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The Goddess in all her glory! A celebration of important and powerful goddess mythologies from around the world. This stunning collection brings together goddess mythologies from across the globe: familiar, unknown, forgotten -- spectacular! Written by pioneering storyteller Sally Pomme Clayton, whose 30-year career has focused on researching female protagonists, these tales are conjured in vivid and poetic language. The book includes information about the pattern of myths and how they are represented globally and revels in the female, exploring desire, death, and the female body. Journey from Alaska to Mesopotamia and visit ancient Persian and Aztec cultures, meeting Sedna whose fingertips become sea creatures and Persephone whose sojourn in the Underworld brings Spring. This is the most significant contemporary collection of goddess myths and encourages readers to value the female, preserve culture and re-ignite storytelling traditions.

This new edition introduces the core elements of ancient Greek and Roman narratives about immortal gods and heroic humans. It explains how myths once shaped ancient ways of thinking, and how they have fascinated and inspired artists, writers, musicians, scientists, and scholars since. In six clear and concise chapters, this book explains what myths are, sketches the main stories about divinities, heroes and heroines, and explores through specific case studies the ways in which they influenced modern culture, from Renaissance opera to contemporary video games and social movements. The second edition also features a new chapter analyzing how myths have been used in politics from antiquity to the present day. More than two dozen illustrations, maps, and charts complement the text. No prior knowledge of mythology is assumed, and the book incorporates the latest scholarship on classical mythology, providing annotated lists of further readings. Anyone who has encountered Greek or Roman myths in literature, art, or pop culture and wants to know more about the cultural contexts for the stories will benefit from this compact book. Intended for a wide readership, the second edition of Classical Mythology: The Basics continues to off er a clear introduction to the subject for undergraduates, scholars, and the general reader.

'Desde los albores del positivismo decimonónico hasta nuestros días, en el panorama universitario europeo y americano se han sucedido incontables definiciones y teorías sobre el mito. Habitualmente este tipo de relato ha sido reducido a una historia anecdótica, un pretexto introspectivo o un recurso semiótico, cuando no a una falacia sensacionalista. Tras una amplia introducción encaminada a comprender los factores que dificultan la comprensión del mito en nuestra cultura contemporánea (globalización, relativismo e inmanencia), este libro profundiza en la noción de trascendencia sobrenatural sagrada, categoría basilar para una correcta distinción entre el mito y otros correlatos del imaginario: esoterismo, fantasía, magia, ciencia ficción. Seguidamente, este volumen ofrece un estudio del mito desde dentro del mito. Sostiene que el mito es un relato funcional, simbólico y temático de acontecimientos extraordinarios con referente trascendente sobrenatural sagrado, carentes, en principio, de testimonio histórico, y remitentes a una cosmogonía o una escatología individuales o colectivas, pero siempre absolutas. La Mitocrítica cultural aquí defendida sale así al paso de la reflexión académica que ha confundido el mito con otros conceptos anejos pero distintos (símbolo, tema, arquetipo, prototipo, héroe) y recusa su utilización servil por otras ciencias (antropología, sociología, política, psicoanálisis). Lejos de ser ignoradas, estas disciplinas científicas y sus respectivas técnicas han sido puestas a contribución para comprender los diversos procesos de mitificación y desmitificación operados en nuestro tiempo, tanto sobre auténticos personajes míticos como sobre personajes históricos y personajes literarios supuestamente mitológicos. La novedad de esta propuesta interdisciplinar no es abordada en abstracto, sino contrastada a la luz de breves o extensos análisis de numerosos textos literarios traídos a colación entre las principales mitologías de nuestro entorno cultural (grecolatinas, bíblicas, nórdicas, celtas, eslavas, etcétera). Esta primera teoría omnicomprensiva del mito proporciona además una metodología, una hermenéutica y una epistemología: da pautas claras para localizar el mito en cualquier relato mítico, propone claves heurísticas para su interpretación objetiva y provee la mitocrítica de unas bases sólidas para reivindicarse como ciencia autónoma.'

The articles in The Bounds of Myth, edited by Gustavo Esparza and Nassim Bravo, shed light on the internal shapes of the mythological discourse, showing the way in which myth borders religion, science, literature, theology, i.e., other forms of rationality. The contributing authors of the volume claim that myth is a valid form of thought and that the former evolves within other forms of discourse, even though its composition is independent and even precedes the latter. The articles collected here demonstrate the importance of myth as a form of thought that is in constant development, a feature that shows in turn that in spite of its remote and archaic origin, myth remains a valuable and relevant tool to interpret our own culture. Contributors are: Nassim Bravo, Claudio Calabrese, Teresa Enríquez, Gustavo Esparza, Ethel Junco, Enrique Martínez, Cecilia Sabido and Jon Stewart.

Como la Ifigenia apoyada a la izquierda del templete en la imagen que ilustra la portada de este volumen, cada uno de los autores del mismo trae consigo una llave. Con ella se invita al lector a acceder a diferentes lugares desde los que contemplar la complejidad del mito griego, tan presente en la cultura actual como difícil de comprender si nos quedamos quietos y lo observamos desde una única perspectiva.Un primer bloque de capítulos ofrece las claves para aproximarse a las diferentes teorías sobre el mito, a la relación de este con la mitografía y a la compleja conexión entre mito e imagen. En segundo lugar, se abren las puertas a diversos géneros literarios que colocaron al mito en un lugar central: la épica, la lírica, la tragedia y la retórica. A continuación, se dedican una serie de capítulos al estudio de las relaciones del mito con las llamadas religiones mistéricas y con la magia, así como a su papel en los orígenes del cristianismo y su conexión con la política. La idea de observar el mito desde diferentes lugares está muy presente, en fin, en el enfoque de la última sección, en la cual las claves las aportan la teoría de género, la psicología evolutiva, la arqueología y el cine.Un último capítulo invita al lector a adentrarse en la aventura comparatista con el hilo conductor de los relatos sobre el diluvio, un motivo que se incluye en el catálogo de “calamidades universales”. Inmersos como estamos en otra pandémica catástrofe, las editoras agradecen su esfuerzo a cuantos han hecho posible que este volumen llegara a puerto seguro.

Explore the magic of the Arthurian legends The first collection of Joseph Campbell's writings and lectures on the Arthurian romances of the Middle Ages, a central focus of his celebrated scholarship, edited and introduced by Arthurian scholar Evans Lansing Smith, PhD, the chair of Mythological Studies at Pacifica Graduate Institute. Throughout his life, Joseph Campbell was deeply engaged in the study of the Grail Quests and Arthurian legends of the European Middle Ages. In this new volume of the Collected Works of Joseph Campbell, editor Evans Lansing Smith collects Campbell's writings and lectures on Arthurian legends, including his never-before-published master's thesis on Arthurian myth, “A Study of the Dolorous Stroke.” Campbell's writing captures the incredible stories of such figures as Merlin, Gawain, and Guinevere as well as the larger patterns and meanings revealed in these myths. Merlin's death and Arthur receiving Excalibur from the Lady of the Lake, for example, are not just vibrant stories but also central to the mythologist's thinking.The Arthurian myths opened the world of comparative mythology to Campbell, turning his attention to the Near and Far Eastern roots of myth. Calling the Arthurian romances the world's first “secular mythology,” Campbell found metaphors in them for human stages of growth, development, and psychology. The myths exemplify the kind of love Campbell called amor, in which individuals become more fully themselves through connection. Campbell's infectious delight in his discoveries makes this volume essential for anyone intrigued by the stories we tell—and the stories behind them.

Mythic Imagination Today is an illustrated guide to the interpenetration of mythology and science throughout the ages. This monograph brings alive our collective need for story to guide the rules, roles, and relationships of everyday life. Whereas mythology is born primarily of perception and imagination, science emerges from systematic observation and experimentation. Both disciplines arise from endless curiosity about the workings of the Universe combined with creative urges to transform inner and outer worlds. Both disciplines are located within open neural wiring that gives rise to uniquely human capacities for learning, memory, and metaphor. Terry Marks-Tarlow explores the origins of story within the social brain; mythmakers and myths from multiple cultures; and how contemporary sciences of chaos and complexity theories and fractal geometry dovetail with ancient wisdom. The ancient Greek myth of Psyche and Eros is unpacked in detail—origins of the very concepts of ‘psyche'and ‘psychology'.

'Mythology gives us a direct connection with our human lineage, taking us out of the bubble of our modern worlds and into a narrative where time is elastic.'This wondrous encyclopaedia gathers together over 100 myths from across the globe, featuring Mesopotamian creation stories, Roman legends, Norse epics, indigenous tales and more. These abridged stories open a window into the ancient landscapes, histories and beliefs that make up our cultural inheritance. These retellings include: • Asgard (Scandinavia) • Bran the Blessed (Britain) • Mount Olympus (Greece) • Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (Middle East) Discover the roots of many recognizable characters, places and tales in each chapter. Made for easy reference, readers can thumb-through this illustrated treasure trove of parables, folktales and wonderful epics, derived from over 30 diverse cultures.

'Como para San Agustín, que comparó la belleza de la historia humana con una melodía, la sucesión de los siglos también es para Ginzburg un canto que nadie puede escuchar en su totalidad. Siguiendo huellas, recurriendo a metáforas, empleando perspectivas que acercan lo extraño o provocan extrañamiento sobre lo familiar, el historiador Carlo Ginzburg persigue la reconstrucción de esa música a partir de fragmentos diversos. Del conjunto de escritos recogidos en Mitos, emblemas, indicios, un clásico de la historiografía moderna, destaca el ensayo'Indicios. Raíces de un paradigma indiciario', de gran impacto y amplia repercusión en el ámbito académico, en donde Ginzburg asienta las bases de la microhistoria cultural: una disciplina que estudia cómo se desarrollan las sociedades a través de hechos cotidianos y aparentemente intrascendentes, pero que expresan los desarrollos histórico-sociales de cada momento. En él, Ginzburg analiza el funcionamiento del'paradigma indiciario', un método de conocimiento de la realidad utilizado desde los albores de los tiempos que no necesitaba apelar a la construcción de la leyes, generalizaciones o regularidades. Empleando desde épocas remotas por los cazadores primitivos y difundido a lo largo del siglo XIX entre intelectuales de distintas procedencias como G. Morelli (crítico de arte), Arthur Conan Doyle (creador del detective Sherlock Holmes) o Sigmund Freud, el paradigma de los indicios propone un conocimiento histórico basado en la recopilación e interconexión morfológica de huellas, rastros o síntomas.'

Comparing and evaluating modern theories of myth, this book offers an overview of explanations of myth from the social sciences and the humanities.This ambitious collection of essays uses the viewpoints of a variety of disciplines - psychology, anthropology, sociology, politics, philosophy, religious studies, and literature. Each discipline advocates a generalization about the origin, the function, and the subject matter of myth. The subject is always not what makes any myth distinct but what makes all myths'myth'. The book is divided into five sections, covering topics such as myth and psychoanalysis, hero myths, myth and science, myth and politics, and myth and the physical world. Chapters engage with an array of theorists--among them, Freud, Jung, Campbell, Rank, Winnicott, Tylor, Frazer, Malinowski, Levy-Bruhl, Levi-Strauss, Harrison, and Burkert. The book considers whether myth still plays a role in our lives is one of the issues considered, showing that myths arise anything but spontaneously. They are the result of a specific need, which varies from theory to theory.This is a fascinating survey by a leading voice in the study of myth. As such, it will be of much interest to scholars of myth and how it interacts with Sociology, Anthropology, Politics and Economics.

Mythology--circulated in sacred stories (myths) and their reenactments (rituals)--is the basis of any society's religion, and religion is an essential key to identity. Mythology's meaning depends on the elaboration of identity in cultural metaphors that are at the same time ecological (arising from a society's environmental exploitation), sociological (based on indigenous social relations) and ideological (couched in terms of a society's worldview). But tellingly, these metaphors are embodied in anthropomorphic spirits, fostering a deep sense of identification with those spirits as well as with individuals who share in one's spiritual devotions. This study examines mythology from a global perspective, citing case studies in cultural traditions from Africa, Europe, Oceania, Native America and elsewhere.

These are the stories that have been told from the dawn of humanity and handed down, over millennia, to the present day. From the ancient indigenous narratives of'The Dreaming'in Australia to the classical founding tales of some of the greatest empires of Western antiquity, these accounts are at once creative works of art as well as valuable sources of early history and sociology.Terri-ann White has brought together a range of fascinating stories from around the world. Each reflects familiar and universal themes such as humour, fear, lust, familial love, romantic love, mortality, a reverence for the divine, and a preoccupation with the meaning of life.

A brilliant lyrical exploration of how modern science illuminates what it means to be human, from the award-winning author of The Price of AltruismWe no longer think, like the ancient Chinese did, that the world was hatched from an egg, or, like the Maori, that it came from the tearing-apart of a love embrace. The Greeks told of a tempestuous Hera and a cunning Zeus, but we now use genes and natural selection to explain fear and desire, and physics to demystify the workings of the universe.Science is an astounding achievement, but are we really any wiser than the ancients? Has science revealed the secrets of fate and immortality? Has it provided protection from jealousy or love? There are those who believe that science has replaced faith, but must it also be a death knell for mythology?Evolutions brings to life the latest scientific thinking on the birth of the universe and the solar system, the journey from a single cell all the way to our human minds. Reawakening our sense of wonder and terror at the world around us and within us, Oren Harman uses modern science to create new and original mythologies. Here are the earth and the moon presenting a cosmological view of motherhood, a panicking mitochondrion introducing sex and death to the world, the loneliness of consciousness emerging from the memory of an octopus, and the birth of language in evolution summoning humankind's struggle with truth. Science may not solve our existential puzzles, but like the age-old legends, its magical discoveries can help us continue the never-ending search.

Explore the mysteries of myth with a master In these pages, the Collected Works of Joseph Campbell presents twelve eclectic, far-ranging, and brilliant essays gathered together for the first time. The essays explore myth in all its dimensions: its history; its influence on art, literature, and culture; and its role in everyday life. This second volume of Campbell's essays (following The Flight of the Wild Gander) brings together his uncollected writings from 1959 to 1987. Written at the height of Campbell's career―and showcasing the lively intelligence that made him the twentieth century's premier writer on mythology―these essays investigate the profound links between myth, the individual, and societies ancient and contemporary. Covering diverse terrain ranging from psychology to the occult, from Thomas Mann to the Grateful Dead, from Goddess spirituality to Freud and Jung, these playful and erudite writings reveal the threads of myth woven deeply into the fabric of our culture and our lives.

Petite Bibliothèque

Il mito è il racconto sorgivo sulla nascita della vita, del pensiero e del mondo, che si esprime nella parola e nel silenzio, nell'arte e nella preghiera, nel gioco, nel canto e nella poesia elementare della vita. Non è verità né illusione, abita su un altro piano: è ordine nella bellezza. Sul mito si fondano la storia, la politica, perfino il cinema e la pubblicità; mitico è l'amore e così l'infanzia. Quando però i miti sono negati, crescono al loro posto idoli e surrogati, come quelli che ci circondano oggi. In questo libro Marcello Veneziani si propone di recuperare la dimensione autentica del mito per porlo al centro dell'esistenza e rispondere così a un desiderio profondo e diffuso di «vita superiore». Dopo la disfatta di religione e filosofia, per compensare lo strapotere della scienza e contendere la sovranità alla tecnica e alla finanza, non resta che affidarsi al «mitopensiero». Senza miti, infatti, la vita non è affatto più libera, più autonoma, più razionale; solo più povera, più insensata, più labile. All'uomo di oggi – scrive Veneziani – «il mito non offre profitti ma fondamenti, non assicura vantaggi ma significati. Dona bellezza, irraggia gli eventi e illumina i volti».

“Filled with cool cocktail-party tidbits, Matt Kaplan considers how things that were once the stuff of legends could one day become reality” (The Atlantic) in this fun scientific inquiry into the mystical places and magical objects of ancient and contemporary lore—from the fountain of youth, to love potions, to Super Mario's mushrooms.Can migrations of birds foretell our future? Do phases of the moon hold sway over our lives? Are there sacred springs that cure the ill? What is the best way to brew a love potion? How do we create mutant humans who regenerate like Wolverine? “In Science of the Magical, Matt Kaplan takes us on a journey spiced with the wonders of myth, history and art, leavened with impeccable research, endlessly fascinating. And the result is both a compelling read and a deeply thoughtful exploration of the world around us and the ways we seek to understand it” (Deborah Blum, author of The Poisoner's Handbook). Like Ken Jennings and Mary Roach, Kaplan serves as a friendly armchair guide to the world of the supernatural. From the strengthening powers of Viking mead to the super soldiers in movies such as Captain America, Kaplan explores cultures and time periods to point out that there is often much more to these enduring magical narratives than mere fantasy. Informative and entertaining, Science of the Magical is “a sprightly survey” (The Wall Street Journal) and “a joy to read…highly recommended” (Library Journal, starred review).

Soubor textu Úvahy o mýtu zahrnuje mýty starozákonní, řecké, středověké, novověké a současné, tj. mýty počátku třetího milénia. Autor vysvětluje pojem mýtu, všímá si těch, které se tradují v literární, divadelní, filmové a dnes už i internetové podobě: stvoření světa, prvotní hřích, potopa, české legendy, legendy nacionální, zrod mediálních hvězd, budování obrazu politiků… I k pasážím zachycujícím historii dávno minulou přidává autor současný rámec a pro mladší čtenáře, zejména pro studenty, uvádí méně známá fakta. Kapitoly věnované výkladu některých českých, československých a opět českých dějinných událostí jsou inspirací k tvořivému přístupu k mýtům obecně.

Mysticism, Myth and Celtic Identity explores how the mythical and mystical past informs national imaginations. Building on notions of invented tradition and myths of the nation, it looks at the power of narrative and fiction to shape identity, with particular reference to the British and Celtic contexts. The authors consider how aspects of the past are reinterpreted or reimagined in a variety of ways to give coherence to desired national groupings, or groups aspiring to nationhood and its ‘defence'. The coverage is unusually broad in its historical sweep, dealing with work from prehistory to the contemporary, with a particular emphasis on the period from the eighteenth century to the present. The subject matter includes notions of ancient deities, Druids, Celticity, the archaeological remains of pagan religions, traditional folk tales, racial and religious myths and ethnic politics, and the different types of returns and hauntings that can recycle these ideas in culture. Innovative and interdisciplinary, the scholarship in Mysticism, Myth and Celtic Identity is mainly literary but also geographical and historical and draws on religious studies, politics and the social sciences. Thus the collection offers a stimulatingly broad number of new viewpoints on a matter of great topical relevance: national identity and the politicization of its myths.

Why were Prometheus and Loki envisioned as chained to rocks? What was the Golden Calf? Why are mirrors believed to carry bad luck? How could anyone think that mortals like Perseus, Beowulf, and St. George actually fought dragons, since dragons don't exist? Strange though they sound, however, these'myths'did not begin as fiction. This absorbing book shows that myths originally transmitted real information about real events and observations, preserving the information sometimes for millennia within nonliterate societies. Geologists'interpretations of how a volcanic cataclysm long ago created Oregon's Crater Lake, for example, is echoed point for point in the local myth of its origin. The Klamath tribe saw it happen and passed down the story--for nearly 8,000 years. We, however, have been literate so long that we've forgotten how myths encode reality. Recent studies of how our brains work, applied to a wide range of data from the Pacific Northwest to ancient Egypt to modern stories reported in newspapers, have helped the Barbers deduce the characteristic principles by which such tales both develop and degrade through time. Myth is in fact a quite reasonable way to convey important messages orally over many generations--although reasoning back to the original events is possible only under rather specific conditions. Our oldest written records date to 5,200 years ago, but we have been speaking and mythmaking for perhaps 100,000. This groundbreaking book points the way to restoring some of that lost history and teaching us about human storytelling.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • An extraordinary book that reveals how the themes and symbols of ancient narratives continue to bring meaning to birth, death, love, and war. The Power of Myth launched an extraordinary resurgence of interest in Joseph Campbell and his work. A preeminent scholar, writer, and teacher, he has had a profound influence on millions of people—including Star Wars creator George Lucas. To Campbell, mythology was the “song of the universe, the music of the spheres.” With Bill Moyers, one of America's most prominent journalists, as his thoughtful and engaging interviewer, The Power of Myth touches on subjects from modern marriage to virgin births, from Jesus to John Lennon, offering a brilliant combination of intelligence and wit. From stories of the gods and goddesses of ancient Greece and Rome to traditions of Buddhism, Hinduism and Christianity, a broad array of themes are considered that together identify the universality of human experience across time and culture. An impeccable match of interviewer and subject, a timeless distillation of Campbell's work, The Power of Myth continues to exert a profound influence on our culture.

Grundlage ist eine Kritik der Moderne, die alles (auch den Menschen) als bloßes Objekt, rein technisch behandelt. Dagegen werden die Homerischen Helden noch als solche, nicht als Objekt irgendwelcher Wissenschaft oder Theorie dargestellt, in ihrer vollen Lebensfülle, wie das auch noch Jesus in seinen Gleichnissen tat. Zum Schluss wird der negative Weg nachgezeichnet, der beginnend mit Platon über Augustinus zu Descartes mit seiner analytisch-zerstörenden Zergliederung von Welt und Mensch führte.

Frankenstein. Werewolves. Dracula. These images aren't just imaginary creatures—they're also powerful symbols of the body. The body can be thought of as a machine made up of parts like Frankenstein's monster, or as a creature ruled by animalistic urges, or as an entity that's vulnerable to infection from a diseased fiend. In The Body of Frankenstein's Monster, Cecil Helman, M.D., expands our view of our bodies by exploring its cultural and artistic representations.

'I hadn't, till I really started digging, gauged the fierce intensity of the need for myth in the human psyche, of any age, or sensed the variety of motives dictating that need,'writes Peter Green in the introduction to this wide-ranging collection of essays on classical mythology and the mythic experience. Using the need for myth as the starting point for exploring a number of topics in Greek mythology and history, Green advances new ideas about why the human urge to make myths persists across the millennia and why the borderland between mythology and history can sometimes be hard to map. Green looks at both specific problems in classical mythology and larger theoretical issues. His explorations underscore how mythic expression opens a door into non-rational and quasi-rational modes of thought in which it becomes possible to rewrite painful truths and unacceptable history—which is, Green argues, a dangerous enterprise. His study of the intersections between classical mythology and Greek history ultimately drives home a larger point,'the degree of mythification and deception (of oneself no less than of others) of which the human mind is capable.'

Candace Slater takes us on a journey into the Amazon that will forever change our ideas about one of the most written-about, filmed, and fought-over areas in the world. In this book she deftly traces a rich and marvelous legacy of stories and images of the Amazon that reflects the influence of widely different groups of people--conquistadors, corporate executives, subsistence farmers --over the centuries. A careful, passionate consideration of one of the most powerful environmental icons of our time, Entangled Edens makes clear that we cannot defend the Amazon's dazzling array of plants and animals without comprehending its equally astonishing human and cultural diversity. Early explorers describe encounters with fearsome warrior women and tell of golden cities complete with twenty-four-carat kings. Contemporary miners talk about a living, breathing gold. TV documentaries decry deforestation and mercury poisoning. How do these disparate visions of the Amazon relate to one another? As she fits the pieces of the puzzle together, Slater shows how today's widespread portrayal of the region as a fragile rain forest on the brink of annihilation is every bit as likely as earlier depictions to obscure important aspects of this immense and complicated region. In this book, Slater draws on her fifteen years of experience collecting stories and oral histories among many different groups of people in the Amazon. Throughout Entangled Edens, the voices of contemporary Amazonians mingle with the analyses of such writers as Claude Lévi-Strauss, Theodore Roosevelt, and nineteenth-century naturalist Henry Walter Bates. Slater convinces us that these stories and ideas, together with an understanding of their origins and ongoing impact, are as critical as scientific analyses in the fight to preserve the rain forest.

Mythology is the universal tongue of human imagination. As a tool for self-discovery, mythology is also a way of gaining access to the secrets of the psyche. The Mythic Imagination is a quest for the ancient source of vision and meaning in the world of dream, myth, and archetype. In the footsteps of Joseph Campbell, Stephen Larsen guides the reader on a journey through the mythic landscape of the psyche. His insight is that all of us, at one time or another, are engaged in creating personal mythologies that reflect the larger myths of the culture and our own deepest desires and aspirations. This book is a guide for bringing the deeper mythic structures of experience into awareness, for learning to recognize the archetypal content embedded in our dreams and daydreams, feelings, beliefs, relationships, conscious creations, and behavior. Student and authorized biographer of Joseph Campbell, Larsen teaches us how to bring myth into our lives.Reissue of the Bantam bestseller.

Hercules, Zeus, Thor, Gilgamesh--these are the figures that leap to mind when we think of myth. But to David Leeming, myths are more than stories of deities and fantastic beings from non-Christian cultures. Myth is at once the most particular and the most universal feature of civilization, representing common concerns that each society voices in its own idiom. Whether an Egyptian story of creation or the big-bang theory of modern physics, myth is metaphor, mirroring our deepest sense of ourselves in relation to existence itself. Now, in The World of Myth, Leeming provides a sweeping anthology of myths, ranging from ancient Egypt and Greece to the Polynesian islands and modern science. We read stories of great floods from the ancient Babylonians, Hebrews, Chinese, and Mayans; tales of apocalypse from India, the Norse, Christianity, and modern science; myths of the mother goddess from Native American Hopi culture and James Lovelock's Gaia. Leeming has culled myths from Aztec, Greek, African, Australian Aboriginal, Japanese, Moslem, Hittite, Celtic, Chinese, and Persian cultures, offering one of the most wide-ranging collections of what he calls the collective dreams of humanity. More important, he has organized these myths according to a number of themes, comparing and contrasting how various societies have addressed similar concerns, or have told similar stories. In the section on dying gods, for example, both Odin and Jesus sacrifice themselves to renew the world, each dying on a tree. Such traditions, he proposes, may have their roots in societies of the distant past, which would ritually sacrifice their kings to renew the tribe. In The World of Myth, David Leeming takes us on a journey'not through a maze of falsehood but through a marvellous world of metaphor,'metaphor for'the story of the relationship between the known and the unknown, both around us and within us.'Fantastic, tragic, bizarre, sometimes funny, the myths he presents speak of the most fundamental human experience, a part of what Joseph Campbell called'the wonderful song of the soul's high adventure.'

Advocates and demonstrates women's path to personal wholeness and self-healing through an eco-feminist, reader-response analysis of four fictional narratives.Women's paths to personal wholeness and self-healing are explored through an eco-feminist, reader-response analysis of four fictional narratives. Included in these are Mary Austin, Harriette Arnow, Ellen Galford, Ibis Gomez-Vega, Sally Carrighar.Jean Troy-Smith is Visiting Assistant Professor in the English Department at State University of New York, College at Oswego.