Is there any author-created mythos that you consider as being interesting?

[Kyriakos]

The term "mythos" seems to have gained by now a specific connotation in English, one which presents it as meaning not an isolated myth, but a collection of myths which form a private cosmology, or even a cosmogony (theory of how the cosmos was created) too.

The term is often used for collections of literary works by authors such as H.P.Lovecraft, or Lord Dunsany.

Also it can happen that isolated larger works can be deemed as being potentially a form of a mythos as well, such as Meyrink's novel "The Golem".

It does seem that only works or collections of works that present a distinctive and overarching force or entity or world, are seen as such a "mythos". For example the work of Kafka, no matter how full it is of patterns and motifs, is still not widely argued to be a mythos in the current use of the term in English.

Lastly, this sort of Mythos is to be seperated from the religious or non-religious mythologies associated with historical belief in divinities, given that in most known examples of it there is no real aspiration of the author to actually argue that this private cosmos of his conception is directly linked to a belief that it presents an image of the external cosmos.

Maybe some here have a favorite Mythos in the literary realm, and can share it. My own is probably Lovecraft's, although i tend to think that such a linking of all works (or virtually all) under this sort of concept is not really by itself beneficial for the work itself. :)

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8d/Cthulhu_sketch_by_Lovecraft.jpg/260px-Cthulhu_sketch_by_Lovecraft.jpg

[Lokasenna]

Lovecraft and Dunsany both produced superb mythologies, as did Tolkien. Perhaps C. S. Lewis as well? It also depends on how you define a mythology - does it have to be supernatural? I'd argue that Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes/Baker Street stories constituted a mythology of sorts.

I'm giving a lecture on Lovecraft in a couple of weeks, and using that exact image on one of my slides. Poor old HPL, not a talented sketch artist...

[Kyriakos]

I envy you for working in a university :D Good luck with the new lecture :)

I have not read any SH stories, but i *think* they do not present any clear seperation or aspiration for such a distinction, from the world as it is supposed to be seen by their writer or his readers by and large. So in my view they would not really warrant being termed as a "mythos" in the current use of that term in English. What links them is a common protagonist, and a few more stable characters and settings, but probably nothing going beyond that.

[cacian]

Hi Kyriakos I tried to read what it says on the sketch but it is not clear. are you able to decipher what it says.
great thread by the way :)
oh I am still unclear what a mythos is or does. are they supposed to be creation only linked to stories?

[Kyriakos]

Thanks :)

It seems this is what the text consists of: "To R. H. Barlow, Esq., whose sculpture hath given immortality to this trivial design of his oblig'd obdt servt. Cthulhu. H. P. Lovecraft. 11th May, 1934."

(at least according to some source on the internet)

[Helga]

I do think there is a sort of mythology in the world of Sherlock Holmes, the fall of a hero and the mysterious man who hides in different disguises. But maybe not of the sort you are talking about.

What comes to mind is American Gods by Neil Gaiman, particularly the three sisters, Zorya. He added one in this book but originally they were just two. Soon after the book came out someone changed the wikipedia page to add the third sister in (it has been changed back now). The funny thing about this is I read the first book in the Druid chronicles by Kevin Hearn and he clearly just checked wiki cause he wrote about three sisters not two, so Gaimans sister became a mythological creature in a book by a man who didn't do enough research.

When it comes to Tolkien's mythology a part of it are myths from Iceland (the names too) so even though they have gained a life of their own now, bits and pieces come from old stories of the ice.

[hannah_arendt]

Maybe Tolkien, Lewis, F. Herbert.

[Lokasenna]

When it comes to Tolkien's mythology a part of it are myths from Iceland (the names too) so even though they have gained a life of their own now, bits and pieces come from old stories of the ice.

Tolkien stole (sorry, 'borrowed') elements from a lot of different sources for his literary output: as well as Norse-Icelandic sagas and mythological poetry, he also appropriated stuff from Anglo-Saxon material, the Brothers Grimm, the Kalevala, Wagner, Lord Dunsany and Lovecraft - amongst many others. Not that makes his mythology any less brilliant - all mythologies are ultimately derived from external influences.

I do think that Sherlock Holmes stories can be seen as a mythology, if by mythology we mean a self-contained thematic world that operates on a consistent set of principles. Conan Doyle's Baker Street may be very close to actual reality, but it does operate in its own purposeful and ordered way.

[Helga]

Yeah I know Tolkien used a lot of different material in his works but I just enjoy pointing out how a small little island in the middle of the sea (and I happen to live on) was a part of it. He did have an au-pair( of sort) from Iceland, at least one girl if not two for some time who told him some stories of elves and helped him with Icelandic.


What about Lewis and his Snark, a lot of people have spent a lot of time figuring that myth or meaning out.

[Hawkman]

Hi. I think I'd have to disagree with Loki in his assessment of SH as comprising a mythos. I think what SH has is mystique, which isn't quite the same thing. Certainly SH has entered into the cannon of popular literature. but there is nothing particularly "mythical" about him, any more than there is about any particular fictional character. Mythos implies a deeper relationship which permeates the very culture of society and art. Holms is a fairly mysterious character in that we know little about him, other than that he has a brother and that he solves puzzles. He is a man with some peculiar habits and an almost autistic inability to relate to people socially. He is essentially withdrawn and solitary and prone to melancholia.

I would say that the term "mythos" requires a semi-religious symbolism, although one has to observe the phenomenon of "Fanism" as applied to certain television sci-fi series, like Star Trek. I would say that there is a Mythos associated with the Vulcans because of the structure of their society as depicted in the series, and for some fans the ideology behind Star Trek, as envisioned by Roddenberry, has "mythic" status. However, it is by no means universally recognised, as Sci Fi fans with this degree of commitment are regarded as, "Geeks".

Is there a Shakespearian mythos? Certainly he has become part of the literary culture of the planet, as have Tolstoy, Dickens Voltaire, etc. etc. But mythos? Not really. Not on their own. Rather they have contributed to the various nations', idea of their own mythos, and the literati's mythos of literature. Having said this, it could be argued that there is mythos surrounding Shakespeare, which has less to do with the cannon of his work, but more to do with his elusive history and whether he wrote the works at all. That his name conjures a standard by which others are judged cannot be argued, but I still wonder whether the man doesn't just have a mystique rather than a mythos.

In a cannon of work which comprises an entire universe, the mythos is created through the links to recognisable cultural imperatives. As has been previously discussed in other posts above, Tolkien built his world out of the bricks of historically traceable cultural legend. So did CS Lewis in the Narnia series, for example, the Christ-figure Lion, Aslan. But the world he made was populated with mythical beasts from classical antiquity, like fauns, and centaurs. (at least I think there were centaurs; it's a long time since I read it.) There were definitely some stereotypical Dwarves and of course, lots of talking animals.

Does Kafka have Mythos? I would argue not. What he does have is a "style" which is instantly recognisable and attributable. Anyone reading a story with a ridiculously monolithic state bureaucracy or a metamorphosis into, well, anything really, brands the work as "Kafkaesque"; but it's not really a mythos as such.

A series of works which might be considered to have a mythos are the Dragon Riders of Pern series, by Ann McCaffery. She populates a planet with colonists and introduces telepathic dragons and regresses her civilisation into a recognisably medieval parallel of Western Europe's. Her world is populated by people who have hero myths of their own. The phenomenon isn't confined to Sci-Fi or fantasy either. Horror Stories can have their own mythos as well. Take The Omen series. They are fictions built from myths and legends, both invented and real.

[Lokasenna]

I suppose it depends on what one means by 'mythology'. I looked it up in the OED, just to see what they had to say:

1.a. The exposition of a myth or myths; the interpretation of fables; a book of such expositions. Obs.
b. The symbolic or allegorical meaning of a fable, etc. Obs.

2. A mythical story, a myth. In early use more widely: a parable, an allegory. Obs.

3.a. As a mass noun: mythical stories or traditional beliefs collectively; myth.
b. A body or collection of myths, esp. those relating to a particular person or thing, or belonging to a particular religious or cultural tradition.
c. In extended use: the received wisdom concerning a particular subject; the collective or personal ideology or set of beliefs which underpins or informs a particular point of view.

4. The branch of knowledge that deals with myths; the study of myths.


I suppose my main notion of the meaning of mythology is mostly to do with the third set meanings - the idea of a mythology as construction of stories based on a fundamental set of assumptions and recieved notions, a working system in and of itself. If that definition stands, then the Holmes universe is at least a quasi-mythology.

[Hawkman]

I don't dispute your definitions of mythology, but I thought we were discussing "mythos" as relating to literary constructs. I wouldn't say Holmes' principles were so much an ideology or received wisdom, but that they were based on science and observation. I be inclined to describe what he evinced as methodology, not mythology.

[cacian]

Thanks :)

It seems this is what the text consists of: "To R. H. Barlow, Esq., whose sculpture hath given immortality to this trivial design of his oblig'd obdt servt. Cthulhu. H. P. Lovecraft. 11th May, 1934."

(at least according to some source on the internet)

thanks!! so much when you can actually read what it writes :)

[JBI]

Milton surely. Also Blake.

As for China, Qu Yuan and maybe Cao Zhi.

[mortalterror]

With some very rare exceptions I don't think a single author creates a whole mythos. Usually a mythos is the work of dozens or hundreds of writers and artists. I'm thinking of how Homer taps into the Trojan war mythos that had been building material for centuries before he put pen to paper. Likewise, Tolstoy didn't invent his own mythos but borrowed it from Teutonic mythology like Wagner did before him. The Norse has a mythos. The Greeks have mythos. Christians have mythos. Mayans, Aztecs, and Native Americans have mythos. Hindus have a mythos. Marvel and DC Comics have mythos. Sherlock Holmes doesn't have it's own set of gods, creation story, physics, or history. Sherlock Holmes is set in the 19th century with all the history and culture of England. Arthur Conan Doyle didn't invent new lands or cultures the way that Jonathan Swift did. You might be able to make a case that Faulkner did that to an extent with his Yoknapatawpha county, but the people are still firmly rooted in the American South and based on Lafayette County, Mississippi. Likewise, while Balzac and Zola's characters might form a large interactive cast that runs into each other in separate novels, they are still set firmly in France. It's hardly More's Utopia or Samuel Butler's Erewhon. Blake creates his own cosmos, full of new myths and spirits. Joseph Smith does this with his Book of Mormon. C.S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia somewhat do this, but the characters and events are still allegorical parallels to the previous Christian mythos.

Lovecraft created a mythos with the Elder Gods, Cthulhu, and I think even a third race of alien beings. He had underwater cities, cities at the south pole, underground cities full of wildly different monsters, some existing on different planes, operating on different rules of physics with different art and architecture. By comparison, Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock is a simple extrapolation of Poe's detective Dupin. If Doyle created his own mythos it would have been with The Lost World, though that was already a popular genre established by earlier authors such as H. Rider Haggard in King Solomon's Mines or She. H.G Wells or Jules Verne might have created mythos of their own with books like The Time Machine and Journey to the Center of the Earth. Lord Dunsany did this.