mythologie

Mythology refers to sets of traditional stories that belong to a culture or tradition. These narratives typically involve gods or supernatural beings, heroes, and foundational events. They address questions about origins, the structure of the cosmos, and the values and norms of a community. Unlike history in the strict sense, myths are often interpreted as symbolic or sacred explanations, though some accounts are treated as part of religious doctrine, folklore, or national myth.

Mythologies exist in oral and written forms. Many traditions begin with oral transmission and later acquire written compilations. They are not uniform—each culture develops its own myths, while some stories travel and adapt across cultures through contact and syncretism. Common motifs include creation narratives, deluges, hero quests, journeys to other realms, divine inheritance, and etiologies that explain mores and natural features.

Scholars study mythologies with disciplines such as comparative mythology, anthropology, literary theory, and archaeology. They distinguish myth from folklore and legend, though the boundaries are porous. Mythologies function to justify social order, to encode rituals, to preserve collective memory, and to help individuals make meaning. They can also entertain and inspire artistic expression.

Many well-known mythologies have shaped literature and art, including Greco-Roman, Norse, Hindu, Chinese, Japanese, Egyptian, Mesopotamian, and Mesoamerican traditions, among others. In modern usage, "mythology" may refer to a canon of myths within a culture or to a field of study about those narratives, sometimes exploring archetypes and motifs through comparative or critical lenses.