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The creation of myth is one of the most complex processes of modern literature. Mythography is, and has always been, a way of shaping the vocabulary of ideological conflict. Poets, essayists, novelists, and playwrights take hold of the past and give it the context and meaning of their own day; they create stories in which past and present merge to prescribe a future for the country. These stories, rich in metaphor and imagery, and steeped in history, last much longer in the minds and hearts of a nation than the political speeches that try to accomplish the same goals. Myth has a quality of mystery and of hiddenness that fires a national imagination much more effectively than mere statements of fact. It appears most often in times of national crisis: war, conflict, and questions of national identity tend to bring out the mythographer in authors and artists whose work might previously have been apolitical. Albert Camus, in his wartime novel The Plague, observed the myths—images of an idealized neomedieval France—being inscribed in the medieval trope by the Vichy government, and twisted them to his own ideological use.

DOI: 10.1057/9781137309471_8

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