Myths of Modern Individualism Quotes

“What this popular symbolism amounts to for Herder is a new and more open view of truth: a rejection of literal and rational truth and a preference for the truth of poetry, of imagination, and of symbolism. Here Herder expresses the new Romantic view of the truth of myth: the Greeks had thought, no doubt, that myths were established traditional stories; but they must have understood that the actions of these stories could not have happened, nor their characters have actually existed. In the sixth to fifth century B.C. the Greek philosopher and poet Xenophanes had indeed objected to Homer's view of the gods on the grounds that it was both incredible and immoral; and this negative, literalistic, view of the truth of poetry, or epic, was supported by Plato in the Republic. The opposing assumption - that myths were not exactly true, yet they had a special kind of validity — was more widely held even in the emerging modern world”
― Ian Watt, Mitos do individualismo moderno