Customer Reviews

The World of Myth: An Anthology

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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.

A book I would never have gotten if not for my final course I took in univeristy, a course on Mythology and Symbolism, I went into this book thinking, "Gosh, myths. Yawn."

I was sadly mistaken. Parallelling Joseph Campbell's notion of universal myths, this book is an exciting journey through various myth-types that seem to crop up in nearly every culture. Explore Creation Myths, Flood Myths, Hero Myths, and Object Myths, for a few examples, in a way that crosses cultures and time periods with ease. A truly diverse selection is in this work, this is not just your typical compilation of Greek and Roman myths. Eastern and Western mythologies tie in with Celtic and Asian and Nordic and Hebrew.

If you are at all interested in mythology, this is the book for you.

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.

I bought this book for a college class. I thought that I would end up stacking it with all of the rest. As I read the stories to do my homework, I began reading a whole lot more than I was required. The stories are short enough for the occasional reader to enjoy, but transition nicely for someone who wants to read a lot.
I highly recommend this book for anyone who wants to learn how similar all of our cultures really are. If we could all learn how similar we are, it would be easier for us to overlook our differences and learn to get along...
I also recommend this book for any history buffs, like me, who just enjoy reading tales from our ancestors...

I loved this book soo much that im reading this after my class is over.

:)

I had to buy this book for a class, but I read through the few chapters not assigned and found it very interesting. The book gives a wide variety of cultures and their myths, and goes into detail without boring the reader. While this book may not be a first choice of leisure reading, I believe it was a very good choice for a class.

This is a wonderful collection of Mythology from all over the world. It is very useful in determining common threads of myth in different socieities...

The book arrived exactly as described in the time allotted for arival. Would buy from this seller again.

I liked this book because it had good information in it about the origins and mythology. I think it also tied into the mythology aspect the religious aspect of things too. I was taking a world religions class and found some similarities the history of each. Good book if you're into learning more about these two subjects.

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.