Anthropology of authors as modern day myth-makers

bedraggled

Hello

This is my first post here

I'm wondering if anyone has experience of researching authors as modern day myth-makers, or any ideas on how it could be done as a form of cultural anthropology.

Feel free to share your thoughts at will

Ostrom

bedraggled wrote: »

Hello

This is my first post here

I'm wondering if anyone has experience of researching authors as modern day myth-makers, or any ideas on how it could be done as a form of cultural anthropology.

Feel free to share your thoughts at will

Sounds very broad, can you be more specific with your concepts? What kind of authors? What does modern-day mean? What is a myth? How does the myth making process work?

Nitochris

There is the Lovecraft - Cthulhu Mythos:

Many have claimed the Necronomicon is a real book, in reality it was created by HP Lovecraft. Check the Necronomicon files website for more information on this. And the book is partially on Google books.

Some occultists do draw on this fictional mythology notably Grant.

The same cycle of stories also may (and I won't go stronger than that) have influenced the Ancient Astronaut myth check this website and the articles on that site for details. You can also read this one of the authors of that essay (Price) is a theologian. I am aware of some criticism of the prominence given to Lovecraft as having inspired the Ancient Astronaut story and I myself would see it more as both Lovcraft and the likes of von Däniken drawing on much the same sources.

The creation of this "mythology" was outlined in a letter:

[SIZE=-1]For the fun of building up a convincing cycle of synthetic folklore, all of our gang frequently allude to the pet daemons of the others—thus Smith uses my Yog-Sothoth, while I use his Tsathoggua. Also, I sometimes insert a devil or two of my own in the tales I revise or ghost-write for professional clients. Thus our black pantheon acquires an extensive publicity & pseudo-authoritativeness it would not otherwise get. We never, however, try to put it across as an actual hoax; but always carefully explain to enquirers that it is 100% fiction. [/SIZE]

Not sure if this is the sort of thing you are looking for, There's also the Angels of Mons which was heavily influenced by Arthur Machen's Bowmen.

Edit (9.36) I've just remembered I have 2 books which touch on the idea of authors as myth makers, I'm away from my bookshelf at the moment but I should be able to find them next week. Not sure If they have anything on methodology.

Actually rereading my post you may want to look into "fake-lore" (which the above would parallel) for ideas I think MacPherson's Ossian inspired some modern (at the time) myths.

Edit: 9 August

the last chapter of A Short History of Myth by Karen Armstrong though I think that was an introduction to a series of retellings of myths, and Literature and film as modern mythology by William Ferrell which looks at films and books via archetypes and tropes common to mythology.