Looking Back to Eurydice: Mythmending in Women's Poetry

Abstract

Myths traditionally fall under the broad category of folklore--set apart from legends, folk tales and fairy tales. Once believed to be true or sacred in the sense that they explain divinities, myths include historical information about actual cultures. As such, myths present a rarely acknowledged hierarchy of influencial value which distinguish them as the superior form of narrative. In descending order, next are legends, which also have historical insights but with the content confined to kings rather than gods. After legends fall folk tales, which give moralistic lessons, and then fairy tales, which are fanciful entertainment for children. Admittedly, each category has its individual influence, but in application, scholars quote and apply myths to theory more frequently than they use legends, folk tales or fairy tales. While scholars have long debated the precise power that myths hold within a culture, a point upon which they agree is that in every culture of every age, from antiquity to present, myths articulate·a culture's defmition of itself.