The World of Myth - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0195056019 ISBN 13: 9780195056013

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 1991

Synopsis

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."

About this title

About the Author:

About the Author
David Adams Leeming is Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Connecticut, Storrs, and is the author of several books on myth and literature.

From Library Journal:

In Mythology: The Voyage of the Hero (Harper, 1980), Leeming collected over 100 hero myths for a comparative study. In his new volume the myths of various types are divided into four sections: of the cosmos, of the gods, of the hero, and of places and objects, within which subdivisions deal with "The Trickster," "The God as Archetype," "The Tree," etc. His introduction and pre-chapter commentaries are concise and somewhat probing. This work does not and is not meant to rival that of Joseph Campbell, but it will be useful to general readers or as a high school or college introductory text. Excellent brief chapter bibliographies; index and illustrations not seen.
-Terry McMaster, Utica Coll. of Syracuse Univ. Lib., N.Y.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 1991
• ISBN 10: 0195056019
• ISBN 13: 9780195056013
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 384
• Editor: Leeming David Adams