mythos

Noun

mythos (countable and uncountable, plural mythoi or mythoses)

1. Anything transmitted by word of mouth, such as a fable, legend, narrative, story, or tale (especially a poetic tale).
   • POLY′MYTHY (S[ubstantive]) in Poetry, a fault in an epic poem, when inſtead of a ſingle mythos, or fable, there is a multiplicity of them.1760, [John Marchant], “POLY′MYTHY”, in A New Complete English Dictionary, Peculiarly Adapted to the Instruction and Improvement of Those who have not had the Benefit of a Learned or Liberal...
2. A story or set of stories relevant to or having a significant truth or meaning for a particular culture, religion, society, or other group; a myth, a mythology.
   • [T]he critics above named, define in a general manner a mythos as the exposition of a fact, or of a thought, under the historical form—it is true; but yet, under the form stamped upon it by the symbolical genius and language of antiquity, so full of warmth and imagination. At the same time...1845, David Friedrich Strauss, “Natural Explanation of the Rationalists—Eichhorn—Paulus”, in The Life of Christ, or A Critical Examination of His History: … Translated from the German, and Reprinted...
   • But the most highly gifted of all peoples in poetic insight were the Greeks. They possessed supreme ability in the interpretation of nature as expression of spirit. They have countless mythoses to express the immortality of man and his after-life.1887 October, W[illiam] T[orrey] Harris, “The Spiritual Sense of Dante’s ‘Divina Commedia’”, in The Journal of Speculative Philosophy, volume XXI, number IV, St. Louis, Mo.: G. Knapp and Co....
3. (broadly) A set of assumptions or beliefs about something.
   • Of all the stories that fuel conflict, none affects you more than your mythos of identity—the core narrative that shapes how you see your identity in relation to that of the other side. In a conflict, you are likely to regard yourself as the victim and the other as the villain. You fill in the...2016, Daniel Shapiro, “Uncovering Your Mythos of Identity”, in Negotiating the Nonnegotiable: How to Resolve Your Most Emotionally Charged Conflicts, New York, N.Y.: Viking, →ISBN, page 139
4. A recurring theme; a motif.
   • To get most benefit from the four mythoi, one must avoid making two errors. First, a work embodying the comic mythos may be called comic but should not be confused with comedy since the latter term has too many meanings that are exclusively dramatic. The same stricture applies to tragedy and the...1984, Kathryn Hume, “Fantasy as a Function of Form”, in Fantasy and Mimesis: Responses to Reality in Western Literature, New York, N.Y.: Methuen, →ISBN; republished Abingdon, Oxon.; New York, N.Y....
   • In addition to mythoi drawn from myths and fairy tales, romances also employ mythoi derived from chivalric romances.2011, Laura Vivanco, “Mythoi”, in John Lennard, editor, For Love and Money: The Literary Art of the Harlequin Mills & Boon Romance (Genre Fiction Monographs), Penrith, Cumbria: Humanities-Ebooks...