MYTH: A kind of story or rudimentary narrative sequence, normally traditionally and anonymous, through which a given culture ratifies its social customs or accounts for the origins of human and natural phenomena, usually in supernatural or boldly imaginative terms.
The term has a wide range of meanings, which can be divided roughly into “rationalist” and “romantic” versions: in the first a myth is a false or unreliable story or belief (mythical), while in the second, “myth” is a superior mode of cosmic understanding (mythic). In most literary contexts, the second kind of usage prevails, and myths are regarded as fictional stories containing deeper truths, expressing collective attitudes to fundamental matters of life, death, divinity and existence (sometimes deemed to be universal).
Myths are usually distinguished from legends in that they have less of a historical basis, although they seem to have a similar mode of existence in oral transmission, retelling, literary adaptation and allusion.
A mythology is a body of related myths shared by members of a given people or religion, or sometimes a system of myths evolved by a by an individual writer as in the “personal mythologies” of William Blake and W.B. Yeats. The term has also been used to denote the study of myths.
MYTH: While common English usage often equates "myth" with "falsehood," scholars use the term slightly differently. A myth is a traditional tale of deep cultural significance to a people in terms of etiology, eschatology, ritual practice, or models of appropriate and inappropriate behavior. The myth often (but not always) deals with gods, supernatural beings, or ancestral heroes. The culture creating or retelling the myth may or may not believe that the myth refers to literal or factual events, but it values the mythic narrative regardless of its historical authenticity for its (conscious or unconscious) insights into the human condition or the model it provides for cultural behavior.
http://web.cn.edu/kwheeler/lit_terms_M.html
