A myth
is any traditional
story consisting
of events that are ostensibly historical, though often supernatural, explaining
the origins of a cultural practice or natural phenomenon. The word "myth"
is derived from the Greek
word mythos, which simply means "story". Mythology can
refer either to the study of
myths, or to a body or
collection of myths. Myth can mean 'sacred story', 'traditional narrative' or 'tale of the gods'. A myth also can be a story to explain why something exists.
Human
cultures usually include a cosmogonical or creation myth, concerning the
origins of the world, or how the world came to exist. The active beings in
myths are generally gods and goddesses, heroes and heroines, or animals and
plants. Most myths are set in a timeless past before recorded time or beginning
of the critical history. A
myth can be a story
involving symbols that are capable of multiple meanings.
A myth
is a sacred narrative because it holds religious or spiritual significance for
those who tell it. Myths also contribute to and express a culture's systems of
thought and values as the myth of gremlins invented by aircraft technicians during World War II
to avoid apportioning blame. Myths
are often therefore stories that are currently understood as being exaggerated
or fictitious.
A metaphor
is a figure of
speech that refers, for rhetorical effect, to one thing by mentioning
another thing. It may provide clarity or identify hidden similarities between
two ideas. Where a simile compares two items, a metaphor directly equates them, and does not use
"like"
or
"as" as does a simile. One of the most commonly
cited examples of a metaphor in English literature is the "All the world's a
stage" monologue from As You Like It:
All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances[...]
—William Shakespeare, As You Like It, 2/7
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances[...]
—William Shakespeare, As You Like It, 2/7
This
quotation expresses a
metaphor because the world is not literally a stage. By asserting that
the world is a stage, Shakespeare uses points of comparison between the world
and a stage to convey an understanding about the mechanics of the world and the
behavior of the people within it.
Aesop was an Ancient Greek fabulist or story teller credited with a number
of fables now collectively known as Aesop's Fables. Although his existence remains uncertain and
no writings by him survive, numerous tales credited to him were gathered
across the centuries and in many languages in a storytelling tradition that
continues to this day. Many of the tales are characterized by animals and
inanimate objects that speak, solve problems, and generally have human
characteristics.
Aesop may not have
written his fables. The Aesop Romance claims that he wrote them down
and deposited them in the library of Croesus; Herodotus calls Aesop a "writer of
fables" and Aristophanes speaks of "reading" Aesop,
but no writings by Aesop have survived. Scholars speculate that "there probably
existed in the fifth century [BCE] a written book containing various fables of
Aesop, set in a biographical
framework." Sophocles in a poem addressed to Euripides
made reference to Aesop's fable of the North Wind and the Sun. Socrates while in prison turned some
of the fables into verse, of which Diogenes
Laertius records a small fragment. The early Roman playwright and poet Ennius also
rendered at least one of Aesop's fables in Latin verse, of which the last two
lines still exist.
Fable
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The fable is one of the most enduring forms of folk literature,
spread abroad, modern researchers agree, less by literary anthologies than by
oral transmission. Fables can be found in the literature of almost every
country.
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Aesopic or Aesop's fable
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The varying corpus denoted Aesopica or Aesop's Fables
includes most of the best-known western fables, which are
attributed to the legendary Aesop, supposed to have been a slave
in ancient
Greece around 550 BC. When Babrius set down fables from the Aesopica
in verse for a Hellenistic Prince "Alexander," he expressly stated at the head of Book
II that this type of "myth"
that Aesop had introduced to the "sons of the Hellenes" had been an
invention of "Syrians" from the time of "Ninos"
(personifying Nineveh to Greeks) and Belos ("ruler"). Epicharmus of Kos
and Phormis are reported as having been among the first to invent comic
fables. Many familiar fables of Aesop include "The Crow and the Pitcher", "The Tortoise and the
Hare" and "The
Lion and the Mouse". In ancient Greek and Roman education, the
fable was the first of the progymnasmata—training exercises in prose
composition and public speaking—wherein students would be asked to learn
fables, expand upon them, invent their own, and finally use them as
persuasive examples in longer forensic or deliberative speeches. The need of instructors to teach,
and students to learn, a wide range of fables as material for their
declamations resulted in their being gathered together in collections, like
those of Aesop.
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