mythcycle

Mythcycle is a term encountered in folklore studies and literary criticism to describe a cohesive set of interconnected myths that recur within a culture or tradition, forming a narrative cycle that can span generations. The word is a compound of myth and cycle, and it is sometimes written as myth-cycle. The concept is used to analyze how a culture organizes its sacred narratives, heroic legends, and cosmological motifs into related stories that reinforce shared meanings.

Typically a mythcycle groups multiple myths around common figures, geographies, or themes, such as a hero’s lineage, a pantheon’s relations, or a cosmogony. It may originate in oral tradition and be preserved through later written compilations, with retellings producing variations while preserving core elements. The boundaries of a cycle are fluid; different scholars may treat overlapping collections as separate cycles or as members of a larger cycle.

In scholarship and popular discourse, mythcycles are used to discuss the patterns of recurrence—birth, quests, exile, reign, apotheosis—that appear across myths in a culture, and to trace how modern authors reuse these motifs to build new narratives within a familiar frame. Classic examples cited in discussions include long-running body of legends about a hero and his companions, or interrelated myths about a pantheon and the world’s creation; in contemporary media, authors and game designers sometimes design new mythcycles by reimagining traditional motifs in new settings.

See also: cycle of myths, mythological cycle, folklore, worldbuilding.