BDS

Actually, mythology and fiction are separate genres. My dictionary defines "fiction" as: "A division of literature consisting of prose works in narrative form, the characters and incidents of which are consiously imaginary, either wholly or partly." The 'consciously" is obviously meant to separate fiction from mythology. Indeed, most preliterate tellers of tales don't differentiate between "history" and "mythology", although many do differentiate other forms of literature (such as riddles, or fables) from history.

Thus fiction is "intentionally invented", whereas mythology is not (as far as anyone knows).

Needless to say, conclusions based based on falsehoods are not "of equal value" with those based on facts. However, they can be "equally valid", which, formally, means "derived correctly on the premises, given the rules of logic." So, as Lewis Carrol proves, nonsensical conclusions can be equally "valid" as reasonable ones, and equally "logical". Logic is a particular technique of reasoning, and can be used in many ways.

sharon45

Yes.

Biff the unclean

You must have very steady hands to split hairs so well. Thor will be pleased to hear that he is nonfiction.

BDS

[QUOTE=Biff the unclean]You must have very steady hands to split hairs so well. QUOTE]

I, and every other student of literature. Not all things that are untrue are "fictional", and only a careless use of the word suggests they are. In a non-literary sense, a "fiction" is "a consciously invented explanation or a deliberate falsehood."

One need only talk to religious people to realize that myths don't qualify under this definition, either.

Biff the unclean

[QUOTE=BDS]I'm sitting here wondering if you think that guy who was the originator of the story of how Pegasus the winged horse spang fully grown from the severed neck of Medusa thought that he was relating nonfiction?
You seem to be confusing the word fiction with the word lying. All literature that is not true is fiction. That is the single distinction of the two broadest literary groups, fiction and non-fiction. Everything else is a sub-genre of one or the other

BDS

Two points: it is not I who is confusing fiction with "lying" or "intentionally inventing", but the normal, educated use of the word, as chronicled in dictionaries. If for example, a work of history contained a simple error (as most of them do), it would not qualify as "a work of fiction". Same with a scientific treatise. Aristotle's scientific writings are not "works of fiction" even though we now recognize that they are not 100% correct.

Why is this the case? It is simply the conventional meaning of the word "fiction". That's how language works.

As far as how myths originate, that's an interesting question, and one to which there is no definitive answer. Did someone invent the story of Medusa? Perhaps. More likely though, it arose organically, over generations, starting, perhaps with a real incident, and slowly adding fantastical accretions. Or, perhaps, it began as a work of fiction, and slowly added historical accretions. In either event, however, "Myth" is certainly a more accurate description of the literary genre to which the story belongs than "fiction" is.

Vorkosigan

No. It is a degree in defending make-believe as truth, a much more pernicious act.

Vorkosigan

Biff the unclean

I agree it is much more accurate, like historic fiction and science fiction are much more accurate.
As for fantastic stories arising "organically"....weeeeellllll. These kinds of stories certainly do grow with the telling, but they don't pop out of thin air. Somebody, somewhere...odds on some sailor...was the first to tell about a flying horse coming from the blood of a slain monster and they weren't reporting current events.

BDS

Maybe they were, maybe they weren't.

I've actually studied some myth origins. I did a masters thesis on a Hopi myth about the massacre at Old Oraibi. This was a massacre of Spanish priests that took place in 1620 (if I remember correctly) and was recorded in both the Hopi mythological record and the Spanish historical record. There is little doubt that the event actually took place, although, of course, the exact causes and the precise events are uncertain, as always.

The Hopi version (recorded by anthropologists over 300 years later) is interesting in that it conforms to certain Hopi literary motifs. I don't doubt that these motifs (some of which are supernatural) include accretions, but how exactly they were added is debatable. Oral literature is naturally (organically?) more protean than written literature, and story tellers tell the story in a form with which they are familiar, if they are to remember and recite it properly. So when I say that myths arise "organically", what I mean is that some of the ways in which a story changes are based on the nature of the medium -- all of Homer's blather about "wine-dark seas", for example, was probably a device that allowed him to recite mindlessly, while thinking of the next passage. Some supernatural events are, likewise, literary devices. Exactly how they developed in the first place, of course, is uncertain, lost in the mists of time.

In any event, to refer to this particular Hopi myth as "fictional" would be misleading. The same is true (I argue) for other myths.

Biff the unclean

Mmmmmm....I think you have crossed from "myth" to "legend" here