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Subject Area: Mythology
Lombardi, Chiara2021 1-4955-0890-0 560 pages
Hardcover book/30 color images. From the author: "The analysis of the figure of Isis appears to be distinguished by studies that have only rarely been devoted to an overall view of the role of the goddess. ...The purpose of [this] study is precisely to give an organic contribution to the different material on Isis so far published. But [the] goal is also to understand who Isis is originally and how Isis has been transformed over time. ...[T]his is not a mutation of her original being, but an extension of her prerogatives, due both to the typicality of the Egyptian religion, and to her character that binds her deeply to human feeling."
Pointer, Fritz
2012 0-7734-4087-9 328 pages
Professor Pointer is the first person to offer an English translation of the Epic of Kambili, an African heroic myth. The book is careful to point out that this text deserves to be read by myth scholars and shows that the literary tradition of epic myth-telling extends to Africa through its oral folklore. The author argues that the story should be treated as an epic myth that was pieced together by different authors over several centuries, which may or may not have been the result of observing real events. It may have been an imaginative narrative representing cultural norms with verbal symbolism, thereby putting it in a different tradition to the European epics, while also showing similar conventions of genre.
Morrow, John A.
2010 0-7734-3660-X 364 pages
This study explores the Amerindian elements in the works of Ernesto Cardenal, the revolutionary poet-priest from Nicaragua. The work examines the three main currents which flow through Cardenal’s poetry: the socio-political current, the religious current, and the indigenous current.
Wintersteen, Benjamin
2010 0-7734-3688-X 180 pages
This book examines the religious, mythological and performance elements of the traditional Afro-Caribbean street festival. Using the theories of performance, political economy and symbolic analysis, this work elucidates how elements of African, European and South American cultures interact to produce a unique understanding of the colonial and post-colonial experience.
Losada, Jose Manuel
1997 0-7734-8450-7 236 pages
This bibliography provides a wide range of references under three principal headings: 1.) Versions; 2.) Critical Studies (books and articles); 3.) Translations. It pays particular attention to the significant authors in the field: Tirso de Molina, Sorrilla, Molière, Mozart, Byron, Shaw, etc. It takes account of all the latest artistic and critical works in the fields. It limits itself strictly to the different versions of the Don Juan myth (i.e., there are no entries on other seducers such as Casanova or Lovelace). The bibliography also provides a list of translations from around the Western world.
Alyal, Amina
2010 0-7734-3798-3 292 pages
This volume develops recent critical work on myth, as well as alluding to seminal if superseded works in the field. The collection explores ways in which this dynamic mythmaking process has taken place — and continues to take place — in contemporary art and thought.
Yanes-Fernandez, Inti
2023 1-4955-1088-3 624 pages
"The argument of the book demonstrates not only how Iberian and British authors adapt these two key historical figures as paradigmatic Christian heroes of historical importance. It also argues that both legends draw on tales and images of earlier iconic figures from the Greco-Roman tradition, the military saints of Byzantium." -Jennifer Goodman Wollock (Foreword)
McCully, Robert S.
1991 0-88946-498-7 102 pages
Takes up where Heinrich Zimmer left off in The King and the Corpse, in which Zimmer takes the position that the ancient symbolic tales and scripts cannot be pinned to a particular theory, as they are in Bettelheim's Freudian approach or in Marie von Franz's Jungian analysis. Examines six well-known fairy tales, listening for the many-faceted intimations common to all enduring art forms. Considers fairy tales as retold dreams, nets that catch hidden psychological realities embedded in the folk-soul, common to any age or time.
Eriksson, Edward
2014 0-7734-4257-X 204 pages
Written as a companion piece to complement Professor Eriksson’s prior groundbreaking analysis, The Appearance of the Mythic Hero in the Twelve Seasons of Nature, this text, focusing on the heroine’s experience, does more than just provide the other half to the hero’s journey. Instead, The Heroine In Literature and Filam as Expressive of the Twelve Natural Seasons further develops Eriksson’s original insight in a thought-provoking analysis that comprehensively details the correspondences between the dramas of human relationships and the seasons of life that shape the feminine quest for fulfillment within a larger cosmological paradigm.
The heroine in literature and film is an expression of seasonal occurrence. Her behavior exhibits, symbolically, the response of the earth to the sun at a given time of the year, beginning at the March equinox and proceeding through twelve seasons. She assumes, then, twelve distinct characterizations. Her conflicts, successes, and failures reflect the natural conditions of Early Spring, Mid-Spring, Late Spring, and so on, in an aesthetic development that converts traditional mythic dynamics, based in agriculture, into story lines in ancient and modern configurations. Her character in a given season suggests the dynamism of that season as reinterpreted into the drama of human relationships.
Rich, Janet Bubar
2014 0-7734-0070-2 116 pages
This book honors Hestia, the goddess of the hearth. It fills the gaping void in exclusive scholarship on Hestia and explores her as a pop culture icon in a quest to grasp her relevance for people today. Thinking about Hestia as an archetype of focus and centeredness may offer soulful refuge from the e-chatter overload that people face in their daily lives. It may help fulfill contemporary yearnings for authenticity and wholeness within human hearts and souls by offering us a path homeward, back to connections with people’s inner selves.
Vemsani, Lavanya
2006 0-7734-5723-2 244 pages
This book studies the evolution of Balarma in Vaiavism through comparative analysis of Balarma stories from selected Hindu puras: the Harivama (HV), the Viu pura (Vi.pu), the Brahma pura (Br.pu), and the Bhgavata pura (Bh.pu). Through careful analysis of Balarma stories from these texts, the author argues that Balarma was a multifaceted deity of considerable importance in early Vaiavism. The modifications introduced in the earliest stories reveal a process whereby Balarma’s popularity and status declined, and he became a minor deity as Ka grew in importance. In this process, Balarma’s personality is modified from his association with food, abundance, fertility and protection to that of an ordinary warrior.
The author demonstrates that the early supremacy and personality of Balarma is reflected in the depiction of this deity in select Jain texts: the Vasudevahid (VH), the Harivamapurna (HVP), the Cauppannamahpurisacariyam (CMC) and the Trialpuruacaritra (TSP). A comparison of Hindu and Jain pura stories of Balarma also reveal that the Jain Balarma stories are derived from independent sources other than the Hindu puras.
A study of the Balarma stories also contributes to current scholarship on the textual history of the Hindu puras. The stories are analyzed, divided into a series of plots and compared across the different texts. The author shows that changes to these basic plots indicate the evolution of the story and suggests that the more different a story is from the basic story, the later it must be while the less different the story, the closer to contemporary it must be. A comparison of the stories indicates that the HV was the source of the Vi.pu, which served as the source for the Br.pu and Bh.pu. A comparison of the latter two texts reveals that the Bh.pu is the last of the texts, while the Br.pu shows a combination of early and late stories. This pattern is consistent with what scholars working on the puras have described.
Prioreschi, Plinio
1990 0-88946-142-2 504 pages
This book examines death from a biological and historical point of view, and its impact on human thinking. The problems of unexplained death, the criteria of death, and its meaning in the light of the Second Law of Thermodynamics are discussed. The answers given by philosophy and the sociological aspects of the phenomena related to the care of the terminally ill, to mercy killing, to suicide and to the death penalty, are also investigated. The thesis supported is that the fear of death is the motivation behind our need to accomplish anything (be it having children or getting the Nobel Prize) that will allow us to survive death. The primary cause of most of our actions in fact, are traced to our desire to achieve some form of immortality. The fear of death is considered to be life’s main energy source. In sum, the book finds that fear of death is the motive behind the human need to accomplish anything at all and discusses care of the terminally ill, mercy killing, suicide, and the death penalty.
Loewen, Gregory V.
2007 0-7734-5508-6 252 pages
Why do people, in our modern age of rationality, science, and materialism, commence the formation and celebration of the irrational, the unscientific, and the immaterial? What anxieties drive us to escape the cold light of the empirical? What desires are left unfulfilled by the premises and promises of technocracy and market capital? What beliefs are unbelievable, and what do we wish to avoid remembering at the cost of forgetting the history of ourselves? This book explores these questions with a combination of analyses of structures which impose themselves upon our thinking and create for us templates of prejudice and spaces of judgment, and a variety of qualitative case studies taken from many of the somewhat occlusive and tricky fjords of human experience.
Ledgerwood, Mikle Dave
1997 0-7734-8462-0 232 pages
This study deals with the development of different 19th and 20th century views of the Western-Hemisphere "Indian". Pays special attention is paid to Brazilian, Peruvian, French, and English Canadian literatures, and the genre of the novel as well as the historical background of these myths. It includes a discussion of what a literary myth is, how it may be derived from a series of microtexts, and how these texts may be compared by the creation of tables detailing semiotically certain semantic attributes of the native New-World inhabitant.
Chapman, Tobias
1989 0-88946-340-9 120 pages
Proposes that the most serious modern objection made to mystical beliefs - not that they are false, but that they are meaningless - is far too simplistic; and provides arguments for certain distinctively mystical doctrines from the point of view of contemporary analytical philosophy.
Steadman, John
1998 0-7734-2829-1
Sections include Mythologies; Satires and Lighter Verses; Meditations, East and West.
Gagnon, Mireille
2008 0-7734-5112-9 176 pages
This study is a first in depth look at a contemporary witchcraft, known as Wicca, in the francophone province of Quebec in Canada. Taking an ethnographic approach and placing itself within the context of two different languages and world, views this study evaluates the Wiccan experience in Quebec, arguing that this particular group claims a religious rather than spiritual relation with the world.
Matos-Nin, Ingrid E.
2010 0-7734-3718-5 172 pages
This work examines some of the sources that María de Zayas uses to present some of her concepts about the devil, evil, men, honor and love in relationship to the supernatural. Contrary to some modern critics, the Spanish people of the Seventeenth century were very much aware of the significance, customs, and relevance of these supernatural beliefs in their lives.
Lichtman, Susan A.
1991 0-7734-9699-8 108 pages
Traces the development of the female archetype as a heroic journey toward self-actualization for the individual woman. While identifying woman as hero of her own unique archetypal journey, this book explains how the journey can only be accomplished through the unification of the three major phases of a woman's life (virgin, mother, crone) into a full vision of feminine development through the signs, symbols, and images of woman as portrayed in mythology, literature, and popular culture. General readers as well as scholars in women's studies, literature, psychology, or history will find this book helpful in broadening their own range of interpretations about the image and impact of woman in society.
Hegy, Pierre
1991 0-7734-9680-7 236 pages
Knowledge, business, politics, defense, etc, would be impossible on a national scale without the inner horizon of common values. This horizon helps us to locate ourselves within the limits of what is knowable, feasible, and permissible; it allows us to set goals and priorities, and to find hope and direction. Values are rooted in myth, defined here as that which is said, as in Homer, but also as the inner rationality of our everyday discourse.
Mythic Hero's Appearance in the Twelve Seasons of Nature: His Dramatic Action in Literature and Film
Eriksson, Edward2012 0-7734-4082-8 172 pages
The hero in literature and film is an expression of seasonal occurrence. His behavior exhibits, symbolically, the relationship of the sun to the earth in twelve phases. It begins at the March equinox and proceeds through the natural year. He assumes, then, twelve distinct characterizations. His conflicts and successes reflect the natural conditions of Early Spring, Mid-Spring, Late Spring, and so on. It creates an aesthetic development that primarily converts traditional mythic dynamics (based in agriculture) into story lines. His character in a given season suggests the dynamism of that season in a modern cultural context. As all works of literature and film either indicate or suggest a seasonal moment, all heroes as will be shown by reference to over a hundred novels, plays, short stories, and films, are characterized by the force of aesthetic sublimation in sympathy with their seasonal set.
dos Santos, Dominique Vieira Coelho
2013 0-7734-4552-8 316 pages
Several books dedicated to the life and career of Saint Patrick seem not to take narrative problems into consideration or at least not to focus on them. The main subject in this particular field is the real or historical Patrick, in contrast to the fictional. The authors of these works try to overcome the gap between referent and representation, transcending then in order to find a hidden meaning in the past. Part of the so-called Patrician problem is related to this need of being forced to choose between real and representation. Patrick’s history is analyzed differently in this research; we are more interested in understanding the representations than to transcend them.
Bakker, J.
1991 0-7734-9713-7 283 pages
The chapters in part one re-examine the impact of the mythic west on a selection of 19th century texts in the light of the latest literary-critical approaches to Western writing. Works include Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales, Melville, Whitman, Twain, et al. The selection has been guided by the fact that all these works deal explicitly with the frontier West. Part two contains chapters on the modern Western. First, the literary Western from Owen Wister's The Virginian through E.L. Doctorow's Welcome to Hard Times. The second chapter discusses the popular or formula Western, concentrating on what links it to the literary Western: violence and the love story. Addresses such writers as Zane Grey and Max Brand. The third chapter is devoted entirely to Larry McMurtry's novels Lonesome Dove and Anything for Billy, examining in what sense and to what extent he succeeds in revitalizing the conventions and stereotypes on which the traditional popular Western is based.
Golden, Kenneth L.
1995 0-7734-9023-X 264 pages
This study takes a fresh approach to the genre of science fiction -- comparative mythology and Jungian psychology, as a contrast to many books in the field which are concerned with a scientific or Freudian perspective. It will be useful not only to scholars in the field of literary studies, but to those using interdisciplinary approaches. It would also be a useful text for courses in contemporary fiction and cinema, mythology and literature, and psychology and literature.
Fike, Matthew
2003 0-7734-6670-3 176 pages
Using a range of interpretive strategies to reevaluate episodes that portray or relate to hell, this monograph argues that Redcrosse, Guyon and Britomart are on parallel journeys that support a heightened sense of Books I-III as a thematic unit.
Grossman, Elwira
2002 0-7734-7054-9 348 pages
Donalson, Malcolm Drew
2022 1-4955-1043-3 84 pages
"The purpose of this study is to create a fundamental element for understanding the figure of Mary, the development of her cult from the New Testament era through the reigns of some outstanding empresses of Byzantium, in comparison and contrast with some characteristics she shared with female deities that preceded her. It should reveal Mary as relatively unique and, to a significant degree, independent of her supposed 'forerunners.'" -From the Author's Preface
Bukay, David
2017 1-4955-0611-8 136 pages
The research found in this book proves, ethnic cleansing has also many other aspects, like expropriating others' history, scientific knowledge, values, even identity; mass slavery of groups and nationals from the seventh century on; coercing Muslim primitive barbarian values on the Free World by terrorism, intimidation, sophisticated propaganda, sabotaging its infrastructure, and mass-immigration; and removing physical and cultural evidence of the targeted groups by demolishing and desecrating their monuments, cemeteries, and places of worship.
Gauss, Aaron Valdis
2022 1-4955-1041-7 544 pages
(8x10 softcover, 2-volume set) From the Author's Introduction: "The primary objective [of this study] is to anthologize and collate the first-ever comprehensive mythography of the Formosan deluge Myths. This includes the creation of a corpus with multiple variations of the flood myths sourced from all of Taiwan's officially recognized tribes. [This study also] classifies the deluge myths according to narrative theme. ...[It] offers a comparative exploration of the deluge texts by classifying the salient themes and motifs of the Formosan oral flood literatures. ...Volume II of this work represents the first of its kind to offer hundreds of texts collected by ethnographers, linguists, missionaries, government agency-appointed investigators, and adventurers since the turn of the twentieth century."
Smith, Gregg A.
2007 0-7734-5353-9 196 pages
Examines the nature and function of the dead in medieval Norse and Celtic literature. It is demonstrated that agents of the living dead in these literatures have a functional and formulaic role, largely manifested as a process of wish-fulfillment. While the authors of these stories provide resonances of past beliefs regarding the dead, they also appear to have adapted these ideas for their own purposes in order to involve the dead as role-players in their stories. This book contains 11 color photographs.
Donalson, Malcolm Drew
2006 0-7734-5693-7 252 pages
This study of the wolf is primarily that of the wolf of Biblical metaphor and medieval legend, rather than the wolf of reality. Yet, it demonstrates for students and teachers alike how the wolf of reality underwent a long-term ‘demonization’ in western culture, largely as a result of the literary wolf. It accomplishes this first, through a close investigation of the pertinent passages of the Scriptures and select references in the works of the Church Fathers. The study then examines details from two sources with the classical tradition, Aelian’s On the Nature of Animals and select fables of the Aesopian tradition. This is followed by a descriptive survey of later medieval works: the so-called ‘beast epics,’ the Physiologus (in its Christian recension), and the illustrated bestiaries. The book explores evidence for the ‘wicked wolf’ in the early and later Middle Ages. The conclusion cites the continuing wolf terror in Western Europe as exacerbated by the heyday of the werewolf phenomenon and points to hopeful signs for the conservation of the wolf. In all, this work shows how the diabolical wolf – only a symbol in the Gospels – developed, grew much ‘larger than life,’ and persisted through late antiquity (when a new term, luparius, was coined for the hunters of the real wolf) and throughout the Middle Ages; and that the ‘agent of the Devil’ was not at all assisted by the observations of naturalists or encyclopedists like Aelian or Isidore of Seville, nor by the image of the greedy but stupid wolf of Aesop. The book is enhanced by photographs, including eight photos of actual wolves by professional photographers. A very select bibliography provides a starting point for the study of the wolf in western civilization, and includes both patristic and medieval works, along with modern works.
Munir, Muhammad
2018 1-4955-0649-5 584 pages
The concept of jihad has been the subject of vigorous academic writings since 9/11. Literature on jihad in most cases suggests that the phenomenon has been misunderstood and distorted. The self-declared jihadi organizations, or non-State Islamic actors, have abused the doctrine of jihad. Consequently, a common man's perception of Islam is to judge it to a large extent through his view of actions of the non-State Islamic actors such as al-Qa'ida, Daish, Boko Haram, or local jihadists organizations such as the Taliban rather than by the principles of Islamic law.
Bellows, Henry Adams
1991 0-88946-783-8 470 pages
A reprint of the classic 1923 Bellows translation. A superb text and an essential source for Scandinavian mythology.
Ingwersen, Niels
2008 0-7734-4983-3 264 pages
Demonstrates that Scandinavian folklore has a range comparable to Shakespearean drama.
Anderson, Earl R.
2010 0-7734-3755-X 608 pages
This monograph is the first book-length comprehensive textual analysis of the Beowulf saga as an Indo-European epic. It provides a detailed reading of the epic in conjunction with ancient legal and cultural practices that allow for a new understanding of this classic work. This theoretical resource offers insights valuable to the fields of comparative mythology, medieval literature and Anglo-Saxon studies.
Bernhardt-House, Phillip A.
2010 0-7734-3714-2 520 pages
This book is a typological study of canids and canid imagery in Medieval Celtic cultures. It explores texts ranging from early Irish legal tracts and heroic narrative to exempla from Welsh, Breton, and later Scottish sources.
Kohen, Elli
2003 0-7734-6778-5 444 pages
This unique book is structured by country, from prehistoric to present times. An effort has been made to revive the soul and ambience of different environments as it evolved over the centuries. The style is intentionally folksy, to reproduce the special sense of humor, puns or poetry of different countries.