Peruvian author Ricardo Palma (1838-1919) was one of the most popular and imitated writers in Latin America during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Hailed as "e;a feast"e; (Washington Post) and "e;a modern-day bestiary"e; (The New Yorker), Stephen Asma's On Monsters is a wide-ranging cultural and conceptual history of monsters--how they have evolved over time, what functions they have served for us, and what shapes they are likely to take in the future.
Minos and the Moderns considers three mythological complexes that enjoyed a unique surge of interest in early twentieth-century European art and literature: Europa and the bull, the minotaur and the labyrinth, and Daedalus and Icarus.
In Leaves from the Garden of Eden, Howard Schwartz, a three-time winner of the National Jewish Book Award, has gathered together one hundred of the most astonishing and luminous stories from Jewish folk tradition.
Roark Bradford's 1931 novel and 1939 play dealing with the legendary folk-hero John Henry (both titled John Henry) were extremely influential in their own time but have long been unavailable or extremely hard to find.
Winner of the 2014 Mythopoeic Myth & Fantasy Studies AwardAt the heart of the mythology of the Anglo-Scandinavian-Germanic North is the evergreen Yggdrasil, the tree of life believed to hold up the skies and unite and separate three worlds: Asgard, high in the tree, where the gods dwelled in their great halls; Middlegard, where human beings lived; and the dark underground world of Hel, home to the monstrous goddess of death.
The discovery of life on other planets would be perhaps the most momentous revelation in human history, more disorienting and more profound than either the Copernican or Darwinian revolutions, which knocked the earth from the center of the universe and humankind from its position of lofty self-regard.
From the stories suggested by the great cave paintings of the Paleolithic period to the thought experiments of modern scientists, From Olympus to Camelot provides a sweeping history of the development of the rich and varied European mythological tradition.
Exploring classic works such as the Song of Songs, the Tao Te Ching, the Rg Veda, the New Testament, and the Indonesian myth of Hainuwele, Myth: A Biography of Belief reveals the cultural energies that ancient "e;mythmakers"e; sought to corral in their creations.
Norse Mythology explores the magical myths and legends of Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Iceland and Viking-Age Greenland and outlines the way the prehistoric tales and beliefs from these regions that have remained embedded in the imagination of the world.
For centuries, poets have looked into the mirror of classical myth to show us the many ways our emotional lives are still reflected in the ancient stories of heroism, hubris, transformation, and loss that myths so eloquently tell.
The Powers of Genre describes a method for interpreting oral literature that depends upon and facilitates dialogue between insiders and outsiders to a tradition.
Classical Myth and Culture in the Cinema is a collection of essays presenting a variety of approaches to films set in ancient Greece and Rome and to films that reflect archetypal features of classical literature.
Visions of the Buddha offers a ground-breaking approach to the nature of the early discourses of the Buddha, the most foundational scriptures of Buddhist religion.
The Truth of Myth is a thorough and accessible introduction to the study of myth, surveying the intellectual history of the topic, methods for studying myth cross-culturally, and emerging trends.
This innovative study posits that myths in general, and Greek theogonic myth in particular, have a latent meaning that is responsible both for the emotional energy inherent in myths, and for the special attraction they have even to those who no longer believe in their literal meaning.
Long studied by anthropologists, historians, and linguists, oral traditions have provided a wealth of fascinating insights into unique cultural customs that span the history of humankind.
Exploring the hero's journey as a metaphor for spiritual evolution in The Epic of Gilgamesh, Homer's Iliad, and Virgil's Aeneid, and focusing in particular on the relationship of the hero to one or more "e;second selves,"e; or alter egos, Van Nortwick demonstrates how the poems address central and enduring truths about human life: that the exertion of heroic will in pursuit of glory can lead to alienation from one's own deepest self and that spiritual wholeness can only be achieved through confrontation with what appears at first to be the very negation of the self.
Boasting a rich, complex history rooted in Celtic and Christian ritual, Halloween has evolved from ethnic celebration to a blend of street festival, fright night, and vast commercial enterprise.
Esteemed scholar David Leeming, who has authored more than twelve books on mythology, here offers the first comprehensive narrative study of the mythology of the Middle East, that tumultuous region that was the cradle of civilization.
Teeming with creatures, both real and imagined, this encyclopedic study in cultural history illuminates the hidden web of connections between the Victorian fascination with fairies and their lore and the dominant preoccupations of Victorian culture at large.
Many cultures have myths about self-imitation, stories about people who pretend to be someone else pretending to be them, in effect masquerading as themselves.
Oedipus the King is the best-known play we have from the pen of Sophocles and was recognized as a masterpiece in Aristotle's Poetics, which cites the play more often than any other as an example of how to write tragedy.
Oedipus the King is the best-known play we have from the pen of Sophocles and was recognized as a masterpiece in Aristotle's Poetics, which cites the play more often than any other as an example of how to write tragedy.
Written texts of the Iliad and the Odyssey achieved an unprecedented degree of standardization after 150 BCE, but what about Homeric texts prior to the emergence of standardized written texts?
