'It will be read and re-read not as a treatise but as a story: one of the most extraordinary that has ever been written of the origins of Western self-consciousness' Simon SchamaThe marriage of Cadmus and Harmony was the last time the gods of Olympus feasted alongside mortals.
Meticulously selected and artfully recreated, the selection of stories in Italian is vast and ranges geographically from Corsica and Sicily to Venice and the Alps.
Combining traditional myth, oral history and re-worked European legend to depict an ancient realm of heroism and wonder, the seven tales collected here are among the most fantastical of all the Norse romances.
Warrior-prince Rama is about to be crowned Young King, when he hears the devastating news that his father, King of Ayodhya, has been tricked into banishing him to the forest.
Endymion, Pelops, Daedalus, Pygmalion what are the stories behind these and the hundreds of other familiar names from Greek mythology names that recur throughout the history of European culture?
Compiled by an unknown scribe in Iceland around 1270, and based on sources dating back centuries earlier, these mythological and heroic poems tell of gods and mortals from an ancient era: the giant-slaying Thor, the doomed V lsung family, the Hel-ride of Brynhild and the cruelty of Atli the Hun.
Kormak's Saga, The Saga of Hallfred Troublesome-Poet, The Saga of Gunnlaug Serpent-Tongue, The Saga of Bjorn, Champion of the Hitardal People, Viglund's Saga Set in the farmsteads of Viking age Iceland at a time when the old ethos of honour and heroic adventure merged with new ideas of romantic infatuation, each of these sagas features poet heroes, complex love triangles, and travels to foreign lands.
Gathering a wide range of traditional African myths, this compelling new collection offers tales of heroes battling mighty serpents and monstrous birds, brutal family conflict and vengeance, and desperate migrations across vast and alien lands.
A comprehensive, scholarly accessible study, in which the authors draw upon poetry and mythology, art and literature, archaeology and psychology to show how the myth of the goddess has been lost from our formal Judeo-Christian images of the divine.
Myths and Legends of the Celts is a fascinating and wide-ranging introduction to the mythology of the peoples who inhabited the northwestern fringes of Europe - from Britain and the Isle of Man to Gaul and Brittany.
THE DEFINITIVE AND COMPREHENSIVE RETELLING OF NORSE MYTHOLOGY 'Burning ice, biting flame; that is how life began' The extraordinary Scandinavian myth cycle is one of the most enduring, exciting, dramatic and compelling of the world's great stories.
Witchcraft, astrology, divination and every kind of popular magic flourished in England during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, from the belief that a blessed amulet could prevent the assaults of the Devil to the use of the same charms to recover stolen goods.
Drawing on myth, folklore and history, the stories of the Mabinogion passed from generations of storytellers before they were written down in the thirteenth century in the form we know.
Steinbeck's first posthumously published work, The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights is a reinterpretation of tales from Malory's Morte d'Arthur.
Mr Jack has been nimble and he s been quick, searching through the history of nursery rhymes and he s found out all kind of plum tales, just like little Jack Horner.
Part of a new series Legends from the Ancient North, The Elder Edda is one of the classic books that influenced JRR Tolkien's The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings'So the company of men led a careless life,All was well with them: until One beganTo encompass evil, an enemy from hell.
Part of a new series Legends from the Ancient North, The Wanderer tells the classic tales that influenced JRR Tolkien's The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings'So the company of men led a careless life,All was well with them: until One beganTo encompass evil, an enemy from hell.
First recorded 1500 years ago, but taking its origins from a far earlier oral tradition, the Pancatantra is ascribed by legend to the celebrated, half-mythical teacher Visnu Sarma.
Hatfield's Herbal is the story of how people all over Britain have used its wild plants throughout history, for reasons magical, mystical and medicinal.
'It was a very momentous day, the day on which I was to be slaughtered' Bringing together tales of melancholy and madness, nightmare and fantasy, this is a new collection of the most haunting German stories from the past 200 years.
Sir James George Frazer (1854-1941) caught the popular imagination with his vast and enterprising comparative study of the beliefs and institutions of mankind, which in its third edition numbered 12 volumes.
The first anthology ever to present the entire range of ancient Greek and Roman stories-from myths and fairy tales to jokesCaptured centaurs and satyrs, talking animals, people who suddenly change sex, men who give birth, the temporarily insane and the permanently thick-witted, delicate sensualists, incompetent seers, a woman who remembers too much, a man who cannot laugh-these are just some of the colorful characters who feature in the unforgettable stories that ancient Greeks and Romans told in their daily lives.
A delightful collection of modern Chinese talesThe Dragon Daughter and Other Lin Lan Fairy Tales brings together forty-two magical Chinese tales, most appearing for the first time in English.