> People used to take the Bible and other religious texts very seriously, and they believed in their literal truth I don't disagree. But in a world where even

> People used to take the Bible and other religious texts very seriously, and they believed in their literal truth I don't disagree. But in a world where even reality was very much a mystery (so you had myths of ancient lost civilizations, cities of gold, etc and so forth), maybe religion, as literal as it was taken, was enough to satisfy the common people with its otherworldly descriptions of places. My point is that I think it is natural that as the world becomes less mysterious and religion becomes increasingly seen as allegorical, the craving for fictional worlds where not all is known becomes more appealing. > Maybe Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene? Its connection to our real world is tenuous at best, I'd say. Maybe the oldes I can think of is the land of Avalon in Athurian legend? Still would have a tenuous connection to the real world.