ABSTRACT
We have been dealing, not always explicitly, with the relationship of two concepts: story and myth. There is one sense in which the general notion of ‘fiction’ embraces both, and in much that has been said it has been implicit that a theory of myth is, for any literary consideration, a theory of fictions. Therefore it is worth considering the degree to which we think of myth as a compelling or somehow superior fiction from which a kind of acceptable or at least usable frame of reference can be devised, if not for the understanding of life as a whole, for the pursuit of particular ends. And such particular ends, of course, constitute their own set of claims on ‘life as a whole’. How coherent do we expect our lives to be? How deeply do we expect the parts to be consonant with each other? How full an explanation do we wish of the rationale of any such consonance?
