Book of Medb hErenn

 
In a recent edition of The Denver Post, Jeffrey A. Lockwood, a professor of natural sciences and humanities at the University of Wyoming, wrote an editorial entitled, "The Cowboy Myth". [Note: This link may become inactive in the near future, however, the editorial can still be found by going to the Archive section of the main site and doing a search for "the cowboy myth". A copy of the piece can then be purchased for three dollars.]

In the editorial, he defined "myth": "'Myth' has two very different meanings. The literary term denotes a traditional story that reveals the world-view of a people; let us call this Myth. But there is also a pejorative meaning — an unfounded account of the world; let's call this a myth. The goal of Myth is to illuminate a moral ideal toward which a people aspire, binding together generations and communities, and helping us to understand how we are to live in the world and treat one another. . . ."

It would be presumptuous of me to suggest my Medb hErenn stories are Myth rather than myth. Since all fiction is a lie, none of my stories are true even from a mythographic perspective. Still, the stories are written from my existential, transcendental point of view, which in turn serves as the basis for Medb's own worldview. So the stories do reflect the way Medb, and to some extent I, view reality. This goes beyond world building in the sense that, while this worldview does help determine the nature and structure of the Medb hErenn universe, it also describes our world; not how it should be, but one way that it might be interpreted. To some degree, all writers describe the world around them in their stories as they see it, whether the stories are meant to be metaphorical or not. This description may be subtle, trivial, or blatant, but often it is there, and often the writer himself may not even be aware of it. But it is this aspect that raises fiction, especially speculative fiction, from mere myth to actual Myth.