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José Manuel losada, Mitocrítica cultural: una definición del Mito, Madrid: akal, 
2022, 824 pages.1
From time to time, academic writers astonish the general and specialized audience with 
the launch of a volume that addresses a very particular, at first sight well-known topic, 
changing the perspective scholars had had over it. It has happened in the 20th and 21st 
centuries with fields such as Horror Fiction, Comparative Literature, Feminist Studies, 
etc. The publication of Mitocrítica cultural. Una definición del mito adheres to this 
trend, meaning the culmination of a fifteen-years long process. Prof. José Manuel Losada 
(Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain) has offered what many scholars have been 
searching for decades: a useful, practical, and complete tool to define and analyze myths 
and their cultural manifestations. As Dr. Losada mentions along the volume, one of the 
main objectives is setting things clear: what constitutes a myth, and what does not. To 
do so, a clear, working definition is presented in the “Introduction,” which is developed 
in the following chapters. In a free translation, that definition argues that a myth is “a 
functional, symbolic, and thematic narration referred to extraordinary events related to 
the sacred and/or supernatural. These events may have a historical background and they 
pledge to an individual or collective (but always absolute) cosmogony and eschatolo-
gy.” However, we can never lose the perspective that, as Losada has repeated on several 
occasions, this is a definition of Myth, a very useful, very complete one, but subject to 
discussion or re-evaluation.
As for practical issues, Mitocrítica cultural is divided into two parts, being the first 
a general introduction to key terms and a contextualization of myth in contemporary 
times. The second part, the most important one within the book, approaches how different 
myths, or myth-related notions, have evolved in Western, European history and culture. 
There, the author also addresses a deconstruction of the different elements that make a 
myth a myth, analyzing how they work, how they are combined, and how they should 
be understood by the reader and the myth critic. Finally, all of this is completed with the 
inclusion of four indexes: on the different myths included in the volume, on key concepts, 
on works mentioned, and on proper names. 
Myths, half-literature, half-religion, have been a constant affecting any given civi-
lization or culture since, at least, the advent of writing systems. They have addressed 
crucial topics and questions such as “what are we?,” “where do we come from?,” etc. 
Myths have contributed to explain what was unexplainable, to comprehend what was 
incomprehensible. In consequence, myths have been created, worked with, modified, 
substituted, and forgotten as their existence has suited human cosmovision(s). Mitocrítica 
1 This book review is part of the activities of the Research Groups “Poéticas y textualidades emergentes. 
Siglos XIX–XXI” (Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain) and “Estudios interdisciplinares de Literatura 
y Arte -LyA-” (Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha, Spain), and of the Complutense Institute for the Study of 
Religion and the Institute of Humanism and Classical Tradition (Universidad de León, Spain).
Besides, the final version of this review was completed during the months I spent as a visiting scholar at the 
University of Nebraska at Omaha, towards whose Department of English I am strongly thankful. I would also 
like to express my gratitude towards Department of English at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, which 
granted me the opportunity of visiting Nebraska leaving temporarily my obligations in Spain.
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cultural successfully explains how this complicated (and convoluted) process has come 
to an existence.
Focusing on the first of the mentioned parts, one of the most interesting questions 
addressed by Dr. Losada is that of globalization, or how myths (born in local, particular 
traditions —although referred to universal notions—) have been affected by the current 
global processes our world is going through, being this a problematic relationship. Losada 
assesses that
El mito se opone a la uniformidad global de igual modo que las minorías 
comunitarias se oponen a la intrusión de instituciones administrativas de 
nivel superior. En contrapartida al falso “mito” del igualitarismo propuesto 
por los paraísos artificiales, el mundo mitológico propone la complemen-
tariedad: ni los dioses ni Dios han querido a los hombres iguales, amor-
fos, indiferenciados, sino desemejantes para que se ayuden y sostengan 
mutuamente [Myths are opposed to worldwide uniformity like minorities 
oppose administrative institutions’ actions. Before the false “myth” of 
egalitarianism, proposed by artificial paradises, myths offer complemen-
tarity: neither gods nor God have ever desired men to be equal, shapeless, 
all alike, but dissimilar in order to mutually help and sustain] (2022: 66).
So, the global world is a side-, reverse-effect of myth, and the conflicts that have 
shaped human history may be understood (or interpreted) through the lens of myth(s).
This argued relation of myths with history is re-visited by Dr. Losada along the 
second part of Mitocrítica cultural. Indeed, “Chapter 8” is devoted to History and how 
mythification processes work. Going back to the definition of myth, myths “may have a 
historical background.” Losada adds that
El acontecimiento narrado por el mito ocurre en un tiempo, pero no el tiempo 
circunscrito en las coordenadas de la historiografía moderna, sino en el de 
una ficción que apunta a unos referentes absolutos malamente enmarcables 
en esa historiografía [The narrations included in a myth happen in a specific 
period of time, but they are not limited by the coordinates stablished by 
modern historiography; on the contrary, the address absolute referential 
points impossible to narrow down to what historiography says] (2022: 475).
Thus, myth and History, despite going hand in hand, have several friction points, for 
myths transcend history. This is even more strongly addressed in the volume when cer-
tain “mythical” historical figures (e.g. Napoleon, Alexander the Great, Rodrigo Díaz de 
Vivar…) are recreated into narrations sharing similarities with myths (and are understood 
as such by the general audience). Losada is crystal clear: “no son mitos” [they are not 
myths] (2022: 485), adding that they may be considered as pseudo-myths or characters 
who have suffered a mythification process. As mentioned, this is one of the main strengths 
of the book: discerning tares from wheat. In a similar way, literary “myths,” such as that 
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of Don Quixote (addressed in pages 391–402), are re-evaluated through the lens of this 
approach, separating them from “real” myths.
However, what is more relevant in Mitocrítica cultural is how the author analyzes 
both the elements that constitute a myth, and how myths relate to them and to the struc-
tural narrations in which they are usually included. Regarding the first of these aspects, 
probably the most relevant chapter is “Chapter 9,” in which Losada deconstructs the 
structure of myth. To do so, Mitocrítica cultural differentiates between the concepts of 
“myth,” “theme,” and “mytheme,” explained the latter as
la unidad temática y mitológica mínima cuya indispensable dimensión 
trascendente o sobrenatural lo capacita para interactuar con otros mitemas 
en la formación de un mito. Si los temas tienen razón mítica, es decir, 
atravesada de trascendencia, son mitemas; de lo contrario, son únicamente 
temas narrativos [the thematic and mythic entitie whose trascendent dime-
sion allows to interact with other mythemes to form a myth. If themes have 
a mythical foundation (linked to transcendence) are mythemes; being this 
not the case, they are just narrative themes] (2022: 536).
Once again, clarifying concepts, as seen for historical characters. Concerning the 
second of the aforementioned aspects, we can read “Chapter 3” and “Chapter 6” together, 
as explained below.
As we have mentioned, a myth is narration halfway between literature and religion 
and, in consequence, shares characteristics that belong to both cultural manifestations. 
Losada has successfully addressed this hybrid nature of mythical narrations, explaining 
both how they connect with literary pieces and how they cipher religious notions such 
as cosmogony and eschatology. So, the author includes a discussion on concepts such 
as genre or chronotope that are usually associated with mere literary narrations. For 
instance, when discussing time and myth, Losada discerns between immanence and 
transcendence, marking these the frontier between narrative and mythical conceptions 
of time. To have a myth, we need the former, as stated in the definition Mitocrítica 
cultural offers. When addressing characters, Losada also discerns between literary 
personae and mythical incarnations, what he terms as “prosopomito.” Regarding the 
religious dimension of myths, Losada has placed together chapters 10 and 11 to address 
two of the fundamental questions religions have traditionally observed: origin(s) and 
conclusion(s). Myths have usually tried to answer the questions “why does everything 
exist?” and “where do I come from?” Thus, human cultures have constructed a series of 
mythical cosmogonies around these narratives, explaining the beginning of everything 
and everyone:
El mito indaga el significado originario del mundo; quiere saber […] El 
mito presta atención y busca interpretar simbólicamente los acontecimientos 
extraordinarios en el extremo de los tiempos, donde el tiempo roza con el no 
tiempo [Myths search the original meaning of the world; they want to know 
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[…] Myths pay attention to, and aim to symbolically explain, extraordinary 
events at the edge of time, where time and no-time collide] (2022: 573).
Mitocrítica cultural addresses this theme with a fruitful evaluation of polytheistic and 
Judeo-Christian approaches. As for eschatology, we are in front of a similar problem, 
for it “se pregunta, sobre todo, por el futuro, pero no por los futuribles inmediatos, sino 
por el futuro final, definitivo y absoluto de una persona, de un pueblo o el universo” 
[asks, above all, about the future, not the immediate future, but the final, definitive, and 
absolute future of a person, a community, or the Universe] (2022: 615). Thus, since the 
future remains convoluted in shadows, myths have traditionally played (and still play) a 
crucial role to approach it. In this section (“Chapter 11”), the author also addresses one 
of those cultural notions that is usually mistake with myths: the eternal return, or the 
cyclical conception of history, subverting the Western conception of time. This analysis 
is interesting for Mitocrítica cultural confronts the vision that is probably more familiar to 
us (Judeo-Christian, medieval-based, projection of history) with extra-European notions, 
closer to a circular vision of evolution. 
In conclusion, as seen in the previous paragraphs, Mitocrítica cultural. Una definición 
del mito offers guarantee for the researcher when dealing with myths or myth-related 
narrations, giving us the opportunity of clearly working with them. On the other hand, 
José Manuel Losada also gives us the chance of stating what is a myth from what is not, 
proposing tools and hermeneutic devices to do so. In consequence, our task as cultural 
researchers has become easier thanks to the enormous amount of work already developed 
by Dr. Losada. His volume has become one of those giants’ shoulders from which we 
can contemplate the academic horizon. Myths were shaped when knowledge could not 
explain everything, they were created to enlighten our ancestors’ minds offering plausible 
and acceptable explanation to the most transcendental questions. Today, like in mythical 
times, Mitocrítica cultural has also become a lantern to illuminate our scholarly path and 
to solve our transcendental doubts.
José Manuel Correoso-Rodenas, Madrid