M y t h

C O N S I D E R - [Columbia Encyclopedia]
Mythology, term that literally means the telling of stories; it is also defined as the collective myths of a particular people and the scientific study of myths. A myth is a traditional story that usually occurs in a timeless past and involves supernatural elements. Myths are the products of pre-rational cultures and express serious concerns ranging from the creation of man and the universe to the evolution of political institutions or the assurance of agricultural fertility. The story concerned with the goddesss Persephone, who spends four months in the underworld with Pluto and six months on the earth with her mother Demeter, is a myth explaining the changing seasons. Although there is no sharp line dividing myth and folktale, a myth is usually more serious, the folktale having greater entertainment function and dealing with social concerns of relative unimportance. In addition, the folktale places less emphasis on the supernatural, and more on narrative interest, which results in a more logical plot. Whereas myth tends to relate seemingly disconnected or irrational events, the folktale takes place in historical time. Its characters are less individually defined than in myth, and folktale heroes depend more on ingenuity and trickery than do mythological heroes. Thus the character Odysseus in Homer's Odyssey possesses many of the attributes of a folktale hero. Stories that can be roughly defined as folktales include "Cinderella," "Cupid and Psyche," the tales in The Arabian Nights, and the "Uncle Remus" stories. Two similar forms, legend and saga, are distinguished by their historical or quasi-historical nature. Legends are based on fact and concern an historical person, place, or incident. The story of Lady Godiva's naked ride through Coventry is a legend. Saga refers specifically to the prose tales of Norwegian and Icelandic Kings, recorded in Iceland from the 12th to the 15th cent. There have been innumerable attempts to analyze and explicate myths, many of the explanations purporting to account for their apparent absurdity. The ancient Greeks developed allegorical interpretations of their own myths. Although this process was probably begun by Theagenes of Rhegium in the 6th cent. B.C., it was most fully developed by the Stoics, whose interpretations reduced the Greek gods to moral principles and natural elements (See Stoicism). Euhemerus considered the gods to have been renowned historical figures who, through the passage of time, became deified. Thus, mythological characters such as Zeus were considered to have been (at one time) men. A later allegorical interpretation, stemming from 18th-century study, states that at one time myths were invented by wise men to point out a truth, but that after a time myths were taken literally, e.g., Cronus who devoured his children is identified with the Greek word for time, which may be said to destroy whatever it brings into existence. The philological studies of myth by Max Müller mark the beginning of serious modern mythology. Müller saw myths evolving out of corruptions of language. Therefore, what seems absurd in myth is the result of people forgetting or distorting the meanings of words, e.g., the phrase "sunrise follows the dawn," spoken in Greek could be interpreted as meaning Apollo pursues Daphne, the maiden of the Dawn. Other theories include the view that myth is the foreshadowing or corruption of the Scriptures; thus Deucalion is another name for Noah.(1) The animistic interpretation sees myths as developing from the improper separation between the human and nonhuman; animals, rocks, and stars are considered to be on a level of intelligence with people, and the dead are thought to inhabit the world of the living in spiritual form. Sir James Frazer, whose epoch-making book The Golden Bough (1890) is a standard work on mythology, believed that all myths were originally connected with the idea of fertility in nature, with the birth, death and resurrection of vegetation as a constantly recurring motif. Other theories have more generally related myth to ritual or religious impulses by positing a common psychological or emotional basis. The anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski considered all myths to be validations of established behavior patterns and institutions within the society. Sigmund Freud made a major contribution to the study of myth by relating the unconscious to myth and dream. Thus, the irrationality of myth arises from the same source as the disconnectedness of dream. Among 20th-century mythologers the theories of Mircea Eliade and Claude Lévi-Strauss are significant. Eliade contends that myths are recited for the purpose of returning to the beginning of time when all things were initiated; by doing so, man can get back to the time of the original, successful creative act. Lévi-Strauss advocates interpreting myths on a structural basis. He dismisses the illogical in myth by denying the importance of content altogether. Ultimately, he believes that all myths are structural models of the mind's response to its world, and he contends that myths attempt to mediate between conflicting opposites such as nature and culture. While ancient Greek and Roman mythology is the best known of all such systems, great modern advances in the science of mythology have occurred since 19th-century scholars like James Frazer and Edward Burnett Tylor became aware of the importance of myths of contemporary primitive cultures to the study of mythology in general. Studies of the myths of North and South American Indians, Australian aborigines, the peoples of S Africa, and other primitive peoples have demonstrated the remarkable similarity of myths of far different cultures. In addition these studies have effected a better understanding of classical mythology, which demonstrates pointes of contact with primitive totemistic myth while clearly displaying signs of rational refinement. Greek myth as we see it in Homer is an elaborate combination of mythical elements with legend and folktale. The Five Ages of Man described in Hesiod's Theogeny is a good example of mythic materials that have undergone a process of rational ordering. Other important mythologies are the Norse, which is less anthropomorphic than the Greek (see Germanic Religion); the Indian, or Vedic, which tends to be more abstract and other worldly than the Greek (see Veda); the Egyptian, which is closely related to religious ritual (See Egyptian Religion); and the Mesopotamian, which shares with the Greek mythology a strong concern with the relationship between life and death (see Middle Eastern Religions). Although there is no specific universal myth, there are many myths that occur in various cultures and ages. The flood myth is extremely common and is one of a group of myths that concern the destruction and recreation of the world or a particular society. While all cultures have myths of the creation of the world, these range from a god fashioning the earth from abstract chaos to a specific animal creating it from a handful of mud. Myths of cyclical destruction and creation are paralleled by myths of seasonal death and rebirth. In Greece the concern with renewed fertility was seasonal, whereas in certain other cultures (e.g., Mesopotamia) the concern was with longer periods of vegetative death through prolonged drought. The idea of a golden age is another common motif (e.g., Hesiod's Golden Age in the Theogony and the Garden of Eden in Christian thought). Man is here viewed as having degenerated from an earlier perfection. Myths of the millennium to come are also common, as are myths treating the origin of water or its retrieval from some being who has stolen it, and myths of the dead or the relation between the living and the dead. Myths also frequently deal with problems of social and political disorder, or with themes of nature as opposed to civilization. There have been many theories as to the reason for similarity in mythology. Carl Jung believed that there is an inherent tendency in all people to form certain of the same mythic symbols. Tylor and Andrew Lang, on the other hand, thought that there is a certain stage of savage mentality that tends to produce similar myths. Another theory postulates mythic diffusion through travel, migration, and other forms of transcontinental communication. Whatever similarity exists in terms of theme or explicit content among various myths, today it is generally believed that the myths of each culture must be examined separately within the total cultural context. Our knowledge of the psychology of mythmaking people remains obscured, and the myths function in a variety of ways within a single culture as well as differing in function from culture to culture. Myth has constantly been employed for the enrichment of literature since the time of Aeschylus and has been used by some of the major English poets (e.g., Milton, Shelly, Keats). Some great literary figures, notably William Blake, James Joyce, Franz Kafka, W.B. Yeats, T.S. Eliot, and Wallace Stevens have consciously constructed personal myths using the old materials and newly constructed symbols. Literary critics have therefore devoted much time to studying the significance of mythmaking and particular myths. [See E. B. Tylor, Primitive Culture (s vol., rev. ed. 1924); J. G. Frazer, The Golden Bough (3rd ed., 13 vol., 1952); Otto Rank, The Myth of the Birth of the Hero (tr. 1952); Gertrude Jobes, Dictionary of Mythology, Folklore and Symbols (2 vol., 1961); Joseph Campbell, The Masks of God (4 vol., 1959-68); Thomas Bulfinch, Mythology (2nd ed. 1970).]

[Harris, William H., and Judith S. Levey, eds. The New Columbia Encyclopedia. New York and London: Columbia University Press, 1975.]

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Mythology n [F or LL; F mythologie, fr. LL mythologia interpretation of myths, fr. Gk, legend, myth, fr mythologein to relate myths, fr. mythos + logos speech -more at Legend] [1603] 1: an allegorical narrative 2: a body of myths: as a: the myths dealing with the gods, demigods, and legendary heroes of a particular reople b: Mythos2 [cold war __] 3: a branch of knowledge that deals with myth 4: a popular belief or assumptin that has grown up around someone or something [defective mythologies that ignore masculine depth of feeling -Robert Bly]

Mythical adj [1669] 1: based on or described in a myth esp. as contrasted with history 2 usu mythical: existing only in the imagination; Fictitious, Imaginary [spotswriters picked a __ all-star team] 3 usu mythic: having qualities suitable to myth: Legendary [the twilight of a mythic professional career -Clayton Riley] -Syn Fictitious