Customer Reviews

World Mythology: An Anthology of Great Myths and Epics

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

First off, for a paperback this book is extremely overpriced. Why did I get it? I was required to purchase it for a college mythology course. I was hoping it would be a great source of world myth, but I was quickly disappointed. Rosenberg waters down and CENSORS the mythology.
For example: In the story of Osiris and Isis, Rosenberg's version said that all of Osiris' parts were recovered. This is not true to the myth as any casual mythology student can tell you. A fish ate one part that was never recovered. Another omission was from Gilgamesh when Enkidu is tamed. Rosenberg leaves out the fact that the "priestess"was actually a temple harlot and she tamed him through six days of sex. These are only the first two stories I have read and I am sure there will be more the further I get into it. It is almost as if Rosenberg is afraid to tackle the adult issues presented in a lot of mythology.
Now normally I would not have a problem with leaving a little out here or there. But when students are required to fully analyze the meaning of a myth or epic we need the whole story. For the price and lack of cartoony illustrations this book is obviously not aimed at children. Give us the unedited, un-PC, correct, original versions of the myths.I don't want to assume things that should be in the stories to begin with.

I think a number of the other reviews missed the point in this volume. This book offers an amazingly diverse sampling of the world's mythologies, preceding each myth with an introduction that attempts to provide some cultural context. These are NOT the original myths, as people have noted, but that is done intentionally. Had each of these stories been included in its original form the result would have been a cyclopean tome that likely would have to be broken into numerous volumes. But why do that? There are already countless disparate sources available for one to find the original stories -- this book offers more of a "world mythology digest" that tries to hit on the key themes and events of each story it relates, and does a decent enough job doing so.

I was given this text for a high school class I taught on ancient civilizations. My initial excitement at the summaries and character lists preceding the myths, and the inclusion of great Yoruban and Hittite myths, disappeared once I read the texts. As others have noted, the author censors the myths greatly, removing any hint of sexuality. There is also little attempt to inject color into the narratives. The result are stories unnervingly different than the original, and one fears that many students will think that the Osiris or Aeneas or Telepinu of this book represents the true account.

The Aeneid presentation is toothless and unengaging, a dry outline of segments of Virgil's great epic. Likewise, his predecessor Homer is reborn as what often reads like online encyclopedia summaries.

Rosenberg misses the depth and vibrancy of these great tales, writing in the same voice for each tale. The myths thus start to run together, not because of the shared human condition that informed each, but because of unimaginative presentation.

Reviewers who claim this will supplant Edith Hamilton are perhaps exactly who it was written for - those who do not understand the context of these myths and assume they can be paraphrased simply. Rosenberg does not strike one as a student of world mythology, but someone with an agenda who rushed through various tales.

I would not recommend this book for an educator. No translation has the same substance as the original, of course, but many paraphrases and translations on the market manage to communicate the wit and wonder of ancient thought. Beyond that, her introduction oddly asserts controversial theses as proven fact, and her arrangement is confusing - why does a book attempting to introduce world mythology start with the Greeks instead of their predecessors in the Near East?

For Greco-Roman mythology, Bullfinch and Hamilton still remain Rosenberg's superiors. The time will come for a book that attempts to bring all these myths together in accessible prose paraphrases, but it has not yet come.

If you do use this book, please find alternate translations or paraphrases to allow the students to use Rosenberg only as a companion to a more rigorous and more rewarding translation.

Note that I am fine that Rosenberg did not attempt Dryden's meter, and that my desire isn't for something more difficult. Rather, I'd like something more faithful, one that does not underestimate the ability of her readers.

Unfortunately, this is about as good as it gets if you want students to read myths (rather than reading ABOUT myths) and give them some cultural variety. The alternative for an instructor is putting together a prohibitively expensive reader, or requiring a whole list of books, or depending on students to read excerpts from books on library reserve (which they ordinarily won't do), or requiring other single-volume texts that are imperfect in their own ways. (Thury and DeVinney's "Introduction to Mythology," good as it is, is labyrinthine in its organization and would make my students leap off the nearest cliff; Roy Willis's "World Mythology" is all descriptions and summaries, with no narratives at all.)

This collection leaves much to be desired, though, and so do Rosenberg's interpretations. I'm not sure what her specialty is, but in many cases she relies on poor sources. For the Celtic material, for instance, she draws from reprints of 19th and early 20th century texts that are themselves inaccurate fairy-tale-style retellings of the actual texts. Her descriptions of Celtic belief are also grossly outdated: so far as we now know, the Celts were not sun worshippers and their major holidays were not at the solstices and equinoxes. Even the most cursory research would have led her to more accurate translations in scholarly journals, or she could have used the same sources that Gantz did for his much more accurate renditions of Irish myth in "Early Irish Myths and Sagas"--one of the many texts one would have to require in the multi-text syllabus.

Rosenberg is also enamored of the strain of thought that identifies every powerful goddess figure as a Great Goddess worshipped by the agricultural matriarchal societies of old, a type of society that no one has ever been able to show existed; even neo-pagans prefer the term "matrifocal," and most anthropologists and folklorists would argue even with that term. That leaves the question of whether Rosenberg's understanding of myth is late Victorian or New Agey or both, but it doesn't seem to be very scholarly.

Put Bullfinch aside and hide Hamilton...Donna Rosenberg's "World Mythology" tells it all in captivating storytelling to bring myths from all over the world alive. This is the ideal textbook for a survey of mythology course in high school and college. Creation myths of a broad range of cultures convey the remarkable links to mankind's beginnings, while great epics reveal the heroes and dreams of diverse worlds.

Rosenberg's writing style makes all the stories accessible and entertaining. Who says textbooks have to be boring? Add this to your literature shelves and bring mythology to life for your students.

Great book, really helpful to get it for a low cost. Needed the book for college, worth every penny to buy. If your interested in mythology I recommend this book.

Considering the fact that it is just a textbook, the World Mythology: An Anthology of Great Myths and Epics book is explained in a simple manner, easy to understand. The reading selections are edited to allow students to understand the overall idea of the main myths without going into a lot of detail. However, there are a few annoying typos throughout the book and some serious mistakes like the wrong names of heroes or gods in some sections which really makes students confused. Again, not too serious for a textbook, but I would not use it for a serious investigation or research for a presentation.

I had to buy this for my college mythology class. It's a nice enough text, with many stories from many different cultures. Before each culture, we learn a little about the people and how their stories came about, which I thought helped me understand the stories more. My personal favorites were the Egyptian myths and the Greek myths, of which there were many. It also includes classics like 'King Arthur', 'Beowulf', and 'The Illiad'. It was interesting to note the similarities and differences between the cultures and their stories, many of which were being created at the same time years ago- but many miles apart.

As for the flaws this book has, there is one major one. While I'm sure the translators translated to the best of their ability, if I had to read "flooded their hearts" one more time, I think I would scream. Okay I get it, they're happy, filled with joy, ecstatic, delighted.... but really? "Flooded"? So maybe that was the literal translation, but couldn't the editors have changed it a few times so that the readers didn't die from the repetition?

Overall I would recommend this book, especially if you're interested in mythology. Just be aware that there are many different interpretations of myths, and the ones that are in this book may not be the most well known. Additionally I'm not sure if they cut out some parts because they knew this would be a school text. If you know the story of Osiris and Isis, you know that there was one piece of his body that a fish ate... that part of the myth isn't in this book- I guess because they deemed it unappropriate? There is a newer edition out however, which isn't exactly better than this one. At the very least, I had hoped they didn't use the word "flooded" so much in that one... But sadly not so. The new version is the same, with some additional stories included like: "Esfandyar", "Chi Li", "Jason and the Golden Fleece" among others. (If you need the newer version for class, you could still get away with buying the cheaper 2nd edition and then just copying certain stories from a fellow classmate's book. The newer is $43 with this one being around $13!)

(Originally reviewed for "Kathleen's Book Reviews")

I ordered this book for a class I am taking on Mythology. I was expecting it to be just like any other dry text book but this one suprised me. It is very readable and interesting. I highly recommend it.

This book is fantastic! Every professor should have their students read this. The stories give a synopsis and describe the characters prior. So much detail, yet not a bore or blur. Highly recommend.