Mythology

:"Myth" redirects here. For the computer game, see Myth (computer game).

What is mythology?

Myths are generally narratives based on tradition and legend designed to explain the universal and local beginnings ("creation myths" and "founding myths"), natural phenomena, inexplicable cultural conventions, and anything else for which no simple explanation presents itself. Not all myths need have this explicatory purpose, however. Likewise, most myths involve a supernatural force or deity, but many simple legends and narratives passed down orally from generation to generation have mythic content. The Brothers Grimm demonstrated that there is mythic content embedded even in the least promising fairy tales.

Related Topics:
Tradition - Legend - Creation myth - Founding myth - Deity - Brothers Grimm - Fairy tale

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In common parlance, a myth is generally considered a "mere story" — that is, a story that holds meaning for people, but the narrative of which is untrue. In folkloristics, which is concerned with the study of both secular and sacred narratives (the latter being myths), a myth also derives some of its power from being believed and deeply held as true; to folklorists, all sacred traditions have myths, and there is nothing pejorative or dismissive about the term as there is in common usage.

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This broader truth runs deeper than the advent of critical history which may, or may not, exist as in an authoritative written form which becomes "the story" (Preliterate oral traditions vanish as the written word becomes "the story" and the literate become "the authority"). However, as Lucian Lévi-Bruhl puts it, "The primitive mentality is a condition of the human mind, and not a stage in its historical development." (Mâche 1992, p.8) Most often the term refers specifically to ancient tales from very old cultures, such as Greek mythology or Roman mythology. Some myths descended originally as part of an oral tradition and were only later written down, and many of them exist in multiple versions.

Related Topics:
Greek mythology - Roman mythology

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According to the eighth chapter of F. W. J. Schelling's Introduction to Philosophy and Mythology, "Mythological representations have been neither invented nor freely accepted. The products of a process independent of thought and will, they were, for the consciousness which underwent them, of an irrefutable and incontestable reality. Peoples and individuals are only the instruments of this process, which goes beyond their horizon and which they serve without understanding."

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