Sharon Pollock

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What's the relationship between history and myth in Walsh?

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History and myth are often mixed together in early history books, such as those of Herodotus and Livy. Since the Renaissance, history and mythology have been separate disciplines, with history concentrating on a forensic analysis of what happened (albeit often viewed through a political lens), and mythology looking the anthropological or psychological causes and effects of myth-making.

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Sharon Pollock's Walsh contrasts the simple and erroneous rumors which reach Ottawa with the complex reality of what is really happening at Fort Walsh, exploring the relationship between myth and reality. However, the relationship between myth and history is more complex, since both claim to be a description of reality. G.K. Chesterton remarked in Orthodoxy that he was more inclined to believe the myth or legend than the history, since the myth was made by the many people in the village who were sane, while the history book was written by the one man in the village who was mad.

Many early books of history in fact contain a great deal of myth. Thucydides complained of this element in Herodotus's Histories, but it looms even larger in Livy's account of the Early History of Rome and the first histories of England. It is only since the Renaissance that history and mythology have become different academic disciplines. During this time, history has been subject to various fashions, many of which apply a political lens to events in an attempt to explain them. Even with this variety of interpretations, academic historians have tried to be as forensically accurate as possible about what actually happened. Scholars of mythology have concentrated on popular perceptions and explanations for the light they throw on psychology, and such anthropological concerns as the creation and development of archetypes.

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