mythos

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.

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, mythoses have been distinguished into different kinds. The mythoses of history, that is to say, the recital of real events colored only by the ancient opinions, which confounded the divine with the human, the natural with the supernatural,—also the philosophic mythoses, those in which a simple thought, a speculation contemporaneous, or a novel idea are enveloped.

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.

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 details of this mythos with personal grievances and accusations. Of course, the other side also sees the conflict through a mythos—and in theirs they are the victim. Unless you transform the fundamental way you relate to each other—your mythos—your conflict will remain.

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 tragic mythos. The second error is to assume that a work embodying the ironic mythos is an anti-romance.

In addition to mythoi drawn from myths and fairy tales, romances also employ mythoi derived from chivalric romances.