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A myth expresses and confirms society's religious values and norms, it provides a pattern of behavior to be imitated, testifies to the efficacy of ritual with its practical ends and establishes the sanctity of cult. [37] Another definition of myth comes from myth criticism theorist and professor José Manuel Losada. According to Cultural Myth ...
[2] [3] The Brothers Grimm defined legend as "folktale historically grounded". [4] A by-product of the "concern with human beings" is the long list of legendary creatures, leaving no "resolute doubt" that legends are "historically grounded." A modern folklorist's professional definition of legend was proposed by Timothy R. Tangherlini in 1990: [5]
The relationship between religion and myth depends on what definition of "myth" one uses. By Robert Graves's definition, a religion's traditional stories are "myths" if and only if one does not belong to the religion in question. By Segal's definition, all religious stories are myths—but simply because nearly all stories are myths.
Within academic circles, the term myth is often used specifically to refer to origin and cosmogonic myths. Folklorists, for example, reserve the term myth for stories that describe creation. Stories that do not primarily focus on origins are categorized as legend or folk tale, which are distinct from myths according to folklorists. [5]
This does not mean that all things which cannot be proven true or false are myths. Many conspiracy theories fall in this space, but a conspiracy theory should never be classified as a myth. Though classifying them as fictional would also be inaccurate (as the saying goes "Don't call him dumb as a rock. That's insulting to the rock.")
To an extent, all theories about mythology follow a comparative approach—as scholar of religion Robert Segal notes, "by definition, all theorists seek similarities among myths". [3] However, scholars of mythology can be roughly divided into particularists, who emphasize the differences between myths, and comparativists, who emphasize the ...
Just because something claims it's "diet," doesn't mean that it's any better for you. Artificial sweeteners trick your body into gearing up your digestive system for calories, which leads to ...
Urban legends (sometimes modern legend, urban myth, or simply legend) is a genre of folklore concerning stories about an unusual (usually scary) or humorous event that many people believe to be true but largely are not.