The Origins of Mythography as a Genre

Abstract

AbstractThis chapter provides an overview of the origins and early development of mythography in late archaic and classical Greece. A particular form of the reception of myth, mythographical collections are one of the results of the rapid spread of alphabetic writing, particularly from the 6th century bce onward. The chapter argues that even though the words mythography and mythographer are not attested until much later, these authors were in possession of a category comparable to our “myth” understood as a type of account that belongs to a heritage from which they are separated by a gap, onto which they can cast an objective gaze. Indeed, writing was a necessary instrument for encouraging a new attitude towards tradition. And the use of written prose had lasting effects. Critical intertextuality, a text that responds dialectically to preexisting texts, is consolidated with the transcription of myths by the early mythographers. Their writings respond to the tradition since they place the canonical texts of ancient poetry on the same level as the opinion of a ordinary private individual, who expresses himself in simple, secular prose. Unlike oral transmission, which is more restricted and more suitable for the elites to be able to exercise control over the spread of information, dissemination in writing guarantees a mass circulation of the text that is less controlled and more “democratic.”