Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
The literary collection of Greco-Roman myths with the greatest influence on later Western culture was the Metamorphoses of the Augustan poet Ovid. Syncretized versions form the classical tradition of mythography , and by the time of the influential Renaissance mythographer Natalis Comes (16th century), few if any distinctions were made between ...
Comparative mythology has served a variety of academic purposes. For example, scholars have used the relationships between different myths to trace the development of religions and cultures, to propose common origins for myths from different cultures, and to support various psychoanalytical theories.
Myth criticism, a discipline that studies myths (mythology contains them, like a pantheon its statues), is by nature interdisciplinary: it combines the contributions of literary theory, the history of literature, the fine arts and the new ways of dissemination in the age of communication.
A creation myth (or creation story) is a cultural, religious or traditional myth which describes the earliest beginnings of the present world. Creation myths are the most common form of myth, usually developing first in oral traditions , and are found throughout human culture.
American mythology is the body of traditional stories pertaining to America's most legendary stories and folktale, dating back to the late 1700s when the first colonists settled. "American mythology" may also refer to the modern study of these representations, and to the subject matter as represented in the literature and art of other cultures ...
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]
Legend: story, sometimes of a national or folk hero, that has a basis in fact but also includes imaginative material; Myth: traditional narrative, often based in part on historical events, that reveals human behavior and natural phenomena by its symbolism; often pertaining to the actions of the gods. Parable; Personal narrative; Urban legend
According to classicist William Hansen: "the Greeks and Romans had all the genres of oral narrative known to us, even ghost stories and urban legends, but they also told all kinds that in most of the Western world no longer circulate orally, such as myths and fairytales."