the essential nature of myth—Page 2

myth as literature

Prior to the 20th century, myth was often studied purely as literature. Starting in the 20th century, a new breed of scholars transformed the study of myth into a discipline in its own right. They saw myth as a source of information about history, cultures, and human nature. Today, myth continues to be studied and enjoyed in both manners.

• See what others have to say about the nature of myth at the Wikipedia page on the same subject. From there you can explore the lives, contributions, and ideas of some of the most influential mythologists of the 19th and 20th Centuries—scholars such as Claude Levi-Strauss, Ernst Cassier, Mircea Eliade, Joseph Campbell, Carl Jung, and Northrup Frye: click here.

Seen as a work of literature, a myth is a fictional story with the structure or form of a narrative. Mythical stories are accounts of events and experiences undergone by a cast of unreal (often unrealistic) characters. Like other kinds of stories, they have plots or storylines that impart a logical order to the way events unfold, but their plots may be erratic, piecemeal, or fragmented.

In the past, myths have structured as narrative short stories or epic poems, but in the 20th century myths started to appear in other forms and media, such as comic books and films.

• For more about literary structures (forms), see The Muse Of Literature's pages on Literary Forms: click here.

A myth has other literary attributes. For instance, it belongs to a class or category of artistic endeavor called a genre. There are a number of different kinds of myths or genres. Different mythic genres exist today and probably new ones will be devised in the future. The different mythical genres can be organized into a taxonomy or classification scheme which relates one subgenre or kind of myth to another.

• For more about literary genres, see The Muse Of Literature's pages on Literary Genres: click here.

Few myths are deliberately originated or written down by a person who can be identified. The story a myth tells usually is the handiwork of an amorphous group; it evolves over a protracted length of time by being told over and over until it becomes the handiwork of a society. Each retelling is embellished until finally someone or a very small group attempts to write it on paper. This person may or may not have artistic talent and sometimes he may change or amend the story or the words to suit his own purposes.

The window of time or period in which a myth is written down is called a literary period. The time in which the action is said to have taken place is usually an unspecified time long before the time of writing—a once upon a time or a time long, long ago. Myths can be retold on paper and each retelling can be set in virtually any historic period. The time in which the action takes place may not even matter to the story.

• For more about literary periods, see The Muse Of Literature's pages on Literary Periods: click here.

There are many different kinds of myths and many literary options. Whatever its specific structure, period, or genre, any given myth is a narrative that has a particular purpose. It depicts certain kinds of interactions that can take place among certain kinds of characters. It is set in a world that has certain special, magical, odd, or unusual rules of its own. And it is founded on and projects the belief system of a culture or society.

—note— an exercise for the hardy The Muse Of Mythology suggests that you select two or three myths from a specific mythology and classify each according to its structure, period, and genre. Compare the structures, genres, and periods of these myths. What generalizations can you make about the myths of a given mythology? Now repeat the above exercise for another mythology. Compare the two mythologies. What generalizations can you make about the literary characteristics of different mythologies? What connections do you see between a culture's history, mythology, and literature?

The rest of this feature explores and outlines some of the core attributes that make any myth mythical—the essential characteristics that make a myth what it is—an instrument of truth, a unique form of art, and a bundle of fun and excitement.

myth and its literary cousins

The term myth is often used (and misused) in ways that belie its original, primary, and most essential meaning. Because this misuse has become widespread, many renowned experts and authoritative texts have come to accept these deviations as valid, even though they may tend to rob the word of much of its meaning, power, and punch.

Myths are often confused with other types of literature that have similar forms, periods, and genres and are distinctly different with regard to content and objectives.

More

A point occasionally missed

What do people tend to miss in myth? They miss the point.

Most kids or adults just don't think about myth. If they do, it's not for long. If a myth like The Odyssey or The Iliad was forced down their throats in high school or college, it was soon forgotten. Myth has been ignored to death.

Myth is the victim of a bum rap. The contemporary mind seems to regard myths as little more than a preposterous, silly, implausible, unimportant collection of anecdotes concerning a bunch of bizzarre-looking naked weirdos who, no matter what they are up to, are likely to be marching out of step with everyday life in the real world as we see it. In the common view, a myth is an unlikely, ancient tale about an irrelevant issue pieced together from oral accounts and written down by some long-dead, oddball foreigner in a toga with a funny, unpronounceable name and a queer idea of what makes a good read.

Persues, by Cellini

By and large, today myths are regarded as childish, superficial, shallow, boring, inconsequential, superstitious, or factually incorrect. Sometimes they are compared to witchcraft or alchemy. The y're pseudoscientific or unscientific, cornball objects of derision penned for country bumpkins to believe and good for little more than a laugh. The y're reminders of dead social institutions or perverse cultures.

In truth, most myths were written long ago when man understood his world far less than he does today; they are based on largely out-of-date mores and lifestyles; and they do contain bushels of factual misinformation.

Yes, there are these kinds of problems with myths, but just wait a minute! Aren't we applying a double standard when we reject old myths just because they're antediluvian, and when we accept new ones just because they're fresh? Take a step or two back for a minute and consider the matter.

Suppose you were an intelligent ancient Greek in the Fifth or century BCE, not a well-informed moderner lucky enough to be living in the information age—someone like Democritus, for example, the Greek philosopher credited with thinking up the idea of the atom. You would be correct to believe in the objective existence of atoms, but you might also believe in the efficacy of magic, the power of the gods, and the institution of slavery. You might even be afraid to walk out at night for fear that the Furies would get you.

Next, suppose you're a citizen of a brave new world in the 23rd century. You might be justified to believe in the literal existence of Little Men from Mars because there's now a colony there, in teleportation because science has mastered quantum entanglement, and in space travel at warp speed because Relativity only applies to local spaces and worm holes have been conquered.

Both your yous—the Greek you and the Future you—might have a hard time watching a 21st century Spiderman movie or reading a Superman comic book without smirking with superiority and laughing out loud. The Greek you might scoff at the ridiculous notion that a real person can fly into space or live on Mars without help from the gods who live on Mount Olympus.

The Future you might scoff at the preposterous notion that an evil genius would find it necessary to insert metallic octopus tentacles in his back in order to move large objects. Everyone knows that a human can't move large objects on his own, but all you have to do is press a button and an army of nanobots will take care of that for you. The idea that a strange green substance called Krypton could rob you of your magical power to see through solid objects or fly around the world backwards and change time is even more ridiculous.

The Greek you and the Future you might both be right to believe in atoms, but the Greek you would believe for the wrong reasons.

Contemporary modern stories of heroes, such as Spiderman, Star Wars, and Superman, are just as fantastic as ancient stories of the Greek heroes; stories that turn people on today may be stories that future centuries will laugh at. Yet modern audiences that are creeped out or bored by ancient myths today are the first to plunk down their hard-earned money at the blockbuster box office.

Off-the-wall stories like Spiderman, Star Wars, and Superman illustrate that transient cultural norms and social conventions have a large role to play in determining whether a story is a boring loser or a box office smash hit. The main difference between an ancient heroic story and a 21st century blockbuster is that the blockbuster is superficially relevant to its culture and its time. Ancient Greek hero stories were blockbusters in their own time and place. Heroic stories of the 23rd century no doubt will be blockbusters too, when their time comes. Every age has its own messages to send, it's own mores to proclaim, it's own social and political objectives. Every age has its own hot buttons, its own irrefragable, irrefutable truths.

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...Coming.

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