Paper Topic Proposal

I have finally found my research topic for this class and most likely my independent research. Several times I have talked to Professor Sexson about various topics relating to the Eleusinian Mysteries that I think would make great research subjects. And most of them would but they are to broad of topics for me to cover in just a single paper and with the short amount of time that I have. This one that I am now proposing could fall into the same categories but I think that with enough work the focus can be made narrow enough that it will fulfill my objectives for Mythologies and my personal research.

As you all probably know by now, since I talk about it often enough, I am studying the Eleusinian Mysteries. This story and its subsequent rites and rituals have connected with me personally over the past year. Today at Ulysses, we started off the meeting talking about the Palm of Beauty, which led to a discussion of Penelope as the central female character of Greek mythology instead of Helen. Somehow and I have no idea on how to explain how, my mind jumped to heroes of Greek Mythology. It seems to me that all of these heroes are imitating the gods in some fashion, which led me to Christianity with the Father and Son duality.

This jump started me thinking about how there are many many similarities between the mythological background of Christianity and the Eleusinian Mysteries. The biggest difference comes from the matriarchal vs. patriarchal dominance of the two religions. For my paper(s) I am going to explore how these two mythologies are similar and different. This will entail studying the story (the Bible vs. Hymn to Demeter), rituals that accompany each one, and the benefits that are given to people who believe and follow these specific mythologies. I think that this could lead to interesting discoveries about how matriarchal and patriarchal mythologies function in society and how things differ when one or the other dominates a specific society and era. This feels like a lot to undertake but I think by keeping the focus solely on these two mythologies, it will be an attainable paper topic.