Man lives, not directly or nakedly in nature like the animals, but within a mythological universe, a body of assumptions and beliefs developed from his existential concerns.
Northrop Frye, The Great Code: The Bible and Literature (1981, p. xviii)
Campbell didn’t discover mythic structure, he discovered story structure, and not realizing that, wrapped it in the patina of myth.
John Yorke, Into the Woods: How Stories Work and Why We Tell Them (2013, p. 221)
There are and remain two aspects of myth: one its story-structure, which attaches it to literature, the other is its social function as concerned knowledge, what it is important for a society to know.
Northrop Frye, The Great Code: The Bible and Literature (1981, p. 47)
…a myth takes its place in a mythology, an interconnected group of myths, whereas folktales remain nomadic, traveling over the world and interchanging their themes and motifs.
Northrop Frye, The Great Code: The Bible and Literature (1981, p. 33)
Generally, Virgin stories occur in the realm of fairy tales and Hero stories occur in the realm of mythology. … However, it is interesting to consider why the Princess/Virgin plays a leading role in many fairy tales while myths often center on the Hero. Possibly this difference is rooted in the internal versus external nature of the Virgin and the Hero journeys, respectively.
Kim Hudson, The Virgin’s Promise: Writing Stories of Feminine Creative, Spiritual and Sexual Awakening (2010, p. 7)
…a myth is not a falsehood—it is a truth, cast into symbol and metaphor.
Hilary Mantel, “The Iron Maiden” (Reith Lecture 2, June 20, 2017)
Mythology is not a datum but a factum of human existence: it belongs to the world of culture and civilization that a man has made and still inhabits.
Northrop Frye, The Great Code: The Bible and Literature (1981, p. 37)
Commemoration is an active process, and often a contentious one. When we memorialize the dead, we are sometimes desperate for the truth, and sometimes for a comforting illusion. We remember individually, out of grief and need. We remember as a society, with a political agenda—we reach into the past for the foundation myths of our tribe, our nation, and found them on glory, or found them on grievance, but we seldom found them on cold facts.
Hilary Mantel, “The Day is for the Living” (Reith Lecture 1, June 13, 2017)
It seems clear that flood myths are better understood when they are compared with other flood myths, not when they are compared with floods.
Northrop Frye, The Great Code: The Bible and Literature (1981, p. 36)
King Lear is not history, it’s myth; but it tells profound truths about the workings of power and love. It does the artist’s work of turning history inside out and telling us what’s under the skin. Despite what Marx said, I don’t believe history ever repeats itself, either as tragedy or farce. I think it’s a live show and you get one chance. Blink and you miss it. Only through art can you live it again.
Hilary Mantel, “Adaptation” (Reith Lecture 5, July 11, 2017)