The Lantern Hall
Painting: an ancient lexicon open on a carved lectern in a dark chapel of books, glowing runes and symbols lifting off its pages like fireflies.
TermLiterature term1931

Mythopoeia

The deliberate creation of a mythology within fiction: invented gods, cosmologies and legends that feel ancient. Tolkien's legendarium is the defining example, and the Mythopoeic Society took its name from the idea.

The deliberate creation of a mythology within fiction: invented gods, cosmologies and legends that feel ancient. Tolkien's legendarium is the defining example, and the Mythopoeic Society took its name from the idea.

Origin

From Greek for myth-making; Tolkien used Mythopoeia as the title of a poem written in 1931 for C. S. Lewis.

Quick answers

What does "Mythopoeia" mean?
The deliberate creation of a mythology within fiction: invented gods, cosmologies and legends that feel ancient. Tolkien's legendarium is the defining example, and the Mythopoeic Society took its name from the idea.
Where does the term "Mythopoeia" come from?
From Greek for myth-making; Tolkien used Mythopoeia as the title of a poem written in 1931 for C. S. Lewis.

Nearby in the archive

J. R. R. Tolkien

Author1892–1973

An Oxford philologist who invented languages, then a world for them to be spoken in — and, with The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, supplied the elves, dwarves, orcs and halflings of every roleplaying game since.

C. S. Lewis

Author1898–1963

Oxford don, Christian apologist and Tolkien's closest literary ally, who sent four children through a wardrobe into Narnia and made the portal fantasy a staple of childhood.

The Mythopoeic Society

Organization1967

Born at a hobbit birthday picnic in Los Angeles in 1967, the Mythopoeic Society turned Inklings fandom into a scholarly tradition — with a journal, an annual conference and a seated-lion award.

Painting: three radiant jewels glowing in a crown of iron against a starry primeval sky, two great luminous trees of silver and gold in the distance.

The Silmarillion

Myth cycle1977

Tolkien's lifelong book of the Elder Days — the making of the world, the theft of three holy jewels and the long doom of the elves — published by his son four years after his death.

Subcreation

Literature term1939

Tolkien's term for the human act of making a Secondary world: the author as a sub-creator, working in the image of a greater Creator. It is the theological heart of his defense of fantasy.

Mythic Fantasy

Literature genre1936

Modern fiction made from ancient myth — Welsh gods in Prydain, Norse elves in The Broken Sword, Greek witches in Circe, old gods on American highways — and invented mythologies with the weight of real ones.