Abstract

This introduction to a special issue of Contemporary Austrian Studies offers necessary definitional and conceptual groundwork and engagement with a range of influential scholarship on myth(ology), sampled from a diversity of disciplinary perspectives. Providing a framework for the ensuing contributions, my discussion unfolds around three sets of issues. First, I offer a brief reexamination of the vexed question about the interrelations between myth-making and history-writing. This is followed by an outline of alternative analytical questions to be put to public, myth-like representations of the past (i.e., questions about their functions, uses, and [perceived] plausibility). Finally, I trace a recent conceptual shift from mythologies to “national mythscapes,” arguing that the latter provide a more accurate lens through which to view relevant materials, in Austria as elsewhere. Throughout this discussion, I interweave conceptual propositions with relevant empirical illustrations, thereby setting the tone for our Austrian case studies in the contributions to follow.