Myth definitions

This post is a rolling inventory of definitions and descriptions of myth – mine, and those of others. The date on which an item is added to the list is given in italics, in parentheses. I’ll move it to the top of the blog every time I update it.

a set of propositions, often stated in narrative form, that is accepted uncritically by a culture or speech-community and that serves to found or affirm its self-conception

--- Peter Heehs (1994), "Myth, History, and Theory"

"Basing ourselves on this philosophical and critical sense of "myth," we may define it as a set of propositions, often stated in narrative form, that is accepted uncritically by a culture or speech-community and that serves to found or affirm its self-conception. "Myth" in this sense includes most traditional narratives as well as some modern literature, but also "texts" such as performance wrestling, certain advertisements, and so on. More generally it consists of any set of related propositions whose "truth" is not demonstrated by the working of logos."

(Oct 2021)

narratives that give point to our labors, exalt our history, elucidate the present, and give direction to our future

--- Neil Postman (1996: 7). The End of Education. 

“our genius lies in our capacity to make meaning through the creation of narratives that give point to our labors, exalt our history, elucidate the present, and give direction to our future” 

(Mar 2021)

stories reflecting current social concerns that we use to make sense of our world and confirm our views 

--- adapted from the Snopes.com entry "Urban Legend Definition":

The legends we tell reflect current societal concerns and fears as well as confirm the rightness of our views. It is through such stories that we attempt to make sense of our world, which at times can appear to be capricious and dangerous. As cautionary tales, urban legends warn us against engaging in risky behaviors by pointing out what has supposedly happened to others who did what we might be tempted try. Other legends confirm our belief that it’s a big, bad world out there, . . .

(July 2020)

"stories that animate individuals and societies by providing paths to transcendence"

"a captivating fiction, a promise unfulfilled and perhaps unfulfillable"

--- Vincent Mosco (2005). The Digital Sublime: Myth, Power, and Cyberspace, p. 3

Myths are stories that animate individuals and societies by providing paths to transcendence  that lift people out of the banality of everyday life. 

A simple but quite limited way to understand a myth is to see it as a captivating fiction, a promise unfulfilled and perhaps unfulfillable 

(July 2020)

"a widely-held belief in significant truth claims, presented as a story, that influences thought or behavior"

--- Yours truly, from "Myth" in tech journalism, June 2020

•     A widely held
•     belief
•     in significant or far-reaching truth claims
•     presented in narrative form
•     that influences thought or behavior

(July 2020)

"culturally-important imaginal stories"

"narrative fictions whose plots read first at the level of their own stories, and then as projections of imminent transcendent meanings"

--- William G. Doty (1980). "Mythophiles’ Dyscrasia: A Comprehensive Definition of Myth," Journal of the American Academy of Religion, XLVIII(4), 531–562. https://doi.org/10.1093/jaarel/XLVIII.4.531

From the abstract:

A mythological corpus consists of a network of myths, which are culturally-important imaginal stories conveying, by means of metaphor and symbol, graphic imagery, and emotional conviction and participation, the primal, foundational accounts of the real, experienced world, and humankind's roles and relative statuses within it. Mythologies may convey the political and moral values of a culture, and provide systems of interpreting individual experience within a universal perspective, which may include the intervention of suprahuman entities, as well aspects of the natural and cultural orders. Myths may be enacted or reflected in rituals, ceremonies, and dramas, or provide materials for secondary elaborations.

Doty devotes sections to each of the attributes listed. In the section on "stories" he notes: "Myths are the narrative fictions whose plots read first at the level of their own stories, and then as projections of imminent transcendent meanings."

In the section commenting on the "culturally important" criterion, he also says: "If ritual, in Victor Turner's phrase, is 'quintessential custom,' myth is quintessential story."

(May 2020)

"A story about something significant [that] must have a powerful hold on its adherents [but] can be either true or false."

--- Robert Alan Segal, from Myth: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press, 2004. More:

I propose defining myth as a story (p. 3)

If, then, myth is to be taken here as a story, what is the story about? For folklorists, whose position is the narrowest, myth is about the creation of the world. . . . Outside the Bible the Oedipus ‘myth’, for example, would actually be a legend. I do not propose being so rigid and will instead define myth as simply a story about something significant. (p. 4)

I propose that, to qualify as a myth, a story, which can of course express a conviction, must have a powerful hold on its adherents. But the story can be either true or false. (p.5)

(March 2020)
“Myths are compost.”

--- Neil Gaiman, from Reflections on Myth, Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art, No. 31 (WINTER 1999), pp. 75-84 (https://www.jstor.org/stable/41807920)

He says, “They begin as religions, the most deeply held of beliefs, or as the stories that accrete to religions as they grow. . . . And then, as the religions fall into disuse, or the stories cease to be seen as the literal truth, they become myths.” Further on: “But retelling myths is important. . . . . Instead we have to understand that even lost and forgotten myths are compost, in which stories grow.”

(January 2020)

“… the ways that [a country] explains itself to itself.”

--- Neil Gaiman, Reflections on Myth, Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art, No. 31 (WINTER 1999), pp. 75-84 (https://www.jstor.org/stable/41807920):

Excerpt: “I have lived here for six years, and I still do not understand it: a strange collection of home-grown myths and beliefs, the ways that America explains itself to itself.”

(January 2020)

“Typically, myths provide symbolic representations of cultural priorities, beliefs, and prejudices.”

--- William G Doty, Myth: A Handbook, Greenwood Folklore Handbooks, 2004

Excerpt:

Typically, myths provide symbolic representations of cultural priorities, beliefs, and prejudices. They dramatize and make abstractions concrete (Girling 1993: 14); perhaps we might say that they embody important sociocultural notions in such ways that they produce charters (Bronislaw Malinowski's term) for social formation and development. They can be referred to not as equivalent to fairy tales and fantasy literature, but as enacted (performantial) narratives, that is to say, as language that does something, namely legitimizing and establishing the social realities that form real life.

(December 2019)

“myths are the stories other people believe”

--- Yours truly. Put another way: We have truth, other people have myth, or, We have religion, they have myths.

(December 2019)

“a set of narratives that acquire through specifiable historical action a significant ideological charge”

--- Slotkin, Richard (1985). The Fatal Environment: The Myth of the Frontier in the Age of Industrialization, 1800-1890. New York: Antheneum. p. 19; cited in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frontier_myth.

(November 2019)

“a symbolic narrative about a series events driven, and/or suffered, by larger-than-life characters”

--- Yours truly. In other words, I’m excluding myth in the sense of a popular belief, tradition, argument, theory or model (often portrayed as an unfounded or false notion) that has grown up around something or someone. For my purposes, myth includes those elements, but primarily tells stories through characters.

(November 2019)

“a popular belief or tradition that has grown up around something or someone – especially : one embodying the ideals and institutions of a society or segment of society”

--- Merriam-Webster, definition 2(a) of myth (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/myth)

(November 2019)

“widely shared stories that we use to make sense of the world”

--- Yours truly

(November 2019)

“myth—an uncritically accepted story that provides a model to interpret current experience, disclosing the meaning of the self, the community, and the universe”

--- Robert Jewett & John Shelton Lawrence, The American Monomyth, Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1977; from the glossary

(November 2019)

"The function of a myth is to empty reality: it is, literally, a ceaseless flowing out, a hemorrhage, or perhaps an evaporation, in short, a perceptible absence."

--- Roland Barthes, "Myth Today" in Mythologies (1957), trans. Annette Lavers (1972), p. 255

(July 2023)