Exploring Ancient Myths: a new book by Professor Kevin Mills

Professor Kevin Mills, a critic and poet, has published Myths and Ancient Stories: Narrative, Meaning and Influence in the West. This book explores ancient myths and their impact on Western culture and modern storytelling.

What inspired you to write this book about ancient myths and their influence on modern storytelling?

Early in my teaching career I realised that most students had no knowledge of classical or biblical stories. I found myself (still find myself) frequently telling the stories of Orestes, Orpheus, Odysseus or the tales of Cain and Abel, the Tower of Babel, Abraham and Isaac, in literature classes. It is impossible to read pre-twentieth-century English literature comprehendingly without some knowledge of these ancient works. Allusions, references, imagery, narrative echoes of them are endemic in poetry, drama and fiction. My initial response (some twenty-five years ago) was to develop a module which introduced the ancient works, and I have taught a version of such a module ever since. I always thought I’d like to produce a book based on the teaching materials, but it was a huge undertaking. A few years ago, I finally felt I had enough material in place. That realisation coincided with the first Covid lockdown, and that’s when I began to knock it all into shape.

How have ancient myths shaped Western culture and modern narratives?

That’s a huge question and my book as a whole is the best answer I can give. In a nutshell: the biblical myths of creation, fall and redemption gave Western culture its religious, moral and spiritual order. The stories told in the Bible lie at the root of western legal systems, civil organisation and education, as well as cultural practices such as marriage, naming, family relationships, holidays and funeral rites. Our arts, too, have been given their form and subject matter by biblical stories as well as those which emerged from the classical world. Even though they are not as well known as they once were, these ancient tales are the cultural root system which feeds modern literature, cinema and game production.

In your book, you take a comparative look at pre-modern stories. Can you share some surprising connections or parallels you found between ancient myths and modern stories?

Recently we have been appalled at the Post Office’s shameful treatment of its staff over many years, and its resistance to all attempts to expose its wrongdoing and to compensate its victims. In the First Branch of the Mabinogi we read of the unjust treatment of Rhiannon, falsely accused of killing her own child and punished for a crime she did not commit. This makes her an example of the ‘calumniated wife’ – a figure who features in many folktales from across Europe. The fact that such stories were so widespread suggests that people have always been horrified by lying accusation and wrongful punishment. It’s a theme treated in the biblical story of Job, too. The Book of Job is an unparalleled examination of the subject, exploring in great depth the troubling question of why innocent people suffer. I only hope that Paula Vennells reads it one day.

What challenges did you face in presenting ancient myths to a modern audience, and how did you overcome them?

Perhaps the most profound problem is that we have no access to the way our ancient ancestors understood the world or themselves. They lived in a world which was, in just about every way, inexplicable. Science can account for the sun rising and setting, can offer us diagnoses when we are unwell, can explain the causes when crops fail, can tell us why apples fall to the ground rather than floating off into space. We cannot know what it was like to live without such knowledge. But we can understand that stories have the power to make the world intelligible and that hasn’t changed since the dawn of civilisation. While science might be able to tell us why our loved one died, it cannot help us to deal with the emotional fallout from our bereavement. Reading about Gilgamesh and the death of his closest friend, Enkidu (in the 4000-year-old Epic of Gilgamesh) tells us more about loss and mortality than science ever could. Conversely, we might not know how it felt to look at a sunset and be mystified by what was happening and why, but we do know what it’s like to be fearful, unsure of the future, or confused by what’s going on around us. Ancient stories connect us with abiding human dilemmas, feelings, desires and fears and that, in turn, can offer us insights into the ancient world as well as into our own experience.

Can you share any insights from your book on how ancient myths can help us understand current social and cultural issues?

Due to its investment in outdated and politically dangerous ideas (such as monarchy, patriarchy and ethnic prejudice), myth is treated with great suspicion by modern philosophers and critics. Re-reading it today and considering the ways in which it is used by writers, filmmakers and game-producers, can alert us to the potentially harmful effects of some cultural productions: their glamourization of armed violence, their promotion of prejudicial values and their normalization of stereotypical behaviours. On the other hand, engaging with enduring stories which foreground profound issues such as the relationship between people and their environment, time, mortality and cultural transition, reminds us of the important role narratives have always played in helping us to understand ourselves and our world.

Can you share an example of a myth from your book that particularly resonates with you, and explain why?

I love all of the stories I examine in the book, but I suppose the tales from the Mabinogi mean most to me now because of their Welsh origin. It is not one specific story that fascinates me so much as the way the Four Branches interweave events and characters in delicate and complicated patterns resembling Celtic knotwork. Once I started to see the patterns, it helped me to understand how and why my life is entangled with those of people around me. Whatever I do and whatever happens to me is never just a matter of my own concerns, worries or obsessions: my life is inextricably interlaced with other lives, and other lives with mine. That perception is simultaneously comforting and burdensome: it makes me part of a life that transcends my own, but also makes me responsible for and to others. In the Fourth Branch, for example, Gwydion and Gilfaethwy plan and execute the rape of a young woman called Goewin. This is shown to affect not only themselves and their victim, but to have consequences for hundreds of lives across two kingdoms. It’s a salutary lesson in the importance of ethical action and communal decision-making.

Your research focuses on the theory and practice of interpretation. How does this perspective influence your analysis of ancient myths in the book?

One of the things I find compelling about the process of coming to terms with myths, is the realization that all human intellectual endeavour has its roots in those stories and their attempts to make sense of the world. Philosophy, religion, literature, history, geography, even the sciences – each has its origins in myth. That is because myth is another word for interpretation. Or, at least, for the earliest known form of interpretation: reading natural phenomena, working out the relationships between them, and assessing their effects on human life. In the process of reading myths and the narratives in which they play a leading part, we are drilling down into the fundamentals of sense-making, observing the pattern-generating manoeuvres by which our ancient forebears organized and sought to control their environment. Modern techniques are more highly evolved, and our knowledge greatly expanded, but the same drive to explore, synthesize, organize, assimilate and explain energizes myth and every form of modern enquiry. As someone who has thought and written a good deal about interpretation, I am, perhaps inevitably, drawn to texts which depict humanity’s earliest attempts to impose order and meaning on what they observed and experienced.  

Kevin is launching his book on Thursday 12 September, at our Cardiff campus and online, from 6.30pm. To book your place, click here.