Shakespeare, who was considered the English Corneille, flourished at about the time of Lope de Vega. He had a strong and fertile genius, full of naturalness and sublimity, without the slightest spark of good taste or the least knowledge of the rules.... After two hundred years most of the outlandish and monstrous ideas of this author have acquired the right to be considered sublime, and almost all modern authors have copied him.... It does not occur to people that they should not copy him, and the lack of success of their copies simply makes people think that he is inimitable.
—Voltaire [François Marie Arouet] (1694–1778)
Hermeneutic, protactic, proairetic, aphanisis: the structuralists are obliged by their scientific consciences to use what they regard as a technical language... but they all hanker after the lost paradise of “ordinary language.”...But it doesn’t occur to them that “ordinary language” is another way of saying “literature”Mi.e., language that can never be translated into a technical language, theirs or anybody else’s. Literature exchanges confidences with literature only, and scientific criticism is for the birds.
—Marvin Mudrick (1921–1986)
Although the same exemplary figures are found in both and equally miraculous events occur in both, there is a crucial difference in the way these are communicated. Put simply, the dominant feeling a myth conveys is: this is absolutely unique; it could not have happened to any other person, or in any other setting; such events are grandiose, awe-inspiring, and could not possibly happen to an ordinary mortal like you or me. The reason is not so much that what takes place is miraculous, but that it is described as such. By contrast, although the events which occur in fairy tales are often unusual and most improbable, they are always presented as ordinary, something that could happen to you or me or the person next door when out on a walk in the woods. Even the most remarkable encounters are related in casual, everyday ways in fairy tales.
—Bruno Bettelheim (1903–1990)