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82-571: The myth goes that Adonis was gored by a wild boar during a hunting trip and died in Aphrodite's arms as she wept. His blood mingled with her tears and became the anemone flower. Aphrodite declared the Adonia festival to commemorate his tragic death, celebrated by women every year in midsummer . During this festival, Greek women would plant "gardens of Adonis", small pots containing fast-growing plants, which they would set on top of their houses in

164-404: A Levantine version of the earlier Mesopotamian myth of Inanna (Ishtar) and Dumuzid (Tammuz). In late 19th and early 20th century scholarship of religion , Adonis was widely seen as a prime example of the archetypal dying-and-rising god . His name is often applied in modern times to handsome youths, of whom he is considered the archetype. The worship of Aphrodite and Adonis is probably

246-622: A moral , fable , allegory or a parable , or collection of traditional stories, understood to be false. It came eventually to be applied to similar bodies of traditional stories among other polytheistic cultures around the world. Thus "mythology" entered the English language before "myth". Johnson 's Dictionary , for example, has an entry for mythology, but not for myth. Indeed, the Greek loanword mythos ( pl. mythoi ) and Latinate mythus (pl. mythi ) both appeared in English before

328-421: A rose bush and the rose, which had previously been white, was stained red by her blood. In another version, an anemone flower grew on the spot where Adonis died, and a red rose where Aphrodite's tears fell. The third century BC poet Euphorion of Chalcis remarked in his Hyacinth that "Only Cocytus washed the wounds of Adonis". According to Lucian 's De Dea Syria , each year during the festival of Adonis,

410-449: A "disease of language". He speculated that myths arose due to the lack of abstract nouns and neuter gender in ancient languages. Anthropomorphic figures of speech , necessary in such languages, were eventually taken literally, leading to the idea that natural phenomena were in actuality conscious or divine. Not all scholars, not even all 19th-century scholars, accepted this view. Lucien Lévy-Bruhl claimed that "the primitive mentality

492-633: A Greek continuation of the ancient Sumerian worship of Inanna and Dumuzid . The Greek name Ἄδωνις ( Ádōnis ), Greek pronunciation: [ádɔːnis] ) is derived from the Canaanite word 𐤀𐤃𐤍 ( ʼadōn ), meaning "lord". This word is related to Adonai ( Hebrew : אֲדֹנָי ), one of the titles used to refer to the God of the Hebrew Bible and still used in Judaism to

574-449: A book on the comparative study of mythology and religion—argued that humans started out with a belief in magical rituals; later, they began to lose faith in magic and invented myths about gods, reinterpreting their rituals as religious rituals intended to appease the gods. Historically, important approaches to the study of mythology have included those of Vico , Schelling , Schiller , Jung , Freud , Lévy-Bruhl , Lévi-Strauss , Frye ,

656-419: A cave to hide from Zeus, who also loved Erinoma and would surely avenge the violence done against her. Hermes , however, lured him with a trick, as Ares wounded him mortally in the form of a boar. Adonis died, but was eventually restored to life after Aphrodite begged Zeus. Erinoma bore him a son named Taleus. Adonis was also said to have been loved by other gods such as Apollo , Heracles and Dionysus . He

738-477: A failed or obsolete mode of thought, often by interpreting myth as the primitive counterpart of modern science within a unilineal framework that imagined that human cultures are travelling, at different speeds, along a linear path of cultural development. One of the dominant mythological theories of the latter 19th century was nature mythology , the foremost exponents of which included Max Müller and Edward Burnett Tylor . This theory posited that "primitive man"

820-561: A festival on the anniversary of his death. In one late account, his blood transformed into roses instead. In a very different version from the standard, surviving in the works of fifth century AD grammarian Servius and perhaps originating from the island of Cyprus , Adonis was made to fall in love with a mortal girl named Erinoma by Aphrodite herself at the command of Hera . Erinoma, a virgin girl favoured by Artemis and Athena , rejected his advances, so Adonis crept up stealthily in her bedroom and raped her. Adonis then fled and went into

902-472: A fragment of a poem by the poet Sappho of Lesbos ( c.  630  – c.  570 BC ), in which a chorus of young girls asks Aphrodite what they can do to mourn Adonis' death. Aphrodite replies that they must beat their breasts and tear their tunics . The cult of Adonis has also been described as corresponding to the cult of the Phoenician god Baal . As Walter Burkert explains: Women sit by

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984-399: A fully mature man. Pseudo-Apollodorus ( Bibliotheke , 3.182) describes Adonis as the son of Cinyras , of Paphos on Cyprus, and Metharme . According to Pseudo-Apollodorus's Bibliotheke , Hesiod , in an unknown work that does not survive, made of him the son of Phoenix and the otherwise unidentified Alphesiboea . In one version of the story, Aphrodite injured herself on a thorn from

1066-422: A long time certain rites of initiation are conducted: first, that they weep for him, since he has died; second, that they rejoice for him because he has risen from the dead ( apo nekrôn anastanti )" (cf. J.-P. Migne, Patrologiae Cursus Completus: Series Graeca , 13:800). Some other scholars have continued to cite Adonis/Tammuz as an example of a dying and rising god, suggesting that the descent into and return from

1148-446: A methodology that allows us to understand the complexity of the myth and its manifestations in contemporary times, is justified. Because "myth" is sometimes used in a pejorative sense, some scholars have opted for "mythos" instead. "Mythos" now more commonly refers to its Aristotelian sense as a "plot point" or to a body of interconnected myths or stories, especially those belonging to a particular religious or cultural tradition. It

1230-535: A myth can be highly controversial. Many religious adherents believe that the narratives told in their respective religious traditions are historical without question, and so object to their identification as myths while labelling traditional narratives from other religions as such. Hence, some scholars may label all religious narratives as "myths" for practical reasons, such as to avoid depreciating any one tradition because cultures interpret each other differently relative to one another. Other scholars may abstain from using

1312-486: A pattern of behavior to be imitated, testifies to the efficacy of ritual with its practical ends and establishes the sanctity of cult . Another definition of myth comes from myth criticism theorist and professor José Manuel Losada . According to Cultural Myth Criticism, the studies of myth must explain and understand "myth from inside", that is, only "as a myth". Losada defines myth as "a functional, symbolic and thematic narrative of one or several extraordinary events with

1394-536: A poetic description of the sea as "raging" was eventually taken literally and the sea was then thought of as a raging god. Some thinkers claimed that myths result from the personification of objects and forces. According to these thinkers, the ancients worshiped natural phenomena, such as fire and air, gradually deifying them. For example, according to this theory, ancients tended to view things as gods, not as mere objects. Thus, they described natural events as acts of personal gods, giving rise to myths. According to

1476-621: A scholarly term for "[a] traditional story, especially one concerning the early history of a people or explaining a natural or social phenomenon, and typically involving supernatural beings or events." The Greek term mythología was then borrowed into Late Latin , occurring in the title of Latin author Fulgentius ' 5th-century Mythologiæ to denote what is now referred to as classical mythology —i.e., Greco-Roman etiological stories involving their gods. Fulgentius' Mythologiæ explicitly treated its subject matter as allegories requiring interpretation and not as true events. The Latin term

1558-406: A shallow piece of broken pottery containing a variety of quick-growing plants, such as lettuce and fennel , or even quick-sprouting grains, such as wheat and barley . The women would then climb ladders to the roofs of their houses, where they would place the gardens out under the heat of the summer sun. The plants would sprout in the sunlight, but wither quickly in the heat. While they waited for

1640-507: A society's customs , institutions , and taboos were established and sanctified. National myths are narratives about a nation's past that symbolize the nation's values. There is a complex relationship between recital of myths and the enactment of rituals . The word "myth" comes from Ancient Greek μῦθος ( mȳthos ), meaning 'speech, narrative, fiction, myth, plot'. In turn, Ancient Greek μυθολογία ( mythología , 'story', 'lore', 'legends', or 'the telling of stories') combines

1722-565: A step further, incorporating the study of the transcendent dimension (its function, its disappearance) to evaluate the role of myth as a mirror of contemporary culture. Cultural myth criticism Cultural myth criticism, without abandoning the analysis of the symbolic , invades all cultural manifestations and delves into the difficulties in understanding myth today. This cultural myth criticism studies mythical manifestations in fields as wide as literature , film and television , theater , sculpture , painting , video games , music , dancing ,

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1804-436: A transcendent, sacred and supernatural referent; that lacks, in principle, historical testimony; and that refers to an individual or collective, but always absolute, cosmogony or eschatology". According to the hylistic myth research by assyriologist Annette Zgoll and classic philologist Christian Zgoll , "A myth can be defined as an Erzählstoff [narrative material] which is polymorphic through its variants and – depending on

1886-576: A world of the remote past, very different from that of the present. Definitions of "myth" vary to some extent among scholars, though Finnish folklorist Lauri Honko offers a widely-cited definition: Myth, a story of the gods, a religious account of the beginning of the world , the creation , fundamental events, the exemplary deeds of the gods as a result of which the world, nature and culture were created together with all parts thereof and given their order, which still obtains. A myth expresses and confirms society's religious values and norms, it provides

1968-455: A young, effeminate man named Jacques who works in a flower shop. Jacques is ultimately shot and killed in a duel, thus following the model of Adonis's tragic death. The late nineteenth-century Scottish anthropologist Sir James George Frazer wrote extensively about Adonis in his monumental study of comparative religion, The Golden Bough (the first edition of which was published in 1890) as well as in later works. Frazer claimed that Adonis

2050-421: Is a condition of the human mind and not a stage in its historical development." Recent scholarship, noting the fundamental lack of evidence for "nature mythology" interpretations among people who actually circulated myths, has likewise abandoned the key ideas of "nature mythology". Frazer saw myths as a misinterpretation of magical rituals, which were themselves based on a mistaken idea of natural law. This idea

2132-465: Is a form of understanding and telling stories that are connected to power, political structures, and political and economic interests. These approaches contrast with approaches, such as those of Joseph Campbell and Eliade , which hold that myth has some type of essential connection to ultimate sacred meanings that transcend cultural specifics. In particular, myth was studied in relation to history from diverse social sciences. Most of these studies share

2214-514: Is associated with the festival of Adonia , which was celebrated by Greek women every year in midsummer. The festival, which was evidently already celebrated in Lesbos by Sappho's time in the seventh century BC, seems to have first become popular in Athens in the mid-fifth century BC. At the start of the festival, the women would plant a "garden of Adonis", a small garden planted inside a small basket or

2296-423: Is nobody's truth. Myths are somebody's truth." One theory claims that myths are distorted accounts of historical events. According to this theory, storytellers repeatedly elaborate upon historical accounts until the figures in those accounts gain the status of gods. For example, the myth of the wind-god Aeolus may have evolved from a historical account of a king who taught his people to use sails and interpret

2378-431: Is not a defining criterion. Myths are often endorsed by secular and religious authorities and are closely linked to religion or spirituality . Many societies group their myths, legends, and history together, considering myths and legends to be factual accounts of their remote past. In particular, creation myths take place in a primordial age when the world had not achieved its later form. Origin myths explain how

2460-472: Is often thought to differ from genres such as legend and folktale in that neither are considered to be sacred narratives. Some kinds of folktales, such as fairy stories , are not considered true by anyone, and may be seen as distinct from myths for this reason. Main characters in myths are usually gods , demigods or supernatural humans, while legends generally feature humans as their main characters. Many exceptions and combinations exist, as in

2542-636: Is sometimes known as "mythography", a term also used for a scholarly anthology of myths or of the study of myths generally. Key mythographers in the Classical tradition include: Other prominent mythographies include the thirteenth-century Prose Edda attributed to the Icelander Snorri Sturluson , which is the main surviving survey of Norse Mythology from the Middle Ages. Jeffrey G. Snodgrass (professor of anthropology at

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2624-510: Is sometimes used specifically for modern, fictional mythologies, such as the world building of H. P. Lovecraft . Mythopoeia ( mytho- + -poeia , 'I make myth') was termed by J. R. R. Tolkien , amongst others, to refer to the "conscious generation" of mythology. It was notoriously also suggested, separately, by Nazi ideologist Alfred Rosenberg . Comparative mythology is a systematic comparison of myths from different cultures. It seeks to discover underlying themes that are common to

2706-568: Is still disputed. Walter Burkert questions whether Adonis had not from the very beginning come to Greece along with Aphrodite. "In Greece," Burkert concludes, "the special function of the Adonis legend is as an opportunity for the unbridled expression of emotion in the strictly circumscribed life of women, in contrast to the rigid order of polis and family with the official women's festivals in honour of Demeter ." The significant influence of Near Eastern culture on early Greek religion in general, and on

2788-579: The Iliad , Odyssey and Aeneid . Moreover, as stories spread between cultures or as faiths change, myths can come to be considered folktales, their divine characters recast as either as humans or demihumans such as giants , elves and faeries . Conversely, historical and literary material may acquire mythological qualities over time. For example, the Matter of Britain (the legendary history of Great Britain, especially those focused on King Arthur and

2870-457: The Republic . His critique was primarily on the grounds that the uneducated might take the stories of gods and heroes literally. Nevertheless, he constantly referred to myths throughout his writings. As Platonism developed in the phases commonly called Middle Platonism and neoplatonism , writers such as Plutarch , Porphyry , Proclus , Olympiodorus , and Damascius wrote explicitly about

2952-860: The Theologia Mythologica (1532). The first modern, Western scholarly theories of myth appeared during the second half of the 19th century —at the same time as "myth" was adopted as a scholarly term in European languages. They were driven partly by a new interest in Europe's ancient past and vernacular culture, associated with Romantic Nationalism and epitomised by the research of Jacob Grimm (1785–1863). This movement drew European scholars' attention not only to Classical myths, but also material now associated with Norse mythology , Finnish mythology , and so forth. Western theories were also partly driven by Europeans' efforts to comprehend and control

3034-622: The Colorado State University ) has termed India's Bhats as mythographers. Myth criticism is a system of anthropological interpretation of culture created by French philosopher Gilbert Durand . Scholars have used myth criticism to explain the mythical roots of contemporary fiction, which means that modern myth criticism needs to be interdisciplinary . Professor Losada offers his own methodologic, hermeneutic and epistemological approach to myth. While assuming mythopoetical perspectives, Losada's Cultural Myth Criticism takes

3116-399: The centaur the trap to ensnare him. Another tradition states that Dionysus , the Greek god of wine and madness, carried off Adonis. In Idyll 15 by the early third-century BC Greek bucolic poet Theocritus , Adonis is described as still an adolescent with down on his cheeks at the time of his love affair with Aphrodite, in contrast to Ovid's Metamorphoses , in which he is portrayed as

3198-751: The Adonis River in Lebanon (now known as the Abraham River ) ran red with blood. The medieval French poet Jean de Meun retells the story of Adonis in his additions to the Roman de la Rose , written around 1275. De Muen moralises the story, using it as an example of how men should heed the warnings of the women they love. In Pierre de Ronsard 's poem "Adonis" (1563), Venus laments that Adonis did not heed her warning, but ultimately blames herself for his death, declaring, "In need my counsel failed you." In

3280-584: The Internet and other artistic fields . 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. Likewise, it undertakes its object of study from its interrelation with other human and social sciences, in particular sociology , anthropology and economics . The need for an approach, for

3362-567: The Soviet school, and the Myth and Ritual School . The critical interpretation of myth began with the Presocratics . Euhemerus was one of the most important pre-modern mythologists. He interpreted myths as accounts of actual historical events, though distorted over many retellings. Sallustius divided myths into five categories: Plato condemned poetic myth when discussing education in

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3444-543: The classical world, since the Greeks and Romans believed that women, such as Adonis's mother Myrrha, were less capable of controlling their primal wants and passions than men. Aphrodite found the baby, and took him to the underworld to be fostered by Persephone . She returned for him once he was grown and discovered him to be strikingly handsome. However, Persephone too found Adonis to be exceedingly handsome and wanted to keep Adonis for she too fell in love with him; Zeus settled

3526-470: The concept of the Oedipus complex in his 1899 The Interpretation of Dreams . Jung likewise tried to understand the psychology behind world myths. Jung asserted that all humans share certain innate unconscious psychological forces, which he called archetypes . He believed similarities between the myths of different cultures reveals the existence of these universal archetypes. The mid-20th century saw

3608-490: The cult of Aphrodite in particular, is now widely recognised as dating to a period of orientalisation during the eighth century BC, when archaic Greece was on the fringes of the Neo-Assyrian Empire . In Cyprus, the cult of Adonis gradually superseded that of Cinyras . W. Atallah suggests that the later Hellenistic myth of Adonis represents the conflation of two independent traditions. The worship of Adonis

3690-597: The cultures, stories and religions they were encountering through colonialism . These encounters included both extremely old texts such as the Sanskrit Rigveda and the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh , and current oral narratives such as mythologies of the indigenous peoples of the Americas or stories told in traditional African religions . The intellectual context for nineteenth-century scholars

3772-500: The dispute by decreeing that Adonis would spend one third of the year with Aphrodite, one third with Persephone, and one third with whomever he chose. Adonis chose Aphrodite, and they remained constantly together. Another version states that both goddesses got to keep him for half the year each at the suggestion of the Muse Calliope . Thus was Adonis' life divided between Aphrodite and Persephone, one goddess who loved him beneath

3854-493: The earth, the other above it. In his comical work Dialogues of the Gods , the satirical author Lucian features Aphrodite in several dialogues, in one of which she complains to the moon goddess Selene that Eros made Persephone fall in love with Adonis and now she has to share him with her. Then, one day, while Adonis was out hunting, he was wounded by a wild boar and bled to death in Aphrodite's arms. In different versions of

3936-738: The fact that his portion of the year spent in the Underworld with Persephone is not really a death and resurrection, but merely an instance of a living person staying in the Underworld. They further argued that Adonis is not explicitly described as rising from the dead in any extant Classical Greek writings, though the fact that such a belief existed is attested by authors in Late Antiquity. For example, Origen discusses Adonis, whom he associates with Tammuz, in his Selecta in Ezechielem ( "Comments on Ezekiel"), noting that "they say that for

4018-493: The first example of "myth" in 1830. The main characters in myths are usually non-humans, such as gods , demigods , and other supernatural figures. Others include humans, animals, or combinations in their classification of myth. Stories of everyday humans, although often of leaders of some type, are usually contained in legends , as opposed to myths. Myths are sometimes distinguished from legends in that myths deal with gods, usually have no historical basis, and are set in

4100-402: The foremost functions of myth is to establish models for behavior and that myths may provide a religious experience. By telling or reenacting myths, members of traditional societies detach themselves from the present, returning to the mythical age, thereby coming closer to the divine. Honko asserted that, in some cases, a society reenacts a myth in an attempt to reproduce the conditions of

4182-414: The gate weeping for Tammuz, or they offer incense to Baal on roof-tops and plant pleasant plants. These are the very features of the Adonis legend: which is celebrated on flat roof-tops on which sherds sown with quickly germinating green salading are placed, Adonis gardens ... the climax is loud lamentation for the dead god. The exact date when the worship of Adonis became integrated into Greek culture

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4264-404: The hot sun. The plants would sprout but soon wither and die. Then, the women would mourn the death of Adonis, tearing their clothes and beating their breasts in a public display of grief. The Greeks considered Adonis's cult to be of Near Eastern origin. Adonis's name comes from a Canaanite word meaning "lord" and most modern scholars consider the story of Aphrodite and Adonis to be derived from

4346-423: The influential development of a structuralist theory of mythology , led by Lévi-Strauss . Strauss argued that myths reflect patterns in the mind and interpreted those patterns more as fixed mental structures, specifically pairs of opposites (good/evil, compassionate/callous), rather than unconscious feelings or urges. Meanwhile, Bronislaw Malinowski developed analyses of myths focusing on their social functions in

4428-711: The knights of the Round Table ) and the Matter of France , seem distantly to originate in historical events of the 5th and 8th centuries, respectively, and became mythologised over the following centuries. In colloquial use, "myth" can also be used of a collectively held belief that has no basis in fact, or any false story. This usage, which is often pejorative , arose from labelling the religious myths and beliefs of other cultures as incorrect, but it has spread to cover non-religious beliefs as well. As commonly used by folklorists and academics in other relevant fields, such as anthropology , "myth" has no implication whether

4510-465: The myth-ritual theory, myth is tied to ritual. In its most extreme form, this theory claims myths arose to explain rituals. This claim was first put forward by Smith , who argued that people begin performing rituals for reasons not related to myth. Forgetting the original reason for a ritual, they account for it by inventing a myth and claiming the ritual commemorates the events described in that myth. James George Frazer —author of The Golden Bough ,

4592-583: The mythical age. For example, it might reenact the healing performed by a god at the beginning of time in order to heal someone in the present. Similarly, Barthes argued that modern culture explores religious experience. Since it is not the job of science to define human morality, a religious experience is an attempt to connect with a perceived moral past, which is in contrast with the technological present. Pattanaik defines mythology as "the subjective truth of people communicated through stories, symbols and rituals." He says, "Facts are everybody's truth. Fiction

4674-430: The myths of multiple cultures. In some cases, comparative mythologists use the similarities between separate mythologies to argue that those mythologies have a common source. This source may inspire myths or provide a common "protomythology" that diverged into the mythologies of each culture. A number of commentators have argued that myths function to form and shape society and social behaviour. Eliade argued that one of

4756-565: The narrative may be understood as true or otherwise. Among biblical scholars of both the Old and New Testament, the word "myth" has a technical meaning, in that it usually refers to "describe the actions of the other‐worldly in terms of this world" such as the Creation and the Fall. Since "myth" is popularly used to describe stories that are not objectively true , the identification of a narrative as

4838-457: The nurse was quick to bring Myrrha to him. Myrrha left her father's room impregnated. After several couplings, Cinyras discovered his lover's identity and drew his sword to kill her; driven out after becoming pregnant, Myrrha was changed into a myrrh tree but still gave birth to Adonis. According to classicist William F. Hansen, the story of how Adonis was conceived falls in line with the conventional ideas about sex and gender that were prevalent in

4920-434: The plants to first sprout and then wither, the women would burn incense to Adonis. Once the plants had withered, the women would mourn and lament loudly over the death of Adonis, tearing their clothes and beating their breasts in a public display of grief. The women would lay a statuette of Adonis out on a bier and then carry it to the sea along with all the withered plants as a funeral procession . The festival concluded with

5002-472: The poem, Venus takes the character Amoretta to raise her in the "Garden of Adonis". Ovid's portrayal of Venus's desperate love for Adonis became the inspiration for many literary portrayals in Elizabethan literature of both male and female courtship. William Shakespeare 's erotic narrative poem Venus and Adonis (1593), a retelling of the courtship of Aphrodite and Adonis from Ovid's Metamorphoses ,

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5084-606: The present day. The Syrian name for Adonis is Gauas . The cult of Inanna and Dumuzid may have been introduced to the Kingdom of Judah during the reign of King Manasseh . Ezekiel 8 ( Ezekiel 8:14 ) mentions Adonis under his earlier East Semitic name Tammuz and describes a group of women mourning Tammuz's death while sitting near the north gate of the Temple in Jerusalem . The earliest known Greek reference to Adonis comes from

5166-484: The rationalization of myths, putting themes formerly imbued with mythological qualities into pragmatic contexts. An example of this would be following a cultural or religious paradigm shift (notably the re-interpretation of pagan mythology following Christianization ). Interest in polytheistic mythology revived during the Renaissance , with early works of mythography appearing in the sixteenth century, among them

5248-543: The real world. He is associated with the idea that myths such as origin stories might provide a "mythic charter"—a legitimisation—for cultural norms and social institutions . Thus, following the Structuralist Era ( c.  1960s –1980s), the predominant anthropological and sociological approaches to myth increasingly treated myth as a form of narrative that can be studied, interpreted, and analyzed like ideology, history, and culture. In other words, myth

5330-488: The same poem, however, Venus quickly finds another shepherd as her lover, representing the widespread medieval belief in the fickleness and mutability of women. The story of Venus and Adonis from Ovid's Metamorphoses was tremendously influential during the Elizabethan era . In Edmund Spenser 's epic poem The Faerie Queene (1590), tapestries depicting the story of Adonis decorate the walls of Castle Joyous. Later in

5412-485: The story, the boar was either sent by Ares, who was jealous that Aphrodite was spending so much time with Adonis, by Artemis, who wanted revenge against Aphrodite for having killed her devoted follower Hippolytus , or by Apollo, to punish Aphrodite for blinding his son Erymanthus . The story also provides an etiology for Aphrodite's associations with certain flowers. Reportedly, as she mourned Adonis's death, she caused anemones to grow wherever his blood fell, and declared

5494-421: The symbolic interpretation of traditional and Orphic myths. Mythological themes were consciously employed in literature, beginning with Homer . The resulting work may expressly refer to a mythological background without itself becoming part of a body of myths ( Cupid and Psyche ). Medieval romance in particular plays with this process of turning myth into literature. Euhemerism , as stated earlier, refers to

5576-464: The term "myth" altogether for purposes of avoiding placing pejorative overtones on sacred narratives. In present use, "mythology" usually refers to the collection of myths of a group of people. For example, Greek mythology , Roman mythology , Celtic mythology and Hittite mythology all describe the body of myths retold among those cultures. "Mythology" can also refer to the study of myths and mythologies. The compilation or description of myths

5658-403: The underworld is a functional analogue for death even if no physical cause of death is depicted. Psychology: Myth Myth is a genre of folklore consisting primarily of narratives that play a fundamental role in a society. For scholars, this is very different from the vernacular usage of the term "myth" that refers to a belief that is not true. Instead, the veracity of a myth

5740-483: The variant – polystratic; an Erzählstoff in which transcending interpretations of what can be experienced are combined into a hyleme sequence with an implicit claim to relevance for the interpretation and mastering of the human condition." Scholars in other fields use the term "myth" in varied ways. In a broad sense, the word can refer to any traditional story , popular misconception or imaginary entity. Though myth and other folklore genres may overlap, myth

5822-739: The winds. Herodotus (fifth-century BCE) and Prodicus made claims of this kind. This theory is named euhemerism after mythologist Euhemerus ( c.  320 BCE ), who suggested that Greek gods developed from legends about humans. Some theories propose that myths began as allegories for natural phenomena: Apollo represents the sun, Poseidon represents water, and so on. According to another theory, myths began as allegories for philosophical or spiritual concepts: Athena represents wise judgment, Aphrodite romantic desire, and so on. Müller supported an allegorical theory of myth. He believed myths began as allegorical descriptions of nature and gradually came to be interpreted literally. For example,

5904-515: The women throwing the effigy of Adonis and the withered plants out to sea. While Sappho does not describe the myth of Adonis, later sources flesh out the details. According to the retelling of the story found in the poem Metamorphoses by the Roman poet Ovid (43 BC – AD 17/18), Adonis was the son of Myrrha , who was cursed by Aphrodite with insatiable lust for her own father, King Cinyras of Cyprus , after Myrrha's mother bragged that her daughter

5986-405: The word mȳthos with the suffix - λογία ( -logia , 'study') in order to mean 'romance, fiction, story-telling.' Accordingly, Plato used mythología as a general term for 'fiction' or 'story-telling' of any kind. In Anglicised form, this Greek word began to be used in English (and was likewise adapted into other European languages) in the early 19th century, in a much narrower sense, as

6068-1029: Was central to the " myth and ritual " school of thought. According to Frazer, humans begin with an unfounded belief in impersonal magical laws. When they realize applications of these laws do not work, they give up their belief in natural law in favor of a belief in personal gods controlling nature, thus giving rise to religious myths. Meanwhile, humans continue practicing formerly magical rituals through force of habit, reinterpreting them as reenactments of mythical events. Finally, humans come to realize nature follows natural laws, and they discover their true nature through science. Here again, science makes myth obsolete as humans progress "from magic through religion to science." Segal asserted that by pitting mythical thought against modern scientific thought, such theories imply modern humans must abandon myth. The earlier 20th century saw major work developing psychoanalytical approaches to interpreting myth, led by Sigmund Freud , who, drawing inspiration from Classical myth, began developing

6150-425: Was described as androgynous , for he acted like a man in his affections for Aphrodite but as a woman for Apollo . "Androgynous" here means that Adonis took on a receptive role during sex with Apollo, which was interpreted in classical Greece to be the feminine position. Heracles ' love of Adonis is mentioned in passing by Ptolemy Hephaestion. The text states that due to his love of Adonis, Aphrodite taught Nessos

6232-545: Was just one example of the archetype of a "dying-and-rising god" found throughout all cultures. In the mid-twentieth century, some scholars began to criticise the designation of "dying-and-rising god", in some cases arguing that deities like Adonis, previously referred to as "dying and rising", would be better termed separately as "dying gods" and "disappearing gods", asserting that gods who "died" did not return, and those who returned never "really" died. Biblical scholars Eddy and Boyd (2007) applied this rationale to Adonis based on

6314-444: Was more beautiful than the goddess. It was to her nurse that, with much reluctance, Myrrha revealed her shameful passion. Sometime later, during a festival in honour of Demeter , the nurse found Cinyras half-passed out with wine and Myrrha's mother nowhere near him. Thus, she spoke to him of a girl who truly loved him and desired to sleep with him, giving him a fictitious name and simply describing her as Myrrha's age. Cinyras agreed, and

6396-618: Was primarily concerned with the natural world. It tended to interpret myths that seemed distasteful to European Victorians —such as tales about sex, incest, or cannibalism—as metaphors for natural phenomena like agricultural fertility . Unable to conceive impersonal natural laws, early humans tried to explain natural phenomena by attributing souls to inanimate objects, thus giving rise to animism . According to Tylor, human thought evolved through stages, starting with mythological ideas and gradually progressing to scientific ideas. Müller also saw myth as originating from language, even calling myth

6478-530: Was profoundly shaped by emerging ideas about evolution . These ideas included the recognition that many Eurasian languages—and therefore, conceivably, stories—were all descended from a lost common ancestor (the Indo-European language ) which could rationally be reconstructed through the comparison of its descendant languages. They also included the idea that cultures might evolve in ways comparable to species. In general, 19th-century theories framed myth as

6560-546: Was the inspiration for the Italian poet Giambattista Marino to write his mythological epic L'Adone (1623), which outsold Shakespeare's First Folio . Shakespeare's homoerotic descriptions of Adonis's masculine and Venus's beauty inspired the French novelist and playwright Rachilde (Marguerite Vallette-Eymery) to write her erotic novel Monsieur Vénus (1884), about a noblewoman named Raoule de Vénérande who sexually pursues

6642-615: Was the most popular of all his works published within his own lifetime. Six editions of it were published before Shakespeare's death (more than any of his other works) and it enjoyed particularly strong popularity among young adults. In 1605, Richard Barnfield lauded it, declaring that the poem had placed Shakespeare's name "in fames immortall Booke". Despite this, the poem has received a mixed reception from modern critics. Samuel Taylor Coleridge defended it, but Samuel Butler complained that it bored him, and C. S. Lewis described an attempted reading of it as "suffocating". The story of Adonis

6724-545: Was then adopted in Middle French as mythologie . Whether from French or Latin usage, English adopted the word "mythology" in the 15th century, initially meaning 'the exposition of a myth or myths', 'the interpretation of fables', or 'a book of such expositions'. The word is first attested in John Lydgate 's Troy Book ( c.  1425 ). From Lydgate until the 17th or 18th century, "mythology" meant

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