Without planning to do so, I’ve spent the past year exploring the difference between fiction and mythology, eventually leading me to write a historical mythology. And yes, the peculiar genre proved to be barrels-of-monkeys fun. Here’s why you might consider reading or writing a historical mythology.
First, the difference between fiction and mythology. I like to think of fiction as mostly believable stories not based in experience or fact. Of course, the fiction writer may draw the story from fact or experience, altering or embellishing. Or the fiction writer may so far embellish the account as to make it not especially believable. But then, the work has probably crossed the line into fantasy. Many fictions are largely fanciful, whether as science fiction, horror, crime, or another form within the broad fiction genre. But generally, even the fanciful fiction may draw its allure from the reader’s ability to imagine the account as real, even if by suspending all critical judgment.
In contrast, mythology receives and interprets a traditional story, often supernaturally or symbolically, around the origin of a people, culture, or custom. Fiction may, like mythology, touch on broad themes, even themes relating to origins. Fiction may, like mythology, even be largely symbolic and involve supernatural events. But celebrating, interpreting, and extending origins wouldn’t generally be the fiction work’s point, as it would be the mythology’s point. The fiction work might instead have psychological, social, quotidian, or other points. In short, you know myth when it starts, “Once upon a time, long ago….” You know fiction when it starts, “She picked up the gun, turning it over in her hand….”
So, what’s historical mythology? A mythological account may be largely or entirely made up. The Greek mythology of Zeus’ thunderbolt would fall into that category, not to diminish the symbolic power of and meaning drawn from the account. Other mythological accounts have their clear basis in history but make no effort to tell the story through historical figures, with factual accuracy, as the author knows or believes the events to have occurred. Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, both drawn around mythical, not historical, figures, nonetheless set their accounts in relationship to the actual Trojan War, an event known to have occurred in history. Historical mythology takes that effort to set the explanatory story within a known historical context one step further. It tells the story through historical figures, using aspects of their lives, character, or context known or believed to have existed.
The power, then, of historical mythology is that it can bring alive again, for their explanatory and celebratory influence, the historical figures through whom the author gives the account. Imagine your favorite historical figure, one whose life inspired you to live your own life in a fresh, honest, ambitious, courageous, or simply better way. Now, imagine an explanatory account of a people, custom, or place, built around that historical figure’s actual character and actions. What you might have is a powerfully alive, even vibrant story, resonating with things you know and experience today, as informed by those figures yesterday or long ago who fostered the customs, culture, and conditions for your own social existence.
I don’t know. It’s hard to explain. But the historical mythology that I wrote liberated me to research and represent historical figures, accurate to what I could discover of them, but in a fresh and familiar setting with which a reader might identify, and yet in symbolic and supernatural ways that perhaps stirred or inspired broader, deeper, or fresh understanding. As complex as that sounds, it didn’t seem all that hard for me to execute, and writing it was a blast. Try historical mythology. You might see your world in a new and important way
.