The Mystery of Modern Myths: Who will be the next Homer?
Author: Klaudia Gomez Tombelle
Translation: Naia Rios
There are some monumental works and stories that, thanks to their influence, universality and impact have reached the status of myth. Who does not know of the myth of Troy, or the adventures of Odysseus that follow it? Or the tragedy of Romeo and Juliet?
The academic world has spent time identifying how, when and why myths arise, as well as reaching a consensus on their definition. It could be said that every myth is a story, which differs in some way from others, and achieves a predominant status. They are often said to reveal something intrinsic about human nature, and appeal to the deepest fears and anxieties of societies, while retaining a fantastic, mystical or directly fictional halo that cannot be ignored. We could say that the essence of myth lies in its presence in the collective imagination. The word myth itself has an ancestral and historical echo, but one cannot forget the dynamic nature of these. It is a very interesting point of analysis to discover which myths are in the process of formation during our era, and analyze those that are closer to this mythical iconicity.
The main inspiration for this article is John Bender, professor of English and Comparative Literature at Stanford University, who wrote an article called “The Novel as Modern Myth” where he defends three literary works that he argues are becoming what he calls ‘modern myths’. Bender consider the Robinson Crusoe, Frankenstein, and Dracula as novels that have surpassed commercial success and canonical value to enter the collective imaginary. This access is guaranteed by sharing several characteristics with the most classic myths: on the one hand, they embody collective fears that haunt society, such as the fear of the unknown in Dracula. On the other hand, they harbor a universality that earns an ethical-moral or educational function, whether from a cosmogonic perspective, or something more of the day-to-day as the warning against unbridled ambition that can be read in Frankenstein.
Something that all these myths share is the reproductive value they have: all these stories continue to be told and versioned, they do not tire and always gain some novel aspect in their reinvention. As well as still making new versions of the Odyssey, such as Christopher Nolan’s new film for 2026, Dracula and Frankenstein have also had their numerous respective adaptations over the years.
Time is proving the veracity of the thesis of doctor John Bender, as the three works mentioned have reached that Olympus of stories that implies being a myth. However, this raises more questions: what will be next? What stories that we are currently reading and consuming will pass into history towards that privileged place of the collective imagination? It’s hard to know, but we can theorize. We cannot ignore the fast-paced society we live in today. More and more works are being written, published and read, and it’s hard to keep up. Unlike all the more classical works we have mentioned which share an element of innovation, it is difficult to achieve that effect in the literary landscape of recent years. Works have an ephemeral and fleeting factor that hinders that transcendentality we have been talking about, and therefore it is more difficult to appeal to society universally. If we ask younger generations, many characters like the superheroes of the Marvel comics, the Harry Potter books, or works such as Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games are gaining a special place in modern imagination. Many people argue that they will certainly be modern classics, but how can we know if they will be modern myths? Only time will tell.
It is striking to think about what the ‘magic trick’ is for a story to reach the levels of relevance we have been talking about, but the mystery is that there is no real way to know. Myths and their creation, as well as their persistence and extinction, are a mystery resulting from humanity’s cultural nature. These myths will be created from the needs of humanity at a particular time, but they will endure if they can continue to appeal to that need for generations to come. Many artists aspire to bring iconic elements to the collective and cultural continuum in the same way that Homer or Mary Shelley did. However, there is no way to know, and that’s the trick. As humans we only have to do the most human thing we know: create, create and create, because that is what we can do, hoping that others will see that humanity in what we do.
OpenEdition le sugiere que cite este post de la siguiente manera:
Klaudia Gomez Tombelle (29 de septiembre de 2025). El Misterio de los Mitos Modernos: ¿Quién será el próximo Homero? El blog de Tartalo. Recuperado 14 de abril de 2026 de https://doi.org/10.58079/14rql

