Myth Reading Group – Autumn Term 2020

Leonardo da Vinci, The Last Supper (1495-98)

The Myth Reading Group is revived for the Autumn Term for four meetings to be held over ‘Zoom’.

Texts will be circulated in advance, and the meetings will consist of reading and discussion of the texts.

The meetings are open to all who have an interest in the study of myth. In the past, the group has attracted a fruitful mix of academics, practitioners, and enthusiasts.

Details of how to join the meeting will be published shortly.

The topic for this term is ‘Food’.

Food is so commonplace that it can easily be overlooked, but it is essential to the mythic imagination of the past and the present. In finding and getting, in times of scarcity or abundance, in the basic need and the sensual delight – the food we eat is as integral to our sense of self as the stories we tell. When we think of the tales of hunting and cultivation, the raw and the cooked, mana and taboo, of hospitality, of raiding, or poison and remedies, we rediscover the vitality of the merest crumb.

We will meet on the following Wednesdays, between 5.30 and 6.30 pm:

• 21 October: Rainer Maria Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus
• 4 November: John Keats, ‘The Fall of Hyperion. A Dream’
• 2 December: Dubravka Ugrešić, Baba Yaga Laid an Egg
• 16 December: Homer, The Odyssey