| allegory | A literary narrative in which persons, places, and events are given a symbolic meaning.
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| anima | Jungian term for the feminine principle residing in the male psyche.
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| animus | Jungian term for the masculine principle residing in the female psyche.
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| archetype | The primal form or original pattern from which all other things of a like nature are descended. In myth, the term refers to characters, ideas, or actions that represent the supreme and/or essential examples of a universal type, components of the "collective unconscious."
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| Aurora | [ah-ROR-uh] The Roman goddess of dawn, a counterpart of the Greek Eos, daughter of Hyperion and Theia.
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| charter myths | Traditional tales that serve to justify or validate some custom or practice, such as Hesiod's story about Prometheus's tricking Zeus into accepting an inferior sacrifice.
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| Daedalus | [DEE-duh-luhs] Master architect who designed the labyrinth at Knossos for King Minos. When Minos tried to keep him and his son Icarus prisoner on Crete, Daedalus fashioned wings for their escape. (See Icarus.)
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| Eos | [EE-ohs] A personification of the dawn, she was the sister of Selene and Helios. She was identified by the Romans with Aurora.
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| etiology | A branch of knowledge dealing with causes, it refers to the proposition that all myths represent attempts to explain the origins of natural, social, or psychological phenomena.
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| Helios | [HEE-lee-ohs] Son of Hyperion, he was god of the sun.
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| Hyperion | [hye-PEER-ee-uhn] Titan son of Uranus and Gaea, and father of Helios, Selene, and Eos; a personification of the sun.
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| Icarus | [IK-uh-ruhs] Son of Daedalus who flew from Crete on artificial wings his father had constructed. Ignoring Daedalus's warning, he flew too close to the sun, whose rays melted the wax holding the wings together, causing him to fall to his death.
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| Lemnos | Volcanic island in the Aegean Sea on which Philoctetes was abandoned by the Achaeans.
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| mythology | (1) The systematic study of myth. (2) A set or collection of myths, such as classical mythology.
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| narratology | The critical study of structure in narratives.
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| nature myth | A theory of myth that sees all myths as disguised representations of natural phenomena, such as the cycle of the seasons or the alternation of sun and storm.
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| personification | A literary device by which an abstract quality is given human or divine form, as when Homer made Panic (the sudden fear that seizes a crowd) and Rout (the impulse to flee the battlefield) actual personages. Eros personifies human sexual desire as Eos signifies the dawn.
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| Plato | Athenian philosopher (427–347 B.C.) who taught that the material world is only a flawed reflection of a perfect spiritual realm, from which the human soul descends to earth to be born in a mortal body and to which it returns for judgment after death.
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| Procrustes | A brigand (said to be a son of Poseidon) who kidnapped and murdered travelers on the road between Athens and Eleusis. He laid his victims on an iron bed: if they were too short he stretched them out to .t the bed frame; if too tall, he cut off their extremities. Theseus beheaded him.
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| psychology | A science that investigates the human mind and behavior.
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| ritual | The established form for a ceremony, a formalized set of words, gestures, or actions assiduously repeated in customary order, especially the prescribed order of a religious rite. According to some mythographers, all myths are related to ritual observances.
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| Selene | [se-LEE-nee] A Titan daughter of Hyperion (or Helios), she personified the moon.
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| shadow | A term used in Jungian psychology to denote the unconscious part of the personality consisting of emotions or qualities that were repressed as the psyche developed. Although the shadow contains many negative or potentially destructive drives that can motivate antisocial or self-defeating behavior—greed, shame, lust, envy, hatred, selfishness—it also harbors abilities and talents that were never cultivated because they were not encouraged and is thus a source of positive psychic energy.
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| Socrates | Athenian philosopher (c. 469–399 B.C.) and friend and teacher of Plato, he was condemned to death for questioning assumptions deemed essential to maintain civic order and security.
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| structuralism | A method of critical analysis postulating that the human mind has an innate tendency to impose patterns or structured systems on experience, such as the tendency to perceive the world as a duality of opposites. The function of myth is to mediate or reconcile these polarities.
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