A Myth is a kind of story or rudimentary narrative sequence,
normally traditional and anonymous, through which a given culture ratifies its
social customs or accounts for the origins of human and natural phenomena,
usually in supernatural or boldly imaginative terms.
The term has a wide range
of meanings, which can be divided roughly into 'rationalist' and 'romantic'
versions:
- in the first, a myth is a false or unreliable story or belief (adjective: mythical),
- in the second, 'myth' is a superior intuitive mode of cosmic understanding (adjective: mythic).
Myths are usually distinguished from Legends in that they have less of an
historical basis, although they seem to have a similar mode of existence in oral
transmission, re-telling, literary adaptation, and Allusion.
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