Kategoria BISAC: Social Science >> Folklore & Mythology

Early Greek Myth is a much-needed handbook for scholars and others interested in the literary and artistic sources of archaic Greek myths--and the only one of its kind available in English. Timothy Gantz traces the development of each myth in narrative form and summarizes the written and visual evidence in which the specific details of the story appear.

In Chinese Mythology, Anne Birrell provides English translations of some 300 representative myth narratives selected from over 100 classical texts, many of which have never before been translated into any Western language. Organizing the narratives according to themes and motifs common to world mythology, Birrell addresses issues of source, dating, attribution, textural variants, multiforms, and context. Drawing on exhaustive work in comparative mythology, she surveys the development of Chinese myth studies, summarizes the contribution of Chinese and Japanese scholars to the study...

The evil eye has received considerable attention in the literature of disciplines as diverse as anthropology and medicine. Researchers have attempted to identify and explain this essentially ambiguous and variable phenomenon from a number of perspectives - as a culture-bound syndrome, an idiom of distress, a mechanism of social control, and a representation of psychobiological fear. In Mal'uocchiu: Ambiguity, Evil Eye, and the Language of Distress, Sam Migliore shifts the focus of discussion from paradigms to a practical examination of how people use the notion of the evil eye in...

In the 1970s and 80s, Northrop Frye and Jay Macpherson co-taught a very influential course at the University of Toronto's Victoria College on the history of Western mythology - Frye focusing on the biblical myths; Macpherson on the classical. Biblical and Classical Myths recreates the thought behind that course, with Frye's lectures - unpublished until very recently - supplemented by Macpherson's popular 1962 textbook on classical mythology, Four Ages: The Classical Myths.

Frye's lectures on the Bible make up the first half of the book. He expounds on an array of...

As a young man, Vusamazulu Credo Mutwa, a Zulu from the South African province of Natal, was determined to follow in the footsteps of his grandfather and become a tribal historian in order to keep the rich oral tradition of his culture alive. In this book, begun in response to the injustices against Africans and their culture, he sets these legends down in writing. He begins with the creation myth, when Ninavanhu-Ma, the Great Mother, created the human race. From there, an epic unfolds, an intricate and vivid cultural tapestry populated by gods and mortals, cattle herders and supreme...