Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes, 75th Anniversary Illustrated Edition

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I know this is an unfair comparison, but earlier in the month I had been reading Oscar Wilde's stories for children, as well as some of Kipling's poetry, and I kept waiting for Hamilton to dazzle me, even just a little bit. It makes me want to read The Odyssey and Iliad, The Aeneid, Medea, and Oedipus Rex, at the least, because no matter how dry you tell it, there is real imagination and juiciness to the tales. Edith Hamilton's mythology succeeds like no other book in bringing to life for the modern reader the Greek, Roman and Norse myths that are the keystone of Western culture-the stories of gods and heroes that have inspired human creativity from antiquity to the present. Doutora honoris causa de várias universidades e devota dos ideais clássicos, Hamilton tornou-se, aos noventa anos de idade, cidadã honorária da cidade de Atenas. Quoted works are cited (informally) and follow fair use laws (including public domain and less than 10%/500 words).

It does not critique the stories from the different sources but ends up to my mind leading to rather difficult reading in which the stories themselves are not registering in my brain at least. Since its original publication by Little, Brown and Company in 1942, Edith Hamilton's Mythology has sold millions of copies throughout the world and established itself as a perennial bestseller in its various available formats: hardcover, trade paperback, mass market paperback, and e-book. She never completed her doctoral degree but she did become an "inspiring and respected head of the school for twenty six years" (bringing new ideas to an old system).So far I've read Norse Gods and the Adventures of Odysseus for my Myth course at Uni and they're really helping my wider reading without bogging me down in excessive reading. Hamilton's brilliant writing, the cover, the layout, the printing, the illustrations, and everything else are done in an excellent manner. This rendition, in the case of Odysseus, does not follow the flow of the story as written in the original. Anyways, mythology is always something I was interested in and loved, it's in so much of our everyday life still in the stories we tell and our history.

The commentary I felt was very insightful to understand the Greek's perspective of these stories and just some interesting observations, overall. At times, she comes across as a woman on a mission - her conviction about the importance of these myths in Western culture is so passionate that she is determined to spread the message to a broader audience. Sometimes sentences are long and rambling and not well punctuated requiring them to be read several times before getting any sense of their meaning.

I declared August "History Month" and read, amongst various others, Bulfinch's Mythology of which I was quite disappointed. Concerning how you approach it, is up to you but I will say this will be a valuable novel before heading towards Homer’s work. I'm also not a pretentious asshole who is going to pretend I lurved it to pieces just to look smart. Hamilton's education continued at Miss Porter's School in Farmington, Connecticut and at Bryn Mawr College near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, from which she graduated in 1894 with an M.

It's not just the over-representation of winged steeds, there's also way too much use of the threatening dark thundercloud effect, and the human figures are invariably depicted as shrieking heavenward as they shake their evidently double-jointed limbs in panic.

This is not the fault of the book, it’s just the way these myths are, where there are loads of them that are not connected to a myth that is part of bigger story, for example one of the families like the House of Thebes. What I did, was read Fry’s retelling first (containing more in-depth retellings of stories in the first half of this novel), this novel and I will eventually read the primary texts. In the introduction it lays clearly the key facts about Hellenic mythology: (1) it is not fables but oral transfer of true events (2) part of it is also pure literature but it is not difficult to identify the literature from factual parts, (3) the cosmos made the gods and not the other way around, (4) Greek myths are rational without magic or fear of the world: the only two witches Circe and Medea are beautiful, attractive women and interesting characters, (5) women are as important as men in the Greek myths and the feminine nature is propelled to a major force in shaping world and society without which the world would not be viable (6) there is no mysticism but rather a fresh love of the natural, the visual and the beautiful: monsters are codenames for volcanoes, earthquakes and other geological phenomena not parts of social life, (7) the myths promote upright ethics, heroism and the idea of a meaningful life, (8) they excite reader's imagination without being fairy tales or unrealistic: realism and imagination go hand in hand. When you thought someone in history was being creative, chances are they were just borrowing from the creativity of the ancient Greeks.

We have two copies of Mythology in our house—one from high school and one that I picked up along the way from a relative who was downsizing. An easy to use contents page, lots of info on major and minor Greek mythology characters and even a very small section on Norse mythology at the back. At home, Hamilton was a recipient of many honorary degrees and awards, including election to the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Most of them (stories) I felt were very engaging compact retellings, but I will say some stories suffer, an example is the creation myth. I get that it's not for everyone, but if you want to learn more about mythology in general, this is the book for you. Does Edith Hamilton not care that the prototype is more important than the bastardized version invented by Germanic peoples?