Myth

Thor's battle against the giants, painting by Mårten Eskil Winge (1872).

The myths (from the Greek μύθος, mythos, «story», «tale») are narratives that express the ancestral ideas of a people about the world in which they live. lives. They arose so that these peoples could give an answer to questions that were inexplicable to them. Therefore, through traditional stories, they tried to clarify the mysteries of the cycles of life and death, and explain how all things (Earth, man, fire) began to exist., diseases, the stars, etc.).

Myths recount prodigious events led by supernatural or extraordinary beings (gods, demigods, heroes, etc.), who, based on what they created from the beginning, made man what he is.

The prodigious and astonishing explanations provided by myths, for the peoples who created them had the character of truth and were the center of their religious beliefs. For this reason, recounting a myth was a celebration that took place within the framework of important ceremonies (marriages, burials, initiation of adult life). The main objective was: to reveal to each people the common origin of the world, of man and of life, to justify daily activities (such as the way in which they should hunt and farm). And, furthermore, teach him that his supernatural story was significant and an example to imitate.

Mythical narratives have an oral origin and arise collectively and anonymously. As they are passed down from generation to generation, they undergo transformations: lengthening, shortening, character names changing, and so on. These changes give rise to different versions and these, at some point, can be put in writing.

Overview

Since in Greco-Roman Antiquity philosophical and scientific explanations entered into competition with mythical ones, the word myth was charged in certain contexts with a pejorative value, coming to be used loosely as a synonym for hoax, widespread but false belief, for example, the classless society is a communist myth, or the invisible hand of the market is a liberal myth. The somewhat lax use of myth and mythical (or legend and legendary ) to refer to characters is also common. historical or contemporary (or even commercial products) laden with prestige and glamour: Charlotte is a silent film legend; The Brutals are a mythical group.

Like other traditional narrative genres, myth is a text of oral origin, whose details vary in the course of its transmission, giving rise to different versions. In societies that know writing, the myth has been the subject of literary reworking, thus expanding its range of versions and variants. For this reason, the myths have not disappeared in the present time, they are only shown

Features

According to Mircea Eliade, myth is a sacred story that narrates an event that happened during a primeval time, in which the world did not yet have its current form. The events of nature that are repeated periodically are explained as a consequence of the events narrated in the myth (for example, in Greek mythology the cycle of the seasons is explained from the abduction of Persephone. However, not all myths are They refer to a "first" time, they can also address events that occurred after the origin, but that stand out for their importance and for the changes they brought.

According to the vision of Claude Lévi-Strauss, a structuralist anthropologist, all myths have three characteristics:

• It deals with an existential question concerning the creation of the Earth, death, birth and the like.
• It is constituted by irreconcilable opposites: creation against destruction, life against death, gods against men or against evil.
• It provides the reconciliation of these poles in order to conjure our anguish.

For his part, the anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski affirmed that there is no important aspect of life that is alien to myth. For this reason, there are religious myths (such as the birth of the gods), political myths (such as the founding of Rome) or on particular topics (why corn became the main food of a people, as it happened with the pre-Hispanic peoples of Mexico.). For Malinowski, myths are fundamental narratives, insofar as they respond to the basic questions of human existence: reason for existing, reason for what surrounds it, among others. Malinowski also clarified that the myth belongs to the order of beliefs.

According to the professor and literary theorist José Manuel Losada, myth is a “functional, symbolic and thematic account of extraordinary events with a transcendental sacred supernatural referent, lacking, in principle, historical testimony, and referring to a cosmogony or an eschatology individual or collective, but always absolute”.

Function of the myth

The functions of myths are multiple since it is part of a culture. However, in general, three essential functions can be accepted: explanatory, meaning and pragmatic. The explanatory function: refers to the fact that myths explain, justify or develop the origin, raison d'être and cause of some aspect of social or individual life, for example, the Greek myth that narrates how the world of &#34 originated.;Chaos" or the Genesis that comments on the birth of a woman from a man's rib. The pragmatic function of the myth implies that myths are the basis of certain social structures and actions, thus, a myth can mark a genealogical line and determine who can govern or not. Thanks to this function, myths specify and justify why a situation is a certain way and not another. The function of meaning refers to the fact that myths are not only stories that provide explanations or political justifications, they also provide comfort, a life objective or calm to individuals, this is the case with myths that speak of death, suffering or victory. Therefore, myths are not stories far from the person, but function as an existential handle, a motive, according to the American psychoanalyst Rollo May. The three functions are often combined constantly.^{[citation needed]}

Types of myths

There are several kinds of myths:

• Cosmogonic myths: they explain the creation of the world. They are the most universally extended and the most widely available. Often, the origin of the earth is placed in a primordial ocean. Sometimes a race of giants, like the Titans, plays a decisive role in this creation; in this case, such giants, who are usually semi-gods, constitute the first population of the earth.
• Teogonic myths: Relating the origin of the gods. For example, Athena is armed from the head of Zeus.
• Anthropological myths: They will narrate the appearance of the human being, which can be created from any matter, alive (one plant, one animal) or inert (dust, mud, clay, etc.). The gods teach him to live on the earth. Usually, they are linked to the cosmogonic myths.
• Moral myths: They explain the existence of good and evil.
• Founding myths: they describe the origin of some characteristic of the natural or social world. One example is that of the foundation of Rome by two twins, Rhomulus and Remo, who were breastfed by a wolf.
• eschatological myths: Announce the future, the end of the world. They're still having a wide audience. These myths include two main classes, according to the element that causes the destruction of the world: water or fire. They are often linked to astrology. The imminence of the end is announced by a greater frequency of eclipses, earthquakes, and all kinds of natural disasters that terrorize humans. The classic example is the 'Revelation', considered as such by Bertrand Russell.

Reading: literal, allegorical, symbolic

Although myths seem to have been originally posed as literally true stories, the dialectic between the mythical explanation of the world and the philosophical and scientific one has favored the development of non-literal readings of myths, according to which they should not be the object of belief and interpretation.

Thus, the allegorical reading of myths, born in Greece around the VI century a. C. and continued in the Hellenistic era, proposes to interpret the gods as personifications of natural elements. Said incipient rationalization of the myth, developed from pre-Socratic physics, is carried out by interpreters such as Metrodorus of Lampsacus and Theagenes of Regius (both allegorists of the poems and Homeric gods). This effort finds its continuation in later theories, such as the one spread in the XIX century by Max Müller, according to which myths originate from misunderstood stories about the sun, that has been the object of personification, becoming an anthropomorphic character (the hero or solar god).

For its part, the symbolic reading considers that the myth contains a truthful content, but not about what it apparently deals with, but about the mental contents of its creators and users. Thus, the myth about how a god instituted the week by creating the world in seven days contains accurate information about how the society that created it divided time and what divisions it made between the inanimate and the animate, the different types of animals and man., etc. Myths also contain useful patterns of behavior: models to follow or avoid, stories known to all with which to relate individual experiences.

Modern studies on myth are situated in three fundamental positions:

• the functionalist, developed by the anthropologist Malinowski, examines what myths are used in everyday life (resource of conduct, argument of authority, etc.);
• the structuralist, initiated by Lévi-Strauss, examines the construction of the myths by locating the opposite or complementary elements that appear in it and how they appear related;
• the symbolist, which has classic references in Jung, Bachelard and Gilbert Durand, considers that the fundamental element of the myth is the symbol, a tangible element but loaded with a resonance or significance that refers to archetypal content of the human psyche. An example of archetype is the Elder Child, a contradictory figure that manifests itself as a long-lived character of child appearance or behavior such as Merlin or a baby or child capable of speaking and endowed with enormous knowledge, belonging to an old man—the child Jesus teaching the doctors.

Difference between myth and other types of narratives

Myths are often confused with other types of narratives such as stories, fables or legends. However, they are not the same.

There are several differences between myth and folktale: while tales are presented as fiction, myths are presented as true stories. The function also varies: the myth is essentially etiological (it clarifies how a certain situation was reached; why the sea is salty or man is mortal, for example), while the popular tale transmits values (better skill than strength, good always has its reward, the impostor is always discovered, etc.). In addition, the plot of the stories is usually simple, while the myths are part of a complex framework, in which each story is related to the others by the recurrence of characters, places, etc. (Thus, for example, the story of Jason is related to the myths about Heracles, as he is one of the Argonauts).

Fables are differentiated from myths by the characters (those in fables are animals of human behavior; those in myths, gods, heroes, and monsters) and by their function (fables contain a moral message, which usually appears collected at the end of them in the form of a moral, while the myths are etiological).

As for legends, they are presented, like myths, as true stories and often have an etiological function (they serve, for example, to explain how a lineage reached power, thus sustaining its political legitimacy); however, unlike myths, they take place in real, historical time, in places recognizable by the listener or reader, and often with real protagonists (cf. the legends about Charlemagne or the Cid).

The same plot can appear in a myth, a tale or a legend, depending on how the story is presented (as true or fictional) and what its function is (etiological, didactic, entertainment...). Thus, it has been pointed out how the plot of the Oedipus myth reappears in the medieval legend that makes Judas Iscariot a murderer of his father who unknowingly marries his mother.