Mythology - General & Miscellaneous, Religion - Reference, Social Sciences - Reference

Mythologies

Name: Mythologies
Author: Yves Bonnefoy, Wendy Doniger
ISBN: 9780226064536

by Yves Bonnefoy, Wendy Doniger

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Overview

"The appearance of this monumental work in a beautifully produced and richly illustrated English edition is a publishing event of considerable significance."—Mark C. Taylor, New York Times Book Review

"The almost 100 contributors combine, with characteristic precision and elan, the arts of science and poetry, of analysis and translation. The result is a treasury of information, brilliant guesswork, witty asides, and revealing digressions. This is a work of genuine and enduring excitement."—Thomas D'Evelyn, Christian Science Monitor

About the Author, Yves Bonnefoy, Wendy Doniger

Yves Bonnefoy is a poet, critic and professor emeritus of comparative poetics at the Collège de France. In addition to poetry and literary criticism, he has published numerous works of art history and translated into French several of Shakespeare’s plays.

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Editorials

Library Journal

This collection of 395 articles was compiled by Bonnefoy (comparative poetics, College de France). Although it looks like an encyclopedia, it is not. Instead, as translator Doniger says in the introduction, it is ``a collection of essays on some aspects of some mythologies written by a group of brilliant and philosophically complex French scholars and is highly opinionated and original.'' It is also highly inconsistent in coverage, having little to say about Judaism or Islam and offering only two essays on Buddhism. It often seems to be more about methodology than mythology. These criticisms, however, should not obscure the fact that this is a fascinatingly original if somewhat quirky and idiosyncratic collection of essays. As a reference book it leaves much to be desired. As a unique contribution to the study of mythology, it should be in every library with special interest in the field.-- C. Robert Nixon, M.L.S., Lafayette, Ind.