Definition and scope

Mythology denotes both the scholarly study of myth and the corpus of myths associated with a particular tradition, with myths typically defined as symbolic narratives of partly unknown origin that relate events set apart from ordinary human experience and closely associated with religious belief. (Encyclopaedia Britannica.) In scholarship, myth is distinguished from symbolic behavior such as Ritual and from symbolic places or objects, though all may interrelate within a culture’s religious system. (Encyclopaedia Britannica.)

Terminology and etymology

The English term “myth” derives from Greek mythos (“word,” “saying,” “story,” “fiction”), and “mythology” denotes both story-telling and the systematic study of such narratives, a usage extended in modern scholarship to bodies of sacred narratives worldwide. (Encyclopaedia Britannica.) Greek thought often contrasted mythos with logos (“reasoned account”), a distinction that underlies later philosophical treatments of myth in Ancient Greece. (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Plato’s Myths,” fall 2018/fall 2022 archived editions: SEP; SEP.)

Types and motifs

Scholars commonly group myths by subject matter, including cosmogonic myths about the origin and ordering of the world, anthropogonic myths about the origin of humans, theogonic accounts of gods, etiological myths explaining features of the world, heroic cycles, and eschatological myths about endings. (Encyclopaedia Britannica; Encyclopaedia Britannica; Encyclopaedia Britannica.) The cosmogonic category is often treated as “myth par excellence,” providing a center and orientation for a community’s world-understanding. (Encyclopaedia Britannica.) Distinctions from neighboring genres are standard: legends are told as historical about particular persons or places, while folktales (märchen) are usually presented as fiction; myths typically concern gods or primordial times and are treated as authoritative within religious contexts. (Encyclopaedia Britannica; Encyclopaedia Britannica; journal://Journal of American Folklore|The Forms of Folklore: Prose Narratives (Bascom)|1965.)

Social and religious functions

In many societies, myths articulate fundamental valuations, model behavior, and orient communities within a sacred cosmos; creation narratives, in particular, center the world and specify humanity’s place and obligations within it. (Encyclopaedia Britannica.) Myths are frequently linked with rites—together providing frameworks for worship, seasonal observances, initiation, and social cohesion—even when the precise direction of explanation between narrative and rite is debated. (Encyclopaedia Britannica; Encyclopaedia Britannica.) Comparative observers also note that myths may be reapplied in later periods to shape collective identity and political or ethical persuasion, as seen already in Plato’s use of muthos as civic pedagogy. (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Plato’s Myths,” 2018 archive.)

Major approaches in the study of myth

Early rationalizing and allegorical readings

Ancient and later interpreters sometimes treated myths as embellished history (Euhemerism) or as allegory, seeking moral, natural, or historical truths beneath the narrative surface; Euhemerism, named for Euhemerus (c. 300 BCE), influenced early Christian critiques of pagan gods while occasionally overlapping with deification of historical figures. (Encyclopaedia Britannica.)

Ritualism and functionalism

Nineteenth- and early twentieth-century scholars frequently linked myth to ritual cycles and sacrifice, proposing evolutionary sequences from magic to religion to science and treating myths as explanations or charters for rites and institutions. (Encyclopaedia Britannica; Encyclopaedia Britannica.) Bronisław Malinowski’s functionalism reframed myth as a pragmatic charter that validates and sustains social practices in living cultures, integrating myth with other institutions and needs. (book://Bronisław Malinowski|Magic, Science and Religion and Other Essays|Doubleday|1954.)

Psychoanalytic interpretations

Sigmund Freud read myths as expressions of unconscious desires and conflicts—famously interpreting Oedipus as emblematic of a universal psychosexual complex and tracing religious and mythic patterns to primal events hypothesized in Totem und Tabu. (Encyclopaedia Britannica; Encyclopaedia Britannica.) Carl Jung emphasized archetypes and the collective unconscious to explain recurring figures and structures in myth and literature, an idea that later influenced critics such as Northrop Frye and popular comparativists. (Encyclopaedia Britannica.)

Structuralism

Claude Claude Lévi-Strauss analyzed myths as systems of relations governed by underlying structures of the human mind, especially binary oppositions, proposing that meanings arise from correlations among mythemes rather than from isolated motifs. (Encyclopaedia Britannica.) His four-volume Mythologiques (1964–71) elaborated this program through wide-ranging analyses of the Americas, defining a central role for structure in understanding mythic transformations. (book://Claude Lévi-Strauss|Mythologiques (4 vols.)|Plon|1964–1971; Encyclopaedia Britannica.)

Comparative mythology

Comparativists compare narratives across cultures to identify shared patterns, diffusion, or common inheritance, a practice that spans philology, anthropology, and religious studies; modern examples include studies of Indo-European traditions and global motifs such as the hero’s journey. (Encyclopaedia Britannica.) Joseph Joseph Campbell popularized a schematic “monomyth” centered on the hero’s journey, though scholars debate the method’s selectivity and claims to universality. (Encyclopaedia Britannica; book://Joseph Campbell|The Hero with a Thousand Faces|Princeton University Press|1949.)

Phenomenology and history of religions

Mircea Mircea Eliade treated myth as sacred narrative about primordial time, reenacted through ritual to sacralize existence and overcome “the terror of history,” a view influential yet contested for essentializing tendencies. (Encyclopaedia Britannica; Encyclopaedia Britannica.) Eliade emphasized cosmogonic myths and “the dialectic of the sacred and the profane” as keys to religious life and symbolism. (Encyclopaedia Britannica.)

Semiotics and ideology critique

Twentieth‑century semioticians analyzed modern cultural myths as second‑order sign systems that naturalize ideology, extending the term beyond traditional sacred corpora to mass culture. (book://Roland Barthes|Mythologies|Seuil|1957.)

Myth, ritual, and religion

Myths and rites mutually illuminate religious life: narratives often justify and pattern ceremonies, while ritual performance re-enacts or actualizes mythic events, embedding belief within embodied practice and communal time. (Encyclopaedia Britannica; Encyclopaedia Britannica.) Theories tying myths to sacrificial or seasonal rites—from W. Robertson Smith to James G. Frazer—were historically important and remain reference points even where their universalizing claims are rejected. (Encyclopaedia Britannica; Encyclopaedia Britannica.)

Regional traditions (illustrative examples)

In Greek mythology, cosmogonic accounts, theogonies, and heroic cycles construct an ordered cosmos populated by Olympian deities and culture heroes, with many myths entwined with cult and seasonal observance. (Encyclopaedia Britannica.) In the Germanic/Norse sphere, myths recount creation from a primordial void or the body of a giant, a pantheon divided between Aesir and Vanir, and an eschatology culminating in Ragnarök, with narratives preserved in the Poetic and Prose Eddas. (Encyclopaedia Britannica; Encyclopaedia Britannica.) Such examples illustrate both cross-cultural motifs (e.g., world-creation, divine conflict) and localized theologies and ritual ecologies. (Encyclopaedia Britannica.)

Canonical works and reference points in myth studies

Foundational comparative and theoretical works include James G. Frazer’s The Golden Bough, early functionalist and psychoanalytic writings, structuralist analyses such as Lévi‑Strauss’s “The Structural Study of Myth,” and programmatic essays in folklore classification and theory. (book://James George Frazer|The Golden Bough (abridged ed.)|Macmillan|1922; journal://Journal of American Folklore|The Structural Study of Myth (Claude Lévi‑Strauss)|1955; journal://Journal of American Folklore|The Forms of Folklore: Prose Narratives (Bascom)|1965; Encyclopaedia Britannica.)

Disciplinary location

Mythology intersects with anthropology, religious studies, classics, folklore, linguistics, psychology, philosophy, and literary studies, each contributing methods for analyzing narrative form, performance, symbolism, cognition, and social function. (Encyclopaedia Britannica; Encyclopaedia Britannica.)

Selected figures

Important theorists and interpreters include Claude Lévi-Strauss (structural analysis of mythemes and transformations), Sigmund Freud (psychoanalytic readings focusing on desire and taboo), Mircea Eliade (phenomenology of the sacred and cosmogonic paradigms), and Joseph Campbell (comparative “monomyth” of the hero’s journey). (Encyclopaedia Britannica; Encyclopaedia Britannica; Encyclopaedia Britannica; Encyclopaedia Britannica.)