Historians' views on myths
Although myths are often considered to be accounts of events that have not happened, many historians consider that myths can also be accounts of actual events that have become highly imbued with symbolic meaning, or that have been transformed, shifted in time or place, or even reversed. One way of conceptualizing this process is to view 'myths' as lying at the far end of a continuum ranging from a 'dispassionate account' to 'legendary occurrence' to 'mythical status'. As an event progresses towards the mythical end of this continuum, what people think, feel and say about the event takes on progressively greater historical significance while the facts become less important. By the time one reaches the mythical end of the spectrum the story has taken on a life of its own and the facts of the original event have become almost irrelevant.
This process occurs in part because the events described become detached from their original context and new context is substituted, often through analogy with current or recent events. Some Greek myths originated in Classical times to provide explanations for inexplicable features of local cult practices, to account for the local epithet of one of the Olympian gods, to interpret depictions of half-remembered figures, events, or account for the deities' attributes or entheogens, even to make sense of ancient icons, much as myths are invented to "explain" heraldic charges, the origins of which has become arcane with the passing of time. Conversely, descriptions of recent events are re-emphasised to make them seem to be analogous with the commonly known story. This technique has been used by Right-wing conservatives in America with text from the Bible (e.g. Revelation), and was used in the Russian Communist era in propaganda about political situations with misleading references to class struggles. Even today the fitness of the Emperor of Japan is based partly on his distant descent from the Goddess of the Sun.
Other uses
Myths are not the same as fables, folktales, fairy tales, anecdotes, or simple fiction, but sloppy usage has blurred the distinctions in many people's minds. The term "myth" is sometimes used pejoratively in reference to common beliefs of a culture or for the beliefs of a religion to imply that the story is both fanciful and fictional.
Myth is often used to refer to a commonly held but erroneous belief. Compare urban myth, the secular mythology of modern culture.
The terms urban myth and urban legend are sometimes used to describe something that is false, but, strictly speaking, those can be either true or false as well.
See also
Reference
- Charles H. Long, Alpha: The Myths of Creation, George Braziller Inc., 1963
- Kees W. Bolle, The Freedom of Man in Myth, Vanderbilt University Press, 1968
- Elliot Aronson, Timothy D. Wilson, Robin M. Akert, Social Psychology, Addison-Wesley Educational Publishers Inc. 1997
- John Gribbin, The Birth of Time: How Astronomers Measured the Age of the Universe, Yale Univ Press, 2000
- Timothy Ferris, Red Limit: Search for the Edge of the Universe, William Morrow, 2002
External links
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