The word mythology literally means the (oral) retelling of myths – stories that a particular culture believes to be true and that use the supernatural to interpret natural events and to explain the nature of the universe and humanity. The modern definition of mythology primarily the body of myths from a particular culture or religion, as in Greek mythology, Egyptian mythology or Norse mythology. Mythology is also the branch of knowledge dealing with the collection, study and interpretation of myths.
The following are leather bound books about mythology including ancient myths and legends, Celtic myths, Greek myths, Native myths, mythical creatures, mythical stories and more.
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Easton Press Mythology Books
American Indian Legends by Allan Macfarlan - 1968
Le Morte D'Arthur by Thomas Malory - 2 volumes - 1983 (Library of Famous Editions)
Confucius The Man and The Myth by H.G. Spence - 1994
The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley - 2 volumes - 1996
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Other Stories by Washington Irving - 1996
The Legends of King Arthur by Howard Pyle - 1996 - 4 volume set including titles:
The Story of the Champions of the Round Table
The Story of King Arthur and His Knights
The Story of Sir Lancelot and His Companions
The Story of the Grail and the Passing of Arthur
Myths and Legends of the Ancient World - 1997 - 10 volume set including titles:
Myths of Ancient Egypt by Lewis Spencer
Babylonia & Assyria myths by Lewis Spencer
Celtic myths and legends by T.W. Rolleston
Myths of China by E.T.C Wemer
Myths of Hindus and Buddhas by Margret E Noble
Myths of Japan by F. Hadland Davis
Myths of Norsemen by H.A. Guerber
Myths of the North American Indians by Lewis Spencer
The Greek myths vol I by Robert Graves
The Greek myths vol II by Robert Graves
Bulfinch's Mythology - 2000
Myths & Folktales of Ireland - 2000 - 4 volume set including titles:
Cuchulain of Muirthemne by Lady Gregory
Fairy & Folktales of Ireland by William Butler Yeats
Gods and Fighting Men by Lady Gregory
Mythologies The Celtic Twilight, The Secret Rose by William Butler Yeats
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Other Stories by Washington Irving - 2002
Beowulf - 2004 (100 Greatest Books Ever Written)
Mythology: Myths, Legends and Fantasies - 2005
The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus - 2007
3 volume set by Edith Hamilton - 2009 - including titles:
Mythology
The Greek Way
The Roman Way
Knights In History and Legend by Constance Brittain Bouchard - 2010
Ovid's Metamorphoses - 2 volumes - 2011
Myths of Greece and Rome - 2013
Myths & Legends by Philip Wilkinson - 2019
English Myths by Michael Kerrigan - 2022
Myths And Legends Of The Middle Ages H.A. Guerber
Norse Myths by by Martin Dougherty
What is mythology?
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 involve a supernatural force or deity. Many legends and narratives passed down orally from generation to generation have mythic content.
In common parlance, a myth is generally considered a "mere story" — that is, a story that holds meaning for people, but the core of which is untrue. In folkloristics, which is concerned with the study of both secular and sacred narratives (the latter being myths), a myth also derives some of its power from being believed and deeply held as true; to folklorists, all sacred traditions have myths, and there is nothing pejorative or dismissive about the term as there 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."
Formation of myths
What forces create myths? 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."
Nature of myths
Typical Myth characteristics
The main characters in myths are usually gods or supernatural heroes. As sacred stories, myths are often endorsed by rulers and priests and closely linked to religion. In the society in which it is told, a myth is usually regarded as a true account of the remote past. In fact, many societies have two categories of traditional narrative "true stories", or myths, and "false stories", or fables. Myths generally take place in a primordial age, when the world had not yet achieved its current form. They explain how the world gained its current form and how customs, institutions, and taboos were established.
Related concepts
Closely related to myth are legend and folktale. Myths, legends, and folktales are different types of traditional story. Unlike myths, folktales can take place at any time and any place, and they are not considered true or sacred events by the societies that tell them. Like myths, legends are stories that are traditionally considered true; however, they are set in a more recent time, when the world was much as it is today. Also, legends generally feature humans as their main characters, whereas myths generally focus on superhuman characters.
The distinction between myth, legend, and folktale is meant simply as a useful tool for grouping traditional stories. In many cultures, it is hard to draw a sharp line between myths and legends. Instead of dividing their traditional stories into myths, legends, and folktales, some cultures divide them into two categories — one that roughly corresponds to folktales, and one that combines myths and legends. Even myths and folktales are not completely distinct: a story may be considered true — and therefore a myth — in one society, but considered fictional — and therefore a folktale — in another society. In fact, when a myth loses its status as part of a religious system, it often takes on traits more typical of folktales, with its formerly divine characters reinterpreted as human heroes, giants, or fairies.
Myth, legend, and folktale are only a few of the categories of traditional stories. Other categories include anecdotes and some kinds of jokes. Traditional stories, in turn, are only one category within folklore, which also includes items such as gestures, costumes, and music.
Myths as depictions of historical events
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 World War II the fitness of the Emperor of Japan was linked to his mythical descent from the Shinto sun goddess, Amaterasu.
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)
Functions of myth
One of the foremost functions of myth is to establish models for behavior. The figures described in myth are sacred and are therefore worthy role models for human beings. Thus, myths often function to uphold current social structures and institutions: they justify these customs by claiming that they were established by sacred beings. Myths can be entertaining.
Another function is to provide people with a religious experience. By retelling myths, human beings detach themselves from the present and return to the mythical age, thereby bringing themselves closer to the divine. In fact, in some cases, a society will reenact a myth in an attempt to reproduce the conditions of the mythical age: for example, it will reenact the healing performed by a god at the beginning of time in order to heal someone in the present.
The study of mythology: a historical overview
Historically, the important approaches to the study of mythology have been those of Vico, Schelling, Schiller, Jung, Freud, Lévy-Bruhl, Lévi-Strauss, Frye, the Soviet school, and the Myth and Ritual School.
Pre-modern theories
The critical interpretation of myth goes back as far as the Presocratics. Euhemerus was one of the most important pre-modern mythologists. He interpreted myths as accounts of actual historical events, distorted over many retellings.
Varro distinguished three aspects of theology, besides political (social) and natural (physical) approaches to the divine allowing for a mythical theology.[citation needed]
Interest in polytheistic mythology revived in the Renaissance, with early works on mythography appearing in the 16th century, such as the Theologia mythologica (1532).
19th-century theories
The first scholarly theories of myth appeared during the second half of the 19th century. In general, these 19th-century theories framed myth as a failed or obsolete mode of thought, often by interpreting myth as the primitive counterpart of modern science.
For example, E. B. Tylor interpreted myth as an attempt at a literal explanation for natural phenomena: unable to conceive of impersonal natural laws, early man tried to explain natural phenomena by attributing souls to inanimate objects, giving rise to animism. According to Tylor, human thought evolves through various stages, starting with mythological ideas and gradually progressing to scientific ideas. Not all scholars — not even all 19th century scholars — have agreed with this view. For example, Lucien Lévy-Bruhl claimed that "the primitive mentality is a condition of the human mind, and not a stage in its historical development."
Max Müller called myth a "disease of language". He speculated that myths arose due to the lack of abstract nouns and neuter gender in ancient languages: anthropomorphic figures of speech, necessary in such languages, were eventually taken literally, leading to the idea that natural phenomena were conscious beings, gods.
The anthropologist James Frazer saw myths as a misinterpretation of magical rituals, which were themselves based on a mistaken idea of natural law.[48] According to Frazer, man begins with an unfounded belief in impersonal magical laws. When he realizes that his applications of these laws don't work, he gives up his belief in natural law, in favor of a belief in personal gods controlling nature — thus giving rise to religious myths. Meanwhile, man continues practicing formerly magical rituals through force of habit, reinterpreting them as reenactments of mythical events. Finally, Frazer contends, man realizes that nature does follow natural laws, but now he discovers their true nature through science. Here, again, science makes myth obsolete: as Frazer puts it, man progresses "from magic through religion to science".
By pitting mythical thought against modern scientific thought, such theories implied that modern man must abandon myth.
20th-century theories
Many 20th-century theories of myth rejected the 19th-century theories' opposition of myth and science. In general, "twentieth-century theories have tended to see myth as almost anything but an outdated counterpart to science. Consequently, moderns are not obliged to abandon myth for science."
Swiss psychologist Carl Jung (1873-1961) and his followers tried to understand the psychology behind world myths. Jung argued that all humans share certain innate unconscious psychological forces, which he called archetypes. Jung believed that the similarities between the myths from different cultures reveals the existence of these universal archetypes.
Following Jung, Joseph Campbell believed that insights about one’s psychology, gained from reading myths, can be beneficially applied to one’s own life.
Like Jung and Campbell, Claude Lévi-Strauss believed that myths reflect patterns in the mind. However, he saw those patterns more as fixed mental structures — specifically, pairs of oppositions (for example raw vs cooked, nature vs culture) — than as unconscious feelings or urges.
In his appendix to Myths, Dreams and Mysteries, and in The Myth of the Eternal Return, Mircea Eliade attributed modern man’s anxieties to his rejection of myths and the sense of the sacred.
Mythopoeia is a term coined by J. R. R. Tolkien for the conscious attempt to create fiction styled like myths.
In the 1950s, Roland Barthes published a series of essays examining modern myths and the process of their creation in his book Mythologies.
Religion and mythology
Mythology figures prominently in most religions, and most mythology is tied to at least one religion. Some use the words myth and mythology to portray the stories of one or more religions as false, or dubious at best. While nearly all dictionaries include this definition, "myth" does not always imply that a story is either false or true. The term is most often used in this sense to describe religions founded by ancient societies whose belief systems are nearly extinct. However, it is important to keep in mind that while some view myths as merely stories, others may hold them as a religion. By extension, 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 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.
The word mythology is used to refer to stories that, while they may or may not be strictly factual, reveal fundamental truths and insights about human nature, often through the use of archetypes. Also, the stories discussed express the viewpoints and beliefs of the country, time period, culture, and/or religion which gave birth to them. One can speak of a Jewish mythology, a Christian mythology, or an Islamic mythology, in which one describes the mythic elements within these faiths without speaking to the veracity of the faith's tenets or claims about its history.
Ritual myths explain the performance of a certain religious practices or patterns and associated with temples or centers of worship. Origin myths describe the beginnings of a custom, name or object. Cult myths are often seen as explanations for elaborate festivals that magnify the power of the deity. Prestige myths are usually associated with a divinely chosen hero, city, or people. Eschatological myths are stories which describe catastrophic ends to the present world order of the writers. These extend beyond any potential historical scope, and thus can only be described in mythic terms. Some myths fit in more than one category.
Myths by region
Africa
Akamba mythology - Akan mythology - Alur mythology - Ashanti mythology - Bambara mythology - Bambuti mythology - Banyarwanda mythology - Basari mythology - Baule mythology - Bavenda mythology - Bazambi mythology - Baziba mythology - Bushongo mythology - Dahomey mythology (Fon) - Dinka mythology - Efik mythology - Egyptian mythology (Pre-Islam) - Ekoi mythology - Fan mythology - Fens mythology - Fjort mythology - Herero mythology - Ibibio mythology - Ibo mythology - Isoko mythology - Kamba mythology - Kavirondo mythology - Khoikhoi mythology - Kurumba mythology - Lotuko mythology - Lugbara mythology - Lunda mythology - Makoni mythology - Masai mythology - Mongo mythology - Mundang mythology - Ngbandi mythology - Nupe mythology - Nyamwezi mythology - Oromo mythology - Ovambo mythology - Pygmy mythology - San mythology - Serer mythology - Shona mythology - Shongo mythology - Songhai mythology - Sotho mythology - Tumbuka mythology - Xhosa mythology - Yoruba mythology - Zulu mythology
Asia (non-Middle East)
Ayyavazhi mythology - Buddhist mythology - Bön mythology (pre-Buddhist Tibetan mythology) - Chinese mythology - Hindu mythology - Hmong mythology - Japanese mythology (mainstream) - Japanese mythology (Hotsuma version) - Korean mythology - Philippine mythology - Turkic mythology- Vietnamese mythology
Australia and Oceania
Aboriginal mythology (natives of Australia) - Melanesian mythology - Micronesian mythology - Polynesian mythology
Europe
Anglo-Saxon mythology - Basque mythology - Catalan mythology - Celtic mythology - Corsican mythology - French mythology - Germanic mythology - Greek mythology - English mythology - Etruscan mythology - Finnish mythology - Irish mythology - Latvian mythology - Lithuanian mythology - Lusitanian mythology - Norse mythology - Polish mythology - Roman mythology - Romanian mythology - Sardinian mythology - Slavic mythology - Spanish mythology - Swiss mythology - Tatar mythology - Turkish mythology
Middle East
Arab mythology (pre-Islamic) - Biblical mythology - Christian mythology - Jewish mythology - Persian mythology - Mesopotamian mythology (Babylonian, Sumerian, Assrian)
North America
Abenaki mythology - Algonquin mythology - American folklore (non-Native American) - Blackfoot mythology - Chippewa mythology - Chickasaw mythology - Choctaw mythology - Creek mythology - Crow mythology - Haida mythology - Ho-Chunk mythology - Hopi mythology - Inuit mythology - Iroquois mythology - Huron mythology - Kwakiutl mythology - Lakota mythology - Leni Lenape mythology - Navaho mythology - Nootka mythology - Pawnee mythology - Salish mythology - Seneca mythology - Tsimshian mythology - Ute mythology - Zuni mythology
South America and Mesoamerica
Aztec mythology - Incan mythology - Guarani mythology - Haitian mythology - Maya mythology - Olmec mythology - Toltec mythology
Source and additional information: Myth