History And Myth

One of my many favorite aspects of reading is the ideas and topics that get me thinking beyond the book.  One of the books I am reading now reminded me that books and stories are more then entertainment, they are teaching tools, history keepers, and legend builders.  One thing that strikes me about the old stories in particular is their ability to create a blur between reality and myth, to the point that sometimes you are not 100% sure if a person existed for real or a certain event actually happened.  Take for example the legend of King Arthur.  Most people in Western Culture have at least heard of of King Arthur, many books, songs, stories, plays, movies, tv shows and even comics have been made to feature him...but was he even a real

person?  To be honest, nobody knows for sure.  He could have been a king in the 5th century that had his exploits written down by somebody, he could be a conglomeration of several kings and rulers, he could be a name that people of the time period used to sum up all the glory's and failures and morals and lessons they wanted to impart.  We will probably never know for sure.  Others have also achieved that blurred mythical status.  Robin Hood, Paul Bunyan, Johnny Appleseed, Beowulf, and many many others that are all as interesting and all as nebulously real as the last.  These legends have a very important purpose around the world.  They are there to preserve history, events may not be exactly what happened in the song, or poem, but we can get an idea of what was going on during that time period.  They are used as lessons, to teach morals and consequences.  These stories are used as entertainment and to evoke emotion, to bond people together over a shared experience.  When I first started thinking about this the other day, I felt like we don't do this anymore.  We don't memorialize our hero's in song, epic poems are no longer written about epic battles.  Then I watched Band of Brothers, and read Jepp Who Defied the Stars and realized that most historical fiction, heck most fiction in general is a way to record on film, or put down on paper, or digitize in binary numbers our current history and turn it into legends in their own forms.  The biggest difference is that it is so much easier to produce these works then it was before.  More people have access to, and the ability to read and write on their own.  Before a select few people could read or right, multi media consisted of writing on paper that took weeks to make, painting, weaving, and song.  All communication was done in person, on foot or horse back or by ship, things were slow and new entertainment few and far between, so any new song or story or piece of art was rare, valued and known by most people in the region.  Today I can access thousands of stories, books, songs, pieces of art,

cultural rites...or add to it myself.  Before stories were passed from on person to another, allowing for errors, embellishments and miss attributions until the original person or event became morphed into an epic tale, only vaguely resembling the original.  Today we can record most history in a fairly accurate way, we can usually find the source story, so the mysterious hero's are no longer so mysterious.  In the end, I still kind of wish we would all gather around the fire to hear tales of heroism, or hear a ballad of an epic event, or decorate our halls with weaving's depicting the building of great monuments...but I am also glad I can download every Harry Potter book in 20 seconds anytime I want :-)  Happy Reading Everybody!
Do you think we have any mythical legends now days?  What is your favorite legendary figure?  Do you think bard is still a legitimate proffesion?