While defining for myself what fiction and untrue stories are, I was reminded of Beowulf and oral tradition. Or rather, the way that men used (and still do) to tell each other stories of their bravery and strength that could never really have happened. It is a huge part of culture to tell each other stories, from fairy tales to ghost stories. Today we have the National Enquirer and tabloids to tell us about cheese sandwiches that have the Virgin Mary on them and the screwed up love lives of the rich an famous. We know to take these with a grain of salt and look on anyone who takes such things seriously or who writes them as crazy. They are untrue, unbelieved and scorned by the mainstream. But such things were once accepted as entertainment, even believed. Just look at Ancient Mythology, from the Greeks and Romans with their petulant, sex-crazed gods turning themselves into bulls to attack women or royal houses tearing themselves apart because a prophesy was spoken. The Celts and Norsemen also kept themselves from boredom with tales of their pantheons. These oral traditions continued and manifested as brags of swimming in the sea for days in full armor while battling a sea monster or other such feats. They could never be done, but men still claimed to have done so, an no one called them on the impossibility of it, simply creating a new story to top their neighbor. While these stories were also untrue, they were regarded more as fiction, becuase no one brought their truth into question. Or, more precisely, the truth was not an issue. It was a story, an entertainment, and no one was upset by the fact that they were not real, no one scorned the speakers for being liars or crazy. Much as fiction as a genre today makes no issue out of being somewhat fantastical or scientifically or historically acurate, the brags of Beowulf and his companions are accepted by society as an untrue story with no real pretentions of truth. It may be unspoken, but it is understood to be false. A story becomes untrue rather than fiction when it makes truth an issue by claiming to be real. Then the world stops looking at it as a bit of lighthearted entertainment that knows itself to be false and begins to laugh at the poor make believe story that pretends to be serious.