Myth

Abstract

The Danish word 'Mythe' (in modern orthography 'Myte') generally refers to a purely fictional narrative, usually involving supernatural persons, actions, or events, and embodying some popular idea, concerning natural or historical phenomena. In particular it refers to stories handed down from olden times regarding the lives of the gods. In its broadest sense, the word refers to any narrative containing fictitious elements, sometimes with the connotation that the narrative lacks veracity. Kierkegaard adopts the Latinized form 'Mythe'. In Kierkegaard's works the most frequent occurrence of the word "myth" (or "mythical") is in 'The Concept of Irony', where the concept is richly discussed in connection with Plato's dialectics, particularly his earlier dialogues, in a subsection of the first part of the book entitled "The Mythical in the Earlier Platonic Dialogues as a Token of a More Copious Speculation." Here Kierkegaard asks the reader to notice the ambivalence implicit in the gap between the dialectical and the mythical and identifies at least three elements of myth.