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The World of Myth: An Anthology
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Average Rating:  out of 8 Reviews
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Price: $19.95
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Sale: $10.90
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Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
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EAN (European Article Number): 9780195074758
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Number of Items: 1
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Binding: Paperback
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Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
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Dewey Decimal Number: 201.3
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Publication Date: 1992-02-27
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Reading Level: 362
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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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Customer Reviews
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Review Summary: Handy reference, though not exactly unbiased |
Date: 2008-06-03 |
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Details: The World of Myth was my textbook for a college course on world mythology. It is a handy reference that brings together several myths from different societies under the general headings of: Creation, Flood, Afterlife, Apocalypse, Hero, Place/Object Myths, and so on.
The good news: it's useful to have these myths together in something of a synoptic format, such that the reader can easily draw lines of similarity and difference. All traditions are viewed equally, without preference to one or another as necessarily "more true". The author doesn't appear to take sides. Christian stories are told alongside those of ancient Greece, India, Africa, and so on. This seems like a reasonable way of doing business when it comes to mythology in an academic context.
The bad news: while I appreciate the work of Joseph Campbell and Carl Jung, their ideas do not represent the whole of scholarship on mythology. I agree with an earlier reviewer who pointed out a bias in the book toward universalist views. It would have been nice to see a broader palette of ideas represented, beyond just a couple of sentences in passing. Scholars such as Levi-Strauss, Malinowski, Burkert, Kirk, and Propp all presented interesting ideas that would be helpful to a study of mythology. There are certainly others as well, but these come to mind immediately.
In favoring the psychological/universalist view, we miss the ideas of the functionalist and structuralist schools (among others) and end up assuming too much about the "facts" of mythology. So while there's no bias in this book with regard to a particular religion and its set of stories, there is an academic bias that comes through in the author's prefatory remarks for each section.
Overall: while I think the coverage is not as broad as it could have been, for a basic understanding of myths, this is a good text. The real strength is in the organization of myths by category, to give students a feel for how societies have expressed similar (though not identical) ideas in their storytelling. |
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Review Summary: Appalled |
Date: 2007-07-02 |
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Details: 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. |
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Review Summary: Recommended to all! |
Date: 2007-05-13 |
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Details: 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. |
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Review Summary: Good Reference Material |
Date: 2007-03-10 |
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Details: 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. |
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Review Summary: The Excellence of Leeming |
Date: 2006-08-30 |
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Details: 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. |
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