Secular Scripture

Conservatism of a stable genre

• Romance alludes to other genres and literature
• Themes in Greek romances still found today

Myth vs. Folktale

• Difference not in structure, but authority and social function

•  Myths

• Form mythology (connected narrative)
• Covers religious and historical revelations
• Tell culture how it came to be, why it is there

•  Folktale

• More nomadic
• Peripheral group to mythology
•  Considered more imaginative, inventive

• "The mythical poet, then, has his material handed him by tradition, whereas the fabulous poet may, up to a point, choose his own plot and characters" (9).

Secular vs. Sacred

• Changes with time; what was myth to the Ancient Greeks became secular to Christians

• Bible

• Due to social pressures, collection of myths formed a universe
• Assumed centered on man

• Can secular stories come together to form the same?
• When culture supersedes another, myth loses authority
• Function not to proclaim its truth, but to not question it
• How? Credit to God

Hierarchy of verbal structures

• High myth - Biblical or Platonic, beyond literature
• Serious verbal structures - non-literary, tell 'truth' of society
• Serious literature - reflects on above 'truths', more agreeable and embellished, line emotions to reason
• Literature to amuse/popular lit - understood by common man, read without direction of betters