Customizing Myth: The Personal in the Public

Abstract

On the surface of the matter, it would seem that mythic discourse is a quintessential form of what Basil Bernstein terms “public language,” that is, “a language which continuously signals the normative arrangements of the group rather than individuates experiences of its members” (1960:181). This assumption is amply reinforced by the important community work attributed to myth in the many definitions and roles devised for it by scholars over the centuries. Any folklorist could assemble a list of impressive public or communal duties assigned to myth in the last century or two, a list that might include (among other entries) Max Müller’s ideas about “mythopoeic thought,” G. L. Gomme’s tidy characterization of myth as “the science of a pre-scientific age,” Bronislaw Malinowski’s thesis that myth establishes a charter for social institutions, and Claude Lévi-Strauss’s notion that “myths operate in men’s minds without their being aware of the fact” (1969:12). Whatever formulation is chosen, we find ourselves in a discourse that would seem to largely exclude the personal in favor of the impersonal, the communal, and the collective. Practical facts conducive to personalization of the narrative, such as the age of the storyteller, the composition of the audience, the occasion for the storytelling event, are a matter of indifference in these frames of reference.