Myth-Lauren Brooks

Myth-Lauren Brooks
The concept of myth is one that I am currently exploring in my journey and one that Lewis and others in the Inklings group spent a lot of discussion time on. It is also something that we spent a lot of time discussing the first couple of class meetings. Myth is something that is often misrepresented in our culture today and something that can be difficult to understand. Popular myths are seen as things that have been changed over time, losing their original meaning and or truth. Despite these popular connotations of the word myth, the real meaning of myth is something that involves the opposite of false, it involves truth.
The true meaning of myth can best be described in a quote from CS Lewis “what flows from myth is not truth but reality (truth is always about something, but reality is that about which truth is)…” (Lewis, 1970). The definition of myth really stems out of Lewis’s writings in his essay “Myth Became Fact”. Myths generally explore some sort of hidden meaning not generally spelled out in the story and in order for us to understand this meaning we need a symbol. The symbol comes to us in the form of myth.