theoryofliteratu00inwell

196 Theory 0} Literature
wider sense, myth comes to mean any anonymously composed
story telling of origins and destinies, the explanations a society
offers its young of why the world is and why we do as we do, its
pedagogic images of the nature and destiny of man. 18
For literary theory, the important motifs are, probably, the
image or picture, the social, the supernatural (or non-naturalist
or irrational), the narrative or story, the archetypal or universal,
the symbolic representation as events in time of our timeless
ideals, the programmatic or eschatological, the mystic. In con-
temporary thought, appeal to the myth may center on any one
of these, with a spread to others. Thus Sorel speaks of the "Gen-
eral Strike" of all the world's workers as a "myth," meaning that
while such an ideal will never become historic fact it must, in
order to motivate and dynamize the workers, be presented as a
future historical event ; myth is program. Thus Niebuhr speaks
of Christian eschatology as mythic: the Second Coming and the
Last Judgment image as future history what are present, perma-
nent, moral, and spiritual evaluations. 19 If the mythic has as its
contrary either science or philosophy, it opposes the picturable
intuitive concrete to the rational abstract. Generally, too, in this,
the central opposition for literary theorists and apologists, the
myth is social, anonymous, communal. In modern times, we may
be able to identify the creators—or some of the creators—of a
myth; but it may still have the qualitative status of myth if its
authorship is forgotten, not generally known, or at any event
unimportant to its validation—if it has been accepted by the com-
munity, has received the "consent of the faithful."
The term is not easy to fix: it points today at an "area of meaning."
We hear of painters and poets in search of a mythology;
we hear of the "myth" of progress or of democracy. We hear of
"The Return of the Myth in World Literature." Yet we also
hear that one can't create a myth or choose to believe one or will
one into being: the book has succeeded the myth, and the cos-
mopolitan city the homogeneous society of the city state. 20
Does modern man lack myth—or a mythology, a system of
interconnected myths? This would be Nietzsche's view: that
Socrates and the Sophists, the "intellectuals," had destroyed the
life of Greek "culture." Similarly it would be argued that the
Enlightenment destroyed—or began destruction of—the Chris-