Symbolic Mythology

Symbolic Mythology

Author: John Fiore

Publisher: iUniverse

Published: 2001-10

Total Pages: 246

ISBN-13: 0595204007

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Symbolic Mythology is the essential guide to understanding the myths of the classical world. Through the author’s unique mix of scholarly analysis and exciting storytelling, the divine, the heroic, and the monstrous become easily accessible to everyone from the casual reader to the serious student of myth. Revelations abound in this original, entertaining, and enlightening study of the myths of ancient Greece and Rome.


Myth and History in Ancient Greece

Myth and History in Ancient Greece

Author: Claude Calame

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2003-07-22

Total Pages: 199

ISBN-13: 0691114587

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Surely the ancient Greeks would have been baffled to see what we consider their "mythology." Here, Claude Calame mounts a powerful critique of modern-day misconceptions on this front and the lax methodology that has allowed them to prevail. He argues that the Greeks viewed their abundance of narratives not as a single mythology but as an "archaeology." They speculated symbolically on key historical events so that a community of believing citizens could access them efficiently, through ritual means. Central to the book is Calame's rigorous and fruitful analysis of various accounts of the foundation of that most "mythical" of the Greek colonies--Cyrene, in eastern Libya. Calame opens with a magisterial historical survey demonstrating today's misapplication of the terms "myth" and "mythology." Next, he examines the Greeks' symbolic discourse to show that these modern concepts arose much later than commonly believed. Having established this interpretive framework, Calame undertakes a comparative analysis of six accounts of Cyrene's foundation: three by Pindar and one each by Herodotus (in two different versions), Callimachus, and Apollonius of Rhodes. We see how the underlying narrative was shaped in each into a poetically sophisticated, distinctive form by the respective medium, a particular poetical genre, and the specific socio-historical circumstances. Calame concludes by arguing in favor of the Greeks' symbolic approach to the past and by examining the relation of mythos to poetry and music.


Myth, Symbol and Reality

Myth, Symbol and Reality

Author: Alan Olson

Publisher: Boston University Studies in Philosophy and Religion

Published: 1982-03

Total Pages: 202

ISBN-13: 9780268013493

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Do myths and symbols have anything at all to tell us about reality? Or do they simply deserve to be relegated to the realm of fantastic unreality? The essayists in this volume deploy all the critical tools available in the task of taking myth and symbol seriously. They are not willing to consign the use of the symbolic to the logician or to relinquish the mythical to the comparative anthropologist as something of historical interest only. Instead, they strive for that difficult position that is guided by criticism but is still open to wonder in the face of what myth and symbol offer in terms of enrichment, meaning, and self-transcendence.


Symbolic Mythology and Translation of a Lost and Forgotten Language

Symbolic Mythology and Translation of a Lost and Forgotten Language

Author: John Martin Woolsey

Publisher: Forgotten Books

Published: 2015-06-14

Total Pages: 226

ISBN-13: 9781330065754

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Excerpt from Symbolic Mythology and Translation of a Lost and Forgotten Language Before written language, abstract ideas were represented by hieroglyphics such as natural and familiar objects and a combination of objects in word pictures. Abstract ideas were expressed through symbolism, - the only way possible, for the mind cannot well grasp a thing which is formless; even our language is made up of mental pictures. In religion it was an effort to make the picture of a divine truth or an outer garment to clothe or conceal the divinity. Allegory is a train of thought conveyed through sensible images. Metaphor is confined to a single expression. Animism belonged to a primitive form of religious superstition, when animals and plants were possessed of souls and the tree had an indwelling spirit, and the idealized monsters of the ancient people correspond to their degree of education and environment. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.


Images and Symbols

Images and Symbols

Author: Mircea Eliade

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2021-10-12

Total Pages: 193

ISBN-13: 0691238340

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Mircea Eliade--one of the most renowned expositors of the psychology of religion, mythology, and magic--shows that myth and symbol constitute a mode of thought that not only came before that of discursive and logical reasoning, but is still an essential function of human consciousness. He describes and analyzes some of the most powerful and ubiquitous symbols that have ruled the mythological thinking of East and West in many times and at many levels of cultural development.


Symbolic and Mythological Animals

Symbolic and Mythological Animals

Author: J. C. Cooper

Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers

Published: 1992

Total Pages: 280

ISBN-13:

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This A-Z of symbolic and mythological animals concentrates specifically on the stories associated with birds and beasts from around the world. Entries vary in length depending on the importance of the animal, fowl, insect or fish, with practically every creature having some symbolic or mythological significance. In addition the book examines the fabulous monsters of legend, and there are more general entries such as totems, fetishes, animal guardians and animal worship. The guide concludes with a bibliography.


The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms

The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms

Author: Ernst Cassirer

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 1955-01-01

Total Pages: 292

ISBN-13: 9780300000382

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The Symbolic Forms has long been considered the greatest of Cassirer’s works. Into it he poured all the resources of his vast learning about language and myth, religion, art, and science—the various creative symbolizing activities and constructions through which man has expressed himself and given intelligible objective form to this experience. “These three volumes alone (apart from Cassirer’s other papers and books) make an outstanding contribution to epistemology and to the human power of abstraction. It is rather as if ‘The Golden Bough’ had been written in philosophical rather than in historical terms.”—F.I.G. Rawlins, Nature