National mythology as a nation-forming factor

A national myth is an inspiring narrative or anecdote about a nation's past. Such myths often serve as an important national symbol and affirm a set of national values. A national myth may sometimes take the form of a national epic or be incorporated into a civil religion. Nations need underlying myths in order to feel their unity, to mark their difference from other nations, to ground their national self identification in common past, to share certain stories, concepts, and heroes. Benedict Anderson’s influential book on nations calls them “imagined communities”.

In the USA collective identity is polycultural. Lack of conventional ties linking people to the state; they had to be substituted by new ideas – dream of religious, later political liberty, paradise on earth.

American way of life takes its roots in supra-national idea – it does not owe its origin to any separate tradition, but is based on individuals and current demands

Any national ideology is based, first and foremost, on canonized and sacralized national culture in its temporal and local integrity (often imaginary), including its system of values and beliefs, its traditional myths and heroes.

National mythology is instrumental in solving the problem of self-identification that figures prominently in present-day postmodern society, and is central in late 20^th – early 21^st cc. literature. Nations aware of their mythology are stronger since the members of a society are aware of their connection with other representatives of the community even without direct contacts with them, since they share the same ideas, symbols, etc.

National myths serve many social and political purposes. National myths often exist only for the purpose of state-sponsored propaganda. In totalitarian dictatorships, the leader might be given, for example, a mythical supernatural life history in order to make him or her seem god-like and supra-powerful (see also cult of personality). However, national myths exist in every society. In liberal regimes they can serve the purpose of inspiring civic virtue and self-sacrifice, or of consolidating the power of dominant groups and legitimizing their rule. Especially today – in a rapidly shifting world there is a need for stable truths not subject to historical changes. Ernest Gellner – culture is unifying factor

Principal mythologems in American culture and literature

1. Christopher Columbus and the Myth of ‘Discovery’

The mythology of the ‘new world’ begins with the discourse of discovery and with powerful European projections that envision a new kind of paradise, a utopia somewhere across the Atlantic that alleviates (lighten) the grievances of the ‘old world’ and that promises boundless earthly riches. In its traditional European version, this discourse is not so much about the ‘hosts’ whom the part Native American novelist as it is about their ‘visitors,’ i.e. those Europeans who arrive and ‘discover.’ The story of Christopher Columbus (1451-1506) and his arrival in the Americas holds a pivotal (key) place in an American foundational mythology that stages the ‘discovery’ and the subsequent settlement and colonization of the ‘new world’ in pro`phetic ways as an inevitable step forward in the course of human progress that eventually would lead to the founding of the USA and to US-American westward expansion, its ‘manifest destiny.’