The Importance Of Myth In Literature

Mythologies and fiction stories have always had a great impact on human psyche and human societies across the world and also on the literature produced by these societies. According to Robert Graves, an eminent myth critic, “Myth has two main functions. The first is to answer the sort of awkward questions that children ask: who made the world? How will it end?....The second function of myth is to justify an existing social system and account for traditional rites and customs” (12). Prominently, literary fiction too defines the validity of human existence in society. It propound on the representation or recreation of the social world via thoughts and generalization.

The literatures of various nations are always dynamic. They form their own spool of spiral which is determined by their national specificity. It is this evolutionary spiral that builds up a universal point and areas of union and confluence in literature. Thus this proposed study will firstly, be analyzed through the lens of comparative approach to literature and secondly, it would employ the strategies of sociological approach. Mathew Arnold once said, “Everywhere there is a connection, everywhere there is an illustration, no single event and no single literature is adequately comprehended except in relation to other events, to other literatures.”

The Mahabharata and Shakespeare’s play through the ages has epitomized the obstacles of the world, through divergence and universality. The entire world identifies