Truth and Myth in History: An Example from the Spanish Civil War

Abstract

Truth and Myth in History: An Example from the Spanish Civil War Any story of a past event is determined only in part by the event itself. The story is also determined by the circumstances in which it is told. The teller always constructs the story to suit the circumstances of the telling-the audience, the time, the place, the teller's identity and sense of what is appropriate. The teller selects from the possible elements of the tale those that best suit the circumstances of the telling. Any story of the past has a double construction and a double truth. The truth of the tale told is its historical truth; the truth of its telling is its mythical truth. Levi-Strauss has called mythical thought bricolage. Bricolage regards the original construction of the elements it uses as irrelevant; it happily synthesizes disparate materials produced for various purposes if the synthesis serves its immediate purpose. In some stories the truth of the tale told limits the elements that can be mobilized to convey the truth of the telling. In others, intellectual bricolage more freely embellishes, borrows, recombines, and fabricates the better to convey the truth of the telling. As myth, a story maps the event of its telling, not the event it recounts. As myth, it may treat the past creatively. It may use memories of events and memories of stories of events as so much raw material to be disassembled and reassembled to suit the