Mythèmes du Nord
For another research question, I amused myself by exploring the use of different French notions to designate Norse Mythology with the Google Ngram Viewer. Discussions to be published in Deshima at the end of the year.
The Vikings are coming to France first in the 1980s
January 21st 2021, 6pm
Alessandra Ballotti (Lorraine University):
Taking on the Pole.
Mythemes of the North in Italian Adventure Novels
Watch the video here.
February 18th 2021, 6pm
Maria Hansson (Sorbonne University):
What Is Truly Swedish?
The Changing Mythemes of Folkhem
Watch the video here.
March 18th 2021, 6pm
Alexandre Zeitler (University of Strasbourg):
A Digital Approach to the Discursive Construction of National Identity: the Example of the Sámi Council’s Declarations
Watch the Video here.
22 April 2021, 6pm
Claire McKeown (Lorraine University)
Interiors and Interiority:
Mytheme Theory and Herman Bang’s Impressionist Aesthetics
Watch the video here.
The webinars will be held every third Thursday of the month from 6 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. (Central European Time) at https://bbb.unistra.fr/b/tho-tab-ufn-sk9. Everyone is welcome to join and to participate in the discussion. The presentations will be made available soon after on our website and on pod.unistra.fr/mythemes.
Organizers:
Alessandra Ballotti (Lorraine University), Claire McKeown (Lorraine University), Thomas Mohnike (University of Strasbourg), and Pierre-Brice Stahl (Sorbonne University).
Most frequent mythemes plus most frequent actors and chronotopes. Coef >0.3, CSR > 1.2. High Betweenness Centrality = Bigger dotes.
Most frequent actor mythemes. Coef >0.3, CSR > 1.2. High Betweenness Centrality = Bigger dotes.
Most frequent actor mythemes without Nils Holgersson. Coef >0.3, CSR > 1.2. High Betweenness Centrality = Bigger dotes.
Most frequent chronotope mythemes. Coef >0.3, CSR > 1.2. High Betweenness Centrality = Bigger dotes.
Davide Finco (University of Genoa)
Mythemes of the North can originate from different sources, such as literary works, press reports, films, opinion surveys and so on. At the same time, media often contribute to consolidate mythemes or to discuss and dismantle them. It is relevant to assess which mythemes have resisted over time, as well as to find out relations between mythemes in an alleged consistency of the image of the North (meant as one form of the knowledge of the North). Another meaningful perspective, however, might be that of comparing different representations of the North, or even of a single nation/culture, in works published in the same period, if not the same year.
This paper has the purpose to consider specific case studies, which display both evident similarities and essential differences: as indicated in the title, all works came out in the period 1927-1929 and they all offer, more or less explicitly, an image of Denmark and its people: : Karin Michaëlis’ Bibi. En lille Piges Liv (1927, 1929), Hans Kirk’s Fiskerne (1928) and Jens August Schade’s Sjov i Danmark (1928).Moreover, all works own a peculiar place in the respective author’s literary production. On the other hand, they belong to very different genres, like children’s literature, realist novel, surrealist poem. While taking all elements (potential mythemes) of Denmark contained in these works into account and connecting and comparing them, my contribution is at least an experimental attempt to investigate the image of Denmark in three famous literary works of the same period, at most a way to explore the potentialities of an approach lead by the theory of mythemes.
Interested? Watch it online: https://pod.unistra.fr/mythemes/video/34414-2nd-mytheme-webinar-tracing-mytheme-change/
Missed our First Mytheme Webinar? Watch the video now!
https://pod.unistra.fr/video/31242-1st-mytheme-webinar-exploring-mythemes/
October 15th , 6 pm
Alessandra Ballotti, Claire McKeown, Thomas Mohnike, and Pierre-Brice Stahl:
Exploring Mythemes
>> Watch the Video online
November 19th , 6 pm
Thomas Mohnike (University of Strasbourg) :
Tracing Mytheme Change. Report from the Mytheme Laboratory
>> Watch the Video online
December 17th , 6 pm
Davide Finco (University of Genoa):
About Bibi, Sjov and the Fishermen. Looking for Danish Mythemes in the Late 1920s
>> Watch the Video online
January 22nd 2020 , 6 pm
Alessandra Ballotti (University of Upper Alsace):
Political and Social Mythemes in Ibsen’s first Italian Critical Reception
At: https://unistra.adobeconnect.com/lce-mytheme
The webinars will be held every third Thursday of the month from 6 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. (Central European Time) at https://unistra.adobeconnect.com/lce-mytheme. Everyone is welcome to join and to participate in the discussion. The presentations will be made available soon after on our website.
Organizers:
Alessandra Ballotti (Lorraine University), Claire McKeown (Lorraine University),
Thomas Mohnike (University of Strasbourg), and Pierre-Brice Stahl (Sorbonne University).
by Thomas Mohnike
Isaac La Peyrère. Relation du Groenland. Paris : Augustin Courbé, 1647.
50 most current tokens interpreted as mythemes. Non-directed. Dark-blue high Eigenvector centrality.
First published , rewritten and updated June 22, 2020
Trying to understand the narrative grammar of the mythèmes used in the Snorra-Edda, I analysed the 80 most frequent tokens, dismissing of course stopwords, with our mythème-laboratory. I used Rasmus Anderson’s English translation (1879), that does include all major mythological passages. I defined discs of 80 words around each search token with a sample coverage rate of less than 50%. Only those words are retained where the number of words in the work is greater than 20 and the over-representation coefficient in the sample is greater than 1.2. The radius of the discs may be automatically reduced to comply with the limit specified for the recovery rate. See the details here. I imported the data to gephi, interpreting the search token as source node and the tokens significant defining tokens as target. Weight of edges corresponds to the CSRR, that is the normalized importance of the coefficient of over-representation. In order to gain a readable layout, I ran the Force-Atlas-layout-algorithm.
A first map places the used mythèmes quite nicely in the context of other mythemes used in the same context: As in the text, Har and Gangleri are highly connected, as they are dialoging throughout the text as are the place of the hall as the location of telling stories. Loke and Thor are undertaking journeys together, accompanied of Thor’s hammer and liked both to the Aesir and the giants. God, heaven, earth and the world are put together and with these mythemes questions of cosmology. Odin is linked too questions of kingdom and fatherhood. Spots in dark green have a high degree, that is are highly connected to others, spots in light green less.
In the above map, giants seem to take an important place. To verify the centrality of the different mythèmes, I run the algorithms that define centrality of the different nodes assigned colors and font size according to the centrality of the elements in the graph. The degrees of the nodes were weighted. The next three graphs show three different resulting variants. Attention : the orientation of the map has changed as I rerun several algorithms, but the general structure remained unchanged. Dark blue nodes are central.
Data at Mythème-laboratory : https://mythemes.u-strasbg.fr/w/index.php/Ref:1879_SNORRE%E2%80%99S_EDDA#tab=L_27_C5_93uvre.
Thomas Mohnike
