Literature Is Not A Subject

In Literature, Questions Of Fact Or Truth Are Subordinated To The Primary Literary Aims Of Producing A Structure Of Words For Its Own Sake, And The Sign-values Of Symbols Are Subordinated To Their Importance As A Structure Of Interconnected Motifs.

Myths, As Compared With Folk Tales, Are Usually In A Special Category Of Seriousness: They Are Believed To Have "really Happened,"or To Have Some Exceptional Significance In Explaining Certain Features Of Life, Such As Ritual. Again, Whereas Folk Tales Simply Interchange Motifs And Develop Variants, Myths Show An Odd Tendency To Stick Together And Build Up Bigger Structures. We Have Creation Myths, Fall And Flood Myths, Metamorphose And Dying-god Myths.

In Our Day The Conventional Element In Literature Is Elaborately Disguised By A Law Of Copyright Pretending That Every Work Of Art Is An Invention Distinctive Enough To Be Patented.

Man Lives, Not Directly Or Nakedly In Nature Like The Animals, But Within A Mythological Universe, A Body Of Assumptions And Beliefs Developed From His Existential Concerns.

The Book Of Revelation, Difficult As It May Be For "literalists," Becomes Much Simpler When We Read It Typologically, As A Mosiac Of Allusions To Old Testament Prophecy.