Is Modern Mythology Ancient?

Abstract:For folklorists, anthropologists, and other scholars of oral tradition, "mythology" typically refers to a genre of narratives whose actions are set in the ancient or primordial past. In his Mythologies, Barthes seems to depart from this scholarly convention by invoking this term and its associated rhetoric to categorize and characterize events and images drawn from the modern world of French and American politics, popular culture, and middle-class values. I argue that despite the nominal modernity of his topics, Barthes almost invariably conjures the power and appeal of ancientness (or eternality, or eternal return) through a variety of subtle strategies that I attempt to lay bare.