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Title: The World of Myth: An Anthology
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Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
List Price: $19.95
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| The World of Myth: An Anthology by Oxford University Press, USA Appalled | Having reviewed this apparently popular textbook for a course on comparative mythology I am teaching, I can hardly believe that any university would permit its use, let alone that Oxford University Press would consent to publish it.
Leeming, based on his collected works, is a single-minded polemicist for universalism, goddess theology, and Jungian interpretation. All of his introductions present this interpretation as fact, and all the books in his recommended bibliography support it or can be distorted in order to do so. No dissenting voices are given so much as a footnote.
Worse, however, is Leeming's undiscriminating use of sources for the versions of myths he anthologizes. His main sources for Greek myth are the literary but highly unreliable Robert Graves (who retold myths in order to advance the thesis of his own _The White Goddess_) and Ovid, who despite his excellence as a poet can hardly be presented as an accurate mirror of Greek attitudes. Leeming also quotes an entirely erroneous passage on Mithras from _The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets_, a neopagan polemic written by Barbara Walker, whose only qualifactions are memberships in several mineralogical societies, and _Lost Goddesses of Ancient Greece_, from which he draws a version of the Pandora story reinvented, entirely out of the author's imagination, as a goddess myth.
It is difficult enough teaching modern students to appreciate the difference between primary and secondary sources without this muddying of the waters. Avoid at all costs. | | The World of Myth: An Anthology by Oxford University Press, USA Recommended to all! | | Thanks for the great service. I receieved my text book super quick and the communication was top notch. So I recommend this seller to everyone who needs text books for college. | | The World of Myth: An Anthology by Oxford University Press, USA Good Reference Material | | I purchased this book for a college class - not only was it more economical to purchase from Amazon, but delivery was much quicker. This book is great as reference material, very easy to follow with a good layout. Index is actually useful to find specific mythological references through out the book. For the person who is just looking for some brief overview's of creation, flood, and god myths it is a good addition to the bookshelf. | | The World of Myth: An Anthology by Oxford University Press, USA The Excellence of Leeming | | Leeming is perhaps the premiere authority on comparative mythology today. He is the author and/or editor of numerous titles on the subject. The quality and depth of coverage of "The World of Myth: An Anthology" is no exception to his legacy of excellence. The book is loaded with bibliographies of the finest works ever written on the subject of mythology and religion. It is ideal as a foundation to mythology for anyone who wishes to take a personal journey through history, literature and religion. | | The World of Myth: An Anthology by Oxford University Press, USA Very Readable | | Like other reviewers, I would have not given this book a second thought were it not one of my textbooks for English 102. I was pleasantly surprised! It is a very enjoyable introduction to viewing myths from the Jungian perspective. There are stories from all over the world, including the Bible, the Torah, and the Koran. While I am suspicious of a couple of the sources that Leeming uses, most are wonderful, from scholars like Joseph Campbell and Samuel Noah Kramer. I appreciate the most that there are actual translations of important myths like those of Inanna and Pan instead of paraphrasing or summaries: hearing them in their original lyrical form makes a BIG difference! There are few books that I will not sell back at the end of the semester: this is one that I hung on to! | | The World of Myth: An Anthology by Oxford University Press, USA Product Description | 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." |
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