Customer Reviews

The Medieval Myths

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

 

 

I am a professor of medieval literature, and have to say as a professional, that this book is just plain awful. It reduces huge epic stories, most originally composed in poetic form, to brief prose tales. Goodrich's word choices are poor, as are her deciions about which selections to "keep" and which ones to delete. Even seemingly small changes cause students problems in years to come. For instance, instead of using the standard English name for the great Frankish king (it is a translation, after all), that is Charlemagne, she translates the name awkwardly as "Carlemagne." Similarly, Roland is "Rollanz," Gueres is "Guenes," etc. These odd spelling choices make research difficult for students. Unfortunately, this book is completely worthless, and may even do damage if people read it and learn to hate medieval literature.

Even though there were some interesting points in this book, it really just put me to sleep. Overall, this book is boring, and I couldn't even finish it. I'm sure there are some more interesting books about medieval myths that I would suggest people read. I gave this book a 2 star because 1 star means that I through it away.

This book was the only text used in my Medievial Myth class, and while I was at first very excited to read this compilation it soon became a burden. Goodrich has lofty aims - to bring the origional texts to the reader in her own way with a minimum of abridgement and interference. Unfortuntally the text through the whole book is just confusing. The stroy of Peredur, a distant begening of the Aurthur Legends, is so disjointed as to be unreadable. Stories are also in modern language and story form, so although Beowulf was originally a poem, it is not in this translation. It was very dissapointing to have such high hopes for a valid littery work only to be left confused by the translated text. A better work is H.A. Guerber's Middle Ages from the Myths and Legends Collection. At least that work mixes coherent modern story with noted original translation to bring home the point.

I was not pleased from the start, when I ordered the product I was immediately sent a response that the product was shipped via USPS without a tracking code, and to expect delivery within 23 days. No where in America should product shipment take 23 days, even at the least expensive mailing method. This was required summer reading for school, and this meant that delivery would be the same as the first day of school. The book was never received. The seller refunded my money on request, but did not apologize, they stated it was shipped. It still has never been received. I do not believe that it was shipped. I will not try to buy a used book online again.