ABSTRACT
At first sight the relationship between myth and history seems to be the most adequate to describe the complex status of oral history. Two poles, one more tilted towards the symbolic, the other towards the analytic, are implied; and oral history moves along the continuum between the two. History may indeed be called on to give the past inaccuracies attacked by semiology in the 1950s as ‘today’s myths’ more respect now they have become ‘yesterday’s myths’. The conservative philosopher Del Noce accused the students in revolt, in the summer of 1968, of ‘supporting the myth of the new at all costs’. The Jungian school of thought seems to waver between a deep understanding of the dialectic of culture and a sudden rigidifying of some of its aspects. Life stories can thus be seen as constructions of single mythbiographies, using a choice of resources, that include myths, combining the new and ancient in unique expressions.
