Hi MB,
Shakespeare … is epitomized for popularizing many archetypal characters, not because he was the first that we know of to write them, but because he defined those roles amongst the backdrop of a complex, social literary landscape. Thus, the characters stand out as original by contrast, even though many of his characters were based on previously-garnered archetypes (Shakespeare often borrowed from fables and myths to construct and embellish his plays).
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archetype
… many people do not regard the tales surrounding the origin and development of modern dominant religions as literal accounts of events, but instead regard them as figurative representations of their belief systems. Many modern day rabbis and priests within the more liberal Jewish and Christian movements, as well as most Neopagans, have no problem viewing their religious texts as containing myth. They see their sacred texts as indeed containing religious truths, divinely inspired but delivered in the language of mankind. Others try to separate their beliefs out from the similar stories of other cultures and refer to them as history. These people object to the use of the word myth to describe what they believe.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth#Relig … _mythology
Robert Graves said of Greek myth: “True myth may be defined as the reduction to narrative shorthand of ritual mime performed on public festivals, and in many cases recorded pictorially.” (The Greek Myths, Introduction). Graves was deeply influenced, perhaps too strongly, by Sir James George Frazer’s mythography The Golden Bough, and he would have agreed that myths are generated by many cultural needs (more on the forces that generate myth is needed).
Myths authorize the cultural institutions of a tribe, a city, or a nation by connecting them with universal truths. Myths justify the current occupation of a territory by a people, for instance.
All cultures have developed over time their own myths, consisting of narratives of their history, their religions, and their heroes. The great power of the symbolic meaning of these stories for the culture is a major reason why they survive as long as they do, sometimes for thousands of years. Mâche (1992, p.20) distinguishes between "myth, in the sense of this primary psychic image, with some kind of mytho-logy, or a system of words trying with varying success to ensure a certain coherence between these images.
A collection of myths is called a mythos, e.g. ‘the Roman mythos.’ A collection of those is called a mythoi, e.g. ‘the Greek and Roman mythoi.’ One notable type is the creation myth, which describes how that culture believes the universe was created. Another is the Trickster myth, which concerns itself with the pranks or tricks played by gods or heroes.
Joseph Campbell was considered by some people to be the world’s leading authority on myth and the history of spirituality. Roger Caillois (1972) contrasts myths of situations determined from outside by historical events with myths of heroes determined from inside by their psychic life. However Mâche (1992, p.10) argues that, “on this level he [Caillois] refers only to the presentation of images in the form of stories, which in themselves are more ancient than stories, not yet submitted to this kind of distinction.”
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth#Relig … _mythology
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 method or technique of interpreting myths as accounts of actual events, euhemerist exegesis, dates from antiguity and can be traced back (from Spencer) to Evhémère’s Histoire sacrée (300 BCE) which describes the inhabitants of the island of Panchaia, Everything-Good, in the Indian Ocean as normal people deified by popular naivety. As Roland Barthes affirms, “Myth is a word chosen by history. It could not come from the nature of things” (Mâche 1992, p.20).
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 some religious conservatives in America with text from the Bible, notably referencing the many prophecies in the Book of Revelation. It was also used during the Russian Communist era in propaganda about political situations with misleading references to class struggles. Until WWII the fitness of the Emperor of Japan was linked to his mythical distant descent from the Amaterasu, the goddess of the sun.
Mâche (1992, p.10) argues that euhemerist exegesis, “was applied to capture and seize by force of reason qualities of thought, which eluded it on every side.” This process, he argues, often leads to interpretation of myths as “disguised propaganda in the service of powerful individuals,” and that the purpose of myths in this view is to allow the “social order” to establish “its permanence on the illusion of a natural order.” He argues against this interpretation, saying that “what puts an end to this caricature of certain speeches from May 1968 is, among other things, precisely the fact that roles are not distributed once and for all in myths, as would be the case if they were a variant of the idea of an ‘opium of the people.’”
Contra Barthes (quote above) Mâche (1992) argues that, “myth therefore seems to choose history, rather than be chosen by it” (p.21), “beyond words and stories, myth seems more like a psychic content from which words, gestures, and musics radiate. History only chooses for it more or less becoming clothes. And these contents surge forth all the more vigorously from the nature of things when reason tries to repress them. Whatever the roles and commentaries with which such and such a socio-historic movement decks out the mythic image, the latter lives a largely autonomous life which continually fascinates humanity. To denounce archaism only makes sense as a function of a ‘progressive’ ideology, which itself begins to show a certain archaism and an obvious naivety.” (p.20)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth#Relig … _mythology
Shalom
