Mythology: Encyclopedia II - Mythology - What is mythology?

Mythology - What is mythology?

In order to consider mythology, it is first necessary to consider what is meant by the term myth.

The ancient Greek Μυθος originally meant simply word or speech, and by extension, a story or narrative. This quickly took on the sense of fiction, and both Pindar (d. 443 BC) and Plato (d. ca. 347 BC) contrast Μυθος with Λογος as "historical truth." Many ancient usages of Μυθος are specifically as fiction; see here for details in the Liddell-Scott-Jones Greek-English Lexicon entry on Μυθος.

Myths are generally narratives passed down traditionally intended 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. Myths are by definition sacred and usually involve a supernatural force or deity. Many legends and narratives passed down orally from generation to generation have mythic content.

In common usage, myth means a falsehood — a story which some believe but which is not true. In this sense, a myth is a "mere story" that might hold meaning meaning for people but is not historical fact. In folkloristics, which is concerned with the study of both secular and sacred narratives, a myth also derives some of its power from being believed and deeply held as true. In the study of folklore, all sacred traditions have myths, and there is nothing pejorative or dismissive intended in the use of the term, as there often is in common usage.

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 may vanish as the written word becomes "the story" and the literate become "the authority"). However, as Lucien Lévy-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.

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."

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "What is mythology?", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki