Author: Tang, Zhecheng Claire
Title: A genre-based comparative study of Heroic Myths
Degree: M.A.
Year: 2013
Subject: Mythology -- Comparative studies.
Myth -- Structural analysis.
Heroes in literature.
Hong Kong Polytechnic University -- Dissertations
Department: Department of English
Pages: 73 pages
Language: English
Abstract: This paper adopts a new perspective in comparative mythology studies. The aim of this paper is to prove that heroic myths from around the world belong to a particular genre with distinct properties from others genres. The study analysed five heroic myths from four different regions and cultures across the world: central Brazil, Canada, Greece and China using the approach of Genre Analysis (GA) compare to see if there exists a possible shared structural pattern between them. The most distinguished characteristic of the study is the combination of comparative mythology and linguistics. The methodologies are adopted from the linguistic areas includes GA and Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL). Through the genre-based comparative study, it is shown that scientific-heroic myths can indeed be included within one genre, in which they share certain linguistic features even though they were from different countries and cultures. To illustrate the genre analysis in-depth, the study analyses the realisations from the perspective of language use as well using ideas from SFL. This study is a trial in the field of comparative mythology using theories and approaches from linguistics, which will bring new theories and methods into the study of comparative mythology.
Rights: All rights reserved
Access: restricted access

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Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://theses.lib.polyu.edu.hk/handle/200/7666