and folklore. Is the impact a positive one or a negative one? Are stories told
on TV our future myths, legends, and folklore? You explored several methodologies about the study of myth. None of the people who came up with these methodologies are alive today. What method would you come up with to study the myths, folklore, and legends that have evolved in the eighteenth through the twentieth centuries? American literary scholar Richard Altick, in his book A Preface to Critical Reading, said, “In the latter part of the 20th century, it is hard for us to realize how important a part mythology played in the imagination of writers and readers down through the ages. The gods and goddesses of Olympus, the heroes of ancient legend were as familiar to the people who created the literature of the western world as popular movie stars are to us. Their names had the power to evoke rich emotions, which sprang from the recollection of the wondrous stories in which these figures participated. Unless the modern reader can somehow re-create for herself the emotional experience a mythological reference brought to readers in earlier generations, her reading of non-contemporary literature will lack much of the pleasure and understanding it would otherwise possess.” Discuss this statement. Without an understanding of myth, can we fully understand and appreciate noncontemporary literature? If we can’t, then how can myth, legend, and folklore stay alive? Does it need to, or can we survive as a culture without it?
