national myth

The tradition & historical record

A national myth is a narrative about a nation's past. Such myths often serve as important national symbols and affirm a set of national values. A myth is fictitious and often mixed with aspects of history to form a mythos, which itself has been described as "a pattern of beliefs expressing often symbolically the characteristic or prevalent attitudes in a group or culture". Myths thereby operate in a specific social and historical setting that help structure national imagination and identity. A national myth may take the form of a national epic, or it may be incorporated into a civil religion. A national myth is a narrative which has been elevated to a symbolic and esteemed level so as to be true to the nation. The national folklore of many nations includes a founding myth, which may involve a struggle against colonialism or a war of independence or unification. In many cases, the meaning of the national myth is disputed among different parts of the population. In some places, the national myth may be spiritual and refer to stories of the nation's founding by a god or gods, leaders favored by gods, or other supernatural beings. National myths often exist for the purpose of state-sponsored propaganda. In totalitarian dictatorships, the leader might be given, for example, a mythical supernatural life history in order to make them seem god-like and supra-powerful. ¹

The concept of national identity is connected with myths. A complex of myths is at the core of nationalistic ethnic identity. Some scholars believe that national identities, supported by invented histories, were constructed only after national movements and national ideologies emerged. All modern national identities were preceded by nationalist movements. Although the term "nation" was used in the Middle Ages, it had usually an ethnic meaning and seldom referred to a state. In the age of nationalism, it was linked to efforts aimed at creating nation-states. National myths foster national identities. They are important tools of nation-building, which can be done by emphasizing differences between people of different nations. They can cause conflict as they exaggerate threats posed by other nations and minimize the costs of war. The nationalist myth of a stable homeland community is explained psychoanalytically as the result of the complexity of relations within the modern external world and the incoherence of one's inner psychological world. Nationalist identity facilitates imagined stability. ¹

National myths are created and propagated by national intellectuals, and they can be used as instruments of political mobilization on demographic bases such as ethnicity. They might over-dramatize incidents, omit historical details, or add details for which there is no evidence; or a national myth might simply be a fictional story that no one takes to be true literally. ¹

Traditional myth-making often depended on literary story-tellers — especially epic poets. Ancient Hellenic culture adopted Homer's Ionian Iliad as a justification of its theoretical unity, and Virgil (70–19 BCE) composed the Aeneid in support of the political renewal and reunification of the Roman world after lengthy civil wars. Generations of medieval writers (in poetry and prose) contributed to the Arthurian Matter of Britain, developing what became a focus for English nationalism by adopting British Celtic material. Camões (c. 1524–1580) composed in Macao the Os Lusíadas as a national poetic epic for Portugal. Voltaire attempted a similar work for French mythologised history in the Henriade (1723). Wagnerian opera came to foster German national enthusiasm. ¹

Modern purveyors of national mythologies have tended to appeal to the people more directly through the media. French pamphleteers spread the ideas of Liberté, égalité, fraternité in the 1790s, and American journalists, politicians, and scholars popularized mythic tropes like "Manifest Destiny", "the Frontier", or the "Arsenal of Democracy". Socialists advocating ideas like the dictatorship of the proletariat have promoted catchy nation-promoting slogans such as "Socialism with Chinese characteristics" and "Kim Il Sung thought". ¹

The ideology of nationalism is related to two myths: the myth of the eternal nation, referring to the permanence of a community, and the myth of common ancestry. These are represented in the particular national myths of various countries and groups. ¹

The text above is adapted from the Wikipedia article “National myth”, available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 licence. ¹

national myth is inspiring narrative about a nation's past, according to the structured record cited below. This entry was generated automatically from that record and has not yet been reviewed by a person familiar with the tradition. ²

The source record links this tradition to 2 external registers, which can be verified through the citation. ²