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Myth is a genre of folklore consisting primarily of that play a fundamental role in a society. For scholars, this is very different from the vernacular usage of the term "myth" that refers to a belief that is not true. Instead, the veracity of a myth is not a defining criterion.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 (when they are closely linked to religion or spirituality) and secular authorities. Many societies group their myths, , and history together, considering myths and legends to be factual accounts of their remote past. In particular, take place in a primordial age when the world had not achieved its later form. explain how a society's customs, institutions, and taboos were established and sanctified. 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.
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 mythologie. 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". Samuel Johnson's Dictionary, for example, has an entry for mythology, but not for myth. Indeed, the Greek loanword mythos (Plural mythoi) and Latinate mythus (pl. mythi) both appeared in English before the first example of "myth" in 1830.
Another definition of myth comes from myth criticism theorist and professor José Manuel Losada. According to Cultural Myth Criticism, the studies of myth must explain and understand "myth from inside", that is, only "as a myth". 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 hylistic myth research by assyriologist Annette Zgoll and classic philologist Christian Zgoll, "A myth can be defined as an Erzählstoff narrative 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."
Vernacularly, and among scholars in other fields, term "myth" is used in varied ways. In a broad sense, the word can refer to any traditional story, popular misconception, urban legend or imagination entity.
Though myth and other folklore genres may overlap, myth is often thought to differ from genres such as legend and Folklore genre 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, 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, elf and . 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 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."
target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> 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.Mircea Eliade. 1967. Myths, Dreams and Mysteries. pp. 23, 162.
As commonly used by folklore studies 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 religious scholars may abstain from using the term "myth" altogether for purposes of avoiding placing pejorative overtones on sacred narratives.
"Mythology" can also refer to the study of myths and mythologies.
target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> Mythography." Lexico. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2020. Retrieved 31 May 2020.
Key mythographers in the Classical tradition include:Jane Chance. 1994–2000. Medieval Mythography, 2 vols. Gainesville.
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.
Professor Losada offers his own methodologic, hermeneutic and epistemological approach to myth. While assuming mythopoetical perspectives, Losada's Cultural Myth Criticism takes a step further, incorporating the study of the transcendent dimension (its function, its disappearance) to evaluate the role of myth as a mirror of contemporary culture.
Cultural myth criticism
Cultural myth criticism, without abandoning the analysis of the , invades all cultural manifestations and delves into the difficulties in understanding myth today. This cultural myth criticism studies mythical manifestations in fields as wide as literature, film and television, theater, sculpture, painting, video games, music, dancing, the Internet and other Art.
target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> Mythopoeia." Lexico. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 31 May 2020.See also: Mythopoeia (poem); cf. Tolkien, J. R. R. 1964 2001. Tree and Leaf; Mythopoeia; The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm's Son . London: HarperCollins. . It was notoriously also suggested, separately, by Nazi ideologist Alfred Rosenberg.
Lauri Honko asserted that, in some cases, a society reenacts a myth in an attempt to reproduce the conditions of the mythical age. For example, it might reenact the healing performed by a god at the beginning of time in order to heal someone in the present. Similarly, Roland Barthes argued that modern culture explores religious experience. Since it is not the job of science to define human morality, a religious experience is an attempt to connect with a perceived moral past, which is in contrast with the technological present.
Pattanaik defines mythology as "the subjective truth of people communicated through stories, symbols and rituals." He says, "Facts are everybody's truth. Fiction is nobody's truth. Myths are somebody's truth."
Sallustius divided myths into five categories:"On the Gods and the World." ch. 5;
See: Collected Writings on the Gods and the World. Frome: The Prometheus Trust. 1995.
Plato condemned poetic myth when discussing education in the Republic. His critique was primarily on the grounds that the uneducated might take the stories of gods and heroes literally. Nevertheless, he constantly referred to myths throughout his writings. As Platonism developed in the phases commonly called Middle Platonism and neoplatonism, writers such as Plutarch, Porphyry, Proclus, Olympiodorus, and Damascius wrote explicitly about the symbolic interpretation of traditional and Orphic myths.Perhaps the most extended passage of philosophic interpretation of myth is to be found in the fifth and sixth essays of Proclus’ Commentary on the Republic (to be found in The Works of Plato I, trans. Thomas Taylor, The Prometheus Trust, Frome, 1996); Porphyry's analysis of the Homeric Cave of the Nymphs is another important work in this area ( Select Works of Porphyry, Thomas Taylor The Prometheus Trust, Frome, 1994). See the external links below for a full English translation.
Mythological themes were consciously employed in literature, beginning with Homer. The resulting work may expressly refer to a mythological background without itself becoming part of a body of myths (Cupid and Psyche). Medieval romance in particular plays with this process of turning myth into literature. Euhemerism, as stated earlier, refers to the rationalization of myths, putting themes formerly imbued with mythological qualities into pragmatic contexts. An example of this would be following a cultural or religious paradigm shift (notably the re-interpretation of Paganism mythology following Christianization).
The intellectual context for nineteenth-century scholars was profoundly shaped by emerging ideas about evolution. These ideas included the recognition that many Eurasian languages—and therefore, conceivably, stories—were all descended from a lost common ancestor (the Indo-European language) which could rationally be reconstructed through the comparison of its descendant languages. They also included the idea that cultures might evolve in ways comparable to species. In general, 19th-century theories framed myth as a failed or obsolete mode of thought, often by interpreting myth as the primitive counterpart of modern science within a unilineal framework that imagined that human cultures are travelling, at different speeds, along a linear path of cultural development.
According to Tylor, human thought evolved through stages, starting with mythological ideas and gradually progressing to scientific ideas. Müller also saw myth as originating from language, even calling myth a "disease of language". He speculated that myths arose due to the lack of and neuter gender in ancient languages. Anthropomorphism figures of speech, necessary in such languages, were eventually taken literally, leading to the idea that natural phenomena were in actuality conscious or divine. Not all scholars, not even all 19th-century scholars, accepted this view. Lucien Lévy-Bruhl claimed that "the primitive mentality is a condition of the human mind and not a stage in its historical development." Recent scholarship, noting the fundamental lack of evidence for "nature mythology" interpretations among people who actually circulated myths, has likewise abandoned the key ideas of "nature mythology".Richard Dorson 1955. "The Eclipse of Solar Mythology." pp. 25–63 in Myth: A Symposium, edited by Thomas Sebeok. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
The mid-20th century saw the influential development of a structuralist theory of mythology, led by Lévi-Strauss. Strauss argued that myths reflect patterns in the mind and interpreted those patterns more as fixed mental structures, specifically pairs of opposites (good/evil, compassionate/callous), rather than unconscious feelings or urges. Meanwhile, Bronislaw Malinowski developed analyses of myths focusing on their social functions in the real world. He is associated with the idea that myths such as Origin myth might provide a "mythic charter"—a legitimisation—for Social norm and Institution.Birenbaum, Harvey. 1988. Myth and Mind. Lanham, MD: University Press of America. pp. 152–153. Thus, following the Structuralist Era (–1980s), the predominant Anthropology and Sociology approaches to myth increasingly treated myth as a form of narrative that can be studied, interpreted, and analyzed like ideology, history, and culture. In other words, myth is a form of understanding and telling stories that are connected to power, political structures, and political and economic interests.
These approaches contrast with approaches, such as those of Joseph Campbell and Mircea Eliade, which hold that myth has some type of essential connection to ultimate sacred meanings that transcend cultural specifics. In particular, myth was studied in relation to history from diverse social sciences. Most of these studies share the assumption that history and myth are not distinct in the sense that history is factual, real, accurate, and truth, while myth is the opposite.
In the 1950s, Roland Barthes published a series of essays examining modern myths and the process of their creation in his book Mythologies, which stood as an early work in the emerging post-structuralist approach to mythology, which recognised myths' existence in the modern world and in popular culture.
The 20th century saw rapid secularization in Western culture. This made Western scholars more willing to analyse narratives in the Abrahamic religions as myths; theologians such as Rudolf Bultmann argued that a modern Christianity needed to demythologize;Rudolf Bultmann. 1958. Jesus Christ and Mythology. New York: Scribner. and other religious scholars embraced the idea that the mythical status of Abrahamic narratives was a legitimate feature of their importance. This, in his appendix to Myths, Dreams and Mysteries, and in The Myth of the Eternal Return, Mircea Eliade attributed modern humans' anxieties to their rejection of myths and the sense of the sacred.
The Christian theologian Conrad Hyers wrote:
Correspondingly, scholars challenged the precedence that had once been given to texts as a medium for mythology, arguing that other media, such as the visual arts or even landscape and place-naming, could be as or more important.For example: Ken Dowden. 1992. The Uses of Greek Mythology. London: Routledge. Myths are not texts, but narrative materials ( Erzählstoffe) that can be adapted in various media (such as epics, hymns, handbooks, movies, dances, etc.).Zgoll, Christian (2019). Tractatus mythologicus. Theorie und Methodik zur Erforschung von Mythen als Grundlegung einer allgemeinen, transmedialen und komparatistischen Stoffwissenschaft (= Mythological Studies 1). Berlin/Boston: Walter de Gruyter GmbH. pp. 25–31. ISBN 978-3-11054119-9. In contrast to other academic approaches, which primarily focus on the (social) function of myths, Hylistics aims to understand myths and their nature out of themselves. As part of the Göttingen myth research, Annette and Christian Zgoll developed the method of hylistics (narrative material research) to extract mythical materials from their media and make possible a transmedial comparison. The content of the medium is broken down into the smallest possible plot components ( Hyleme), which are listed in standardized form (so-called hyleme analysis).Zgoll, Christian (2019). Tractatus mythologicus. Theorie und Methodik zur Erforschung von Mythen als Grundlegung einer allgemeinen, transmedialen und komparatistischen Stoffwissenschaft (= Mythological Studies 1). Berlin/Boston: Walter de Gruyter GmbH. pp. 109–118. ISBN 978-3-11054119-9. Inconsistencies in content can indicate stratification, i.e. the overlapping of several materials, narrative variants and edition layers within the same medial concretion.Zgoll, Christian (2019). Tractatus mythologicus. Theorie und Methodik zur Erforschung von Mythen als Grundlegung einer allgemeinen, transmedialen und komparatistischen Stoffwissenschaft (= Mythological Studies 1). Berlin/Boston: Walter de Gruyter GmbH. pp. 316–369. ISBN 978-3-11054119-9. To a certain extent, this can also be used to reconstruct earlier and alternative variants of the same material that were in competition and/or were combined with each other.Zgoll, Christian (2019). Tractatus mythologicus. Theorie und Methodik zur Erforschung von Mythen als Grundlegung einer allgemeinen, transmedialen und komparatistischen Stoffwissenschaft (= Mythological Studies 1). Berlin/Boston: Walter de Gruyter GmbH. pp. 508–516. ISBN 978-3-11054119-9. The juxtaposition of hyleme sequences enables the systematic comparison of different variants of the same material or several different materials that are related or structurally similar to each other.Zgoll, Christian (2019). Tractatus mythologicus. Theorie und Methodik zur Erforschung von Mythen als Grundlegung einer allgemeinen, transmedialen und komparatistischen Stoffwissenschaft (= Mythological Studies 1). Berlin/Boston: Walter de Gruyter GmbH. pp. 164–204. ISBN 978-3-11054119-9. In his overall presentation of the hundred-year history of myth research, the classical philologist and myth researcher Udo Reinhardt mentions Christian Zgoll's basic work Tractatus mythologicus as "the latest handbook on myth theory" with "outstanding significance" for modern myth research.Reinhardt, Udo (2022). : Hundert Jahre Forschungen zum antiken Mythos (1918/20–2018/20). Ein selektiver Überblick (Altertum – Rezeption – Narratologie) (= Mythological Studies 5). Berlin/Boston: Walter de Gruyter GmbH. pp. 325–322. ISBN 978-3-11-078634-7
Although myth was traditionally transmitted through the oral tradition on a small scale, the film industry has enabled filmmakers to transmit myths to large audiences via film. In Carl Jung psychology, myths are the expression of a culture or society's goals, fears, ambitions and dreams.
The basis of modern visual storytelling is rooted in the mythological tradition. Many contemporary films rely on ancient myths to construct narratives. The Walt Disney Company is well known among cultural study scholars for "reinventing" traditional childhood myths. While few films are as obvious as Disney fairy tales, the plots of many films are based on the rough structure of myths. Mythological archetypes, such as the cautionary tale regarding the abuse of technology, battles between gods and creation stories, are often the subject of major film productions. These films are often created under the guise of cyberpunk , fantasy, and apocalyptic tales.
21st-century films such as Clash of the Titans, Immortals and Thor continue the trend of using traditional mythology to frame modern plots. Authors use mythology as a basis for their books, such as Rick Riordan, whose Percy Jackson and the Olympians series is situated in a modern-day world where the Twelve Olympians are manifest.
Scholars, particularly those within the field of fan studies, and fans of popular culture have also noted a connection between fan fiction and myth. Ika Willis identified three models of this: fan fiction as a reclaiming of popular stories from corporations, myth as a means of critiquing or dismantling hegemonic power, and myth as "a commons of story and a universal story world". Willis supports the third model, a universal story world, and argues that fanfiction can be seen as mythic due to its hyperseriality—a term invented by Sarah Iles Johnston to describe a hyperconnected universe in which characters and stories are interwoven. In an interview for the New York Times, Henry Jenkins stated that fanfiction 'is a way of the culture repairing the damage done in a system where contemporary myths are owned by corporations instead of owned by the folk.'
Nature
One of the dominant mythological theories of the latter 19th century was nature mythology, the foremost exponents of which included Max Müller and Edward Burnett Tylor. This theory posited that "primitive man" was primarily concerned with the natural world. It tended to interpret myths that seemed distasteful to European Victorian era—such as tales about sex, incest, or cannibalism—as metaphors for natural phenomena like agricultural fertility.McKinnell, John. 2005. Meeting the Other in Norse Myth and Legend. Cambridge: Brewer. pp. 14–15. Unable to conceive impersonal natural laws, early humans tried to explain natural phenomena by attributing souls to inanimate objects, thus giving rise to animism.
Ritual
Frazer saw myths as a misinterpretation of magical rituals, which were themselves based on a mistaken idea of natural law. This idea was central to the "myth and ritual" school of thought. According to Frazer, humans begin with an unfounded belief in impersonal magical laws. When they realize applications of these laws do not work, they give up their belief in natural law in favor of a belief in controlling nature, thus giving rise to religious myths. Meanwhile, humans continue practicing formerly magical rituals through force of habit, reinterpreting them as reenactments of mythical events. Finally, humans come to realize nature follows natural laws, and they discover their true nature through science. Here again, science makes myth obsolete as humans progress "from magic through religion to science." Segal asserted that by pitting mythical thought against modern scientific thought, such theories imply modern humans must abandon myth.
20th century
The earlier 20th century saw major work developing Psychoanalysis approaches to interpreting myth, led by Sigmund Freud, who, drawing inspiration from Classical myth, began developing the concept of the Oedipus complex in his 1899 The Interpretation of Dreams. Carl Jung likewise tried to understand the psychology behind world myths. Jung asserted that all humans share certain innate unconscious psychological forces, which he called archetypes. He believed similarities between the myths of different cultures reveals the existence of these universal archetypes.Boeree.
21st century
Both in 19th-century research, which tended to see existing records of stories and folklore as imperfect fragments of partially lost myths, and in 20th-century structuralist work, which sought to identify underlying patterns and structures in often diverse versions of a given myth, there had been a tendency to synthesise sources to attempt to reconstruct what scholars supposed to be more perfect or underlying forms of myths. From the late 20th century, researchers influenced by postmodernism tended instead to argue that each account of a given myth has its own cultural significance and meaning, and argued that rather than representing degradation from a once more perfect form, myths are inherently plastic and variable.For example: McKinnell, John. 1994. Both One and Many: Essays on Change and Variety in Late Norse Heathenism, ( Philologia: saggi, ricerche, edizioni 1, edited by T. Pàroli). Rome. There is, consequently, no such thing as the 'original version' or 'original form' of a myth. One prominent example of this movement was A. K. Ramanujan's essay "".Ramanujan, A. K. 1991. " Three Hundred Rāmāyaṇas: Five Examples and Three Thoughts on Translation." pp. 22–48 in Many Rāmāyaṇas: The Diversity of a Narrative Tradition in South Asia, edited by P. Richman. Berkeley: University of California Press. 13030/ft3j49n8h7/ Ramanujan, A. K. 1991 2004. " Three Hundred Rāmāyaṇas ." pp. 131–160 in The Collected Essays of A. K. Ramanujan. Oxford: Oxford University Press. .
Modernity
Scholars in the field of cultural studies research how myth has worked itself into modern discourses. Mythological discourse can reach greater audiences than ever before via digital media. Various mythic elements appear in popular culture, as well as television, Film and .
See also
Notes
Sources
(1984). 9780520051928, University of California Press. ISBN 9780520051928
(1999). 9780226482026, University of Chicago Press. ISBN 9780226482026
(2025). 9780226112565, University of Chicago Press. ISBN 9780226112565
Sheryl Humphrey (2025). 9781300553649, DCA Art Fund Grant from the Council on the Arts and Humanities for Staten Island and public funding from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs. ISBN 9781300553649
(2025). 9780521648578, Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521648578
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