Customer Reviews

Chinese Myths (British Museum--Legendary Past Series)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Which I was expecting. If you are looking for something along the lines of the "poetic edda", "the tain" or "metamorphosis" then look elsewhere.

This effort, at best, is a textbook presentation of chinese mythology lumped by subject matter. At worst, imagine someone taking a heavily annotated version of Ovid's "metamorpohsis", rearranging the text by topic, excising all extraneous text other than what specifically represents the topic, and then printing the annotations with this remainder tagged at the end of chapter. This is essentiall what you get. For each "subject" listed in the editioral review Anne Birrel gives us 2 to 5 pages of her analysis and interpretation of the text sources as well as comparisions to other mythological systems and then we get 2-4 paragraphs of the original text.

It is commented in the introduction that Chinese mythology is hampered by the source material being fragementary, but this presentation's limited text of the source material is so sterile, so minimal that one has to wonder why any attempt to include the original material was made.

If you are looking for an introduction and comparative analysis of Chinese Mythology as it relates to other better known western mythologies then this is an interesting book. If you are looking for an introduction to the literature that preserves Chinese mythology, fragmentary though it may be --- there has to be a better selection somewhere.

This was a good transaction. Delivery was slow, but not terrible. Thanks a lot!