Myth is a genre of folklore consisting primarily of narratives that play a fundamental role in a society. For scholars, this is different from the ordinary sense of the term myth, meaning a belief that is not true, as the veracity of a piece of folklore is entirely irrelevant to determining whether it constitutes a myth.Deretic, Irina. "Why are myths true: Plato on the veracity of myths." Vestnik of Saint Petersburg University. Philosophy and Conflict Studies (2020): vol. 36, issue 3, pp. 441–451.
Myths are often endorsed by religious and secular authorities, and may be natural or supernatural in character. Many societies group their myths, legends, and history together, considering myths and legends to be factual accounts of their remote past. In particular, creation myths take place in a primordial age when the world had not achieved its later form. Origin myths explain how a society's customs, institutions, and taboos were established and sanctified. National myths are narratives about a nation's past that symbolize the nation's values. There is a complex relationship between recital of myths and the enactment of rituals.
Etymology The word myth comes from Ancient Greek (), meaning 'speech', 'narrative', or 'fiction'. In turn, Ancient Greek ( 'story', 'legends', or 'story-telling') combines the word with the suffix ( 'study'). Accordingly, Plato used as a general term for fiction or story-telling of any kind. This word was adapted into other European languages in the early 19th century, in a much narrower sense, as a scholarly term for "[a] traditional story, especially one concerning the early history of a people or explaining a natural or social phenomenon, and typically involving supernatural beings or events."
The Greek term was then borrowed into Late Latin, occurring in the title of Latin author Fabius Planciades Fulgentius' 5th-century Mythologiæ to denote what is now referred to as classical mythology—i.e., Greco-Roman etiological stories involving their gods. Fulgentius's Mythologiæ explicitly treated its subject matter as allegories requiring interpretation and not as true events. The Latin term was then adopted in Middle French as . Whether from French or Latin usage, English adopted the word mythology in the 15th century, initially meaning 'the exposition of a myth or myths', 'the interpretation of fables', or 'a book of such expositions'. The word is first attested in John Lydgate's Troy Book ()."mythology, n. ." Oxford English Dictionary (3rd ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2003. Accessed 20 Aug 2014.Harper, Douglas. 2020. "Mythology ." Online Etymology Dictionary.
From Lydgate until the 17th or 18th century, mythology meant a moral, fable, allegory or a parable, or collection of traditional stories, understood to be false. It came eventually to be applied to similar bodies of traditional stories among other polytheistic cultures around the world. Thus mythology entered the English language before myth. Johnson's Dictionary, for example, has an entry for mythology, but not for myth. Indeed, the Greek loanword mythos (pl. mythoi) and Latinate (pl. ) both appeared in English before the first example of myth in 1830.
Protagonists and structure The main characters in myths are usually non-humans, such as gods, demigods, and other supernatural figures. Others include humans, animals, or combinations in their classification of myth. Stories of everyday humans, although often of leaders of some type, are usually contained in legends, as opposed to myths. Myths are sometimes distinguished from legends in that myths deal with gods, usually have no historical basis, and are set in a world of the remote past, very different from that of the present.
Definitions
Definitions of myth vary to some extent among scholars, though Finnish folklorist Lauri Honko offers a widely-cited definition:
Professor José Manuel Losada defines myth as "a functional, symbolic and thematic narrative of one or several extraordinary events with a transcendent, sacred and supernatural referent; that lacks, in principle, historical testimony; and that refers to an individual or collective, but always absolute, cosmogony or eschatology". According to the holistic myth research by assyriologist Annette Zgoll and classic philologist Christian Zgoll, "A myth can be defined as an Erzählstoff [narrative material] which is polymorphic through its variants and – depending on the variant – polystratic; an Erzählstoff in which transcending interpretations of what can be experienced are combined into a hyleme sequence with an implicit claim to relevance for the interpretation and mastering of the human condition."
Scholars in other fields use the term myth in varied ways. In a broad sense, the word can refer to any traditional story, popular misconception or imaginary entity.
Though myth and other folklore genres may overlap, myth is often thought to differ from genres such as legend and folktale in that neither are considered to be sacred narratives. Some kinds of folktales, such as fairy stories, are not considered true by anyone, and may be seen as distinct from myths for this reason. Main characters in myths are usually gods, demigods or supernatural humans, while legends generally feature humans as their main characters. Many exceptions and combinations exist, as in the Iliad, Odyssey and Aeneid. Moreover, as stories spread between cultures or as faiths change, myths can come to be considered folktales, their divine characters recast as either as humans or demihumans such as giants, elves and faeries. Conversely, historical and literary material may acquire mythological qualities over time. For example, the Matter of Britain (the legendary history of Great Britain, especially those focused on King Arthur and the knights of the Round Table) and the Matter of France, seem distantly to originate in historical events of the 5th and 8th centuries, respectively, and became mythologised over the following centuries.
In colloquial use, myth can also be used of a collectively held belief that has no basis in fact, or any false story."Myth." Lexico. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2020. Retrieved 21 May 2020. § 2. This usage, which is often pejorative, arose from labelling the religious myths and beliefs of other cultures as incorrect, but it has spread to cover non-religious beliefs as well.Eliade, Mircea. 1967. Myths, Dreams and Mysteries. pp. 23, 162.
As commonly used by folklorists and academics in other relevant fields, such as anthropology, myth has no implication whether the narrative may be understood as true or otherwise.Winzeler, Robert L. 2012. Anthropology and Religion: What We Know, Think, and Question. Rowman & Littlefield. pp. 105–106. Among biblical scholars of both the Old and New Testament, the word myth has a technical meaning, in that it usually refers to "describe the actions of the other‐worldly in terms of this world" such as the Creation and the Fall.
Since myth is popularly used to describe stories that are not objectively true, the identification of a narrative as a myth can be highly controversial. Many religious adherents believe that the narratives told in their respective religious traditions are historical without question, and so object to their identification as myths while labelling traditional narratives from other religions as such. Hence, some scholars may label all religious narratives as "myths" for practical reasons, such as to avoid depreciating any one tradition because cultures interpret each other differently relative to one another. Other scholars may abstain from using the term myth altogether for purposes of avoiding placing pejorative overtones on sacred narratives.
Related terms
Mythology
In present use, mythology usually refers to the collection of myths of a group of people. For example, Greek mythology, Roman mythology, Celtic mythology and Hittite mythology all describe the body of myths retold among those cultures.
"Mythology" can also refer to the study of myths and mythologies.
Mythography The compilation or description of myths is sometimes known as "mythography", a term also used for a scholarly anthology of myths or of the study of myths generally."Mythography." Lexico. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2020. Retrieved 31 May 2020.
Key mythographers in the Classical tradition include:Chance, Jane. 1994–2000. Medieval Mythography, 2 vols. Gainesville. Ovid (43 BCE – 17/18 CE), whose tellings of myths have been profoundly influential; Fabius Planciades Fulgentius, a Latin writer of the late-5th to early-6th centuries, whose Mythologies () gathered and gave moralistic interpretations of a wide range of myths; the anonymous medieval Vatican Mythographers, who developed anthologies of Classical myths that remained influential to the end of the Middle Ages; and Renaissance scholar Natalis Comes, whose ten-book Mythologiae became a standard source for classical mythology in later Renaissance Europe.
Other prominent mythographies include the thirteenth-century Prose Edda attributed to the Icelander Snorri Sturluson, which is the main surviving survey of Norse Mythology from the Middle Ages.
Jeffrey G. Snodgrass (professor of anthropology at the Colorado State University) has termed India's Bhats as mythographers.
Myth criticism Myth criticism is a system of anthropological interpretation of culture created by French philosopher Gilbert Durand. Scholars have used myth criticism to explain the mythical roots of contemporary fiction, which means that modern myth criticism needs to be interdisciplinary. Traditional myth critics like Georges Dumézil, Hans Blumenberg, Kurt Hübner, and Pierre Brunel have created paradigmatic systems and clarified the meanings of myths within their original sources, evolution, and con texts.
Mythos
Because myth is sometimes used in a pejorative sense, some scholars have opted for mythos instead. "Mythos" now more commonly refers to its Aristotelian sense as a "plot point" or to a body of interconnected myths or stories, especially those belonging to a particular religious or cultural tradition."mythos, n." 2003. In Oxford English Dictionary (). Oxford: Oxford University Press. It is sometimes used specifically for modern, fictional mythologies, such as the world building of H. P. Lovecraft.
Mythopoeia Mythopoeia ( + , 'I make myth') was termed by J. R. R. Tolkien, amongst others, to refer to the "conscious generation" of mythology."Mythopoeia." Lexico. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 31 May 2020.See also: Mythopoeia (poem); cf. Tolkien, J. R. R. 2001. Tree and Leaf; Mythopoeia; The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm's Son . London: HarperCollins. .
Interpretations Comparative mythology Comparative mythology is a systematic comparison of myths from different cultures. It seeks to discover underlying themes that are common to the myths of multiple cultures. In some cases, comparative mythologists use the similarities between separate mythologies to argue that those mythologies have a common source. This source may inspire myths or provide a common "protomythology" that diverged into the mythologies of each culture.
Functionalism A number of commentators have argued that myths function to form and shape society and social behaviour. Eliade argued that one of the foremost functions of myth is to establish models for behavior and that myths may provide a religious experience. By telling or reenacting myths, members of traditional societies detach themselves from the present, returning to the mythical age, thereby coming closer to the divine.