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This scarce antiquarian book is a selection from Kessinger Publishings Legacy Reprint Series. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment to protecting, preserving, and promoting the worlds literature. Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone! ... Read more

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This volume, originally published in 1937, is reissued with a new preface and a few small corrections. A brilliant study of the continuing and changing uses of classical mythology in English poetry, it treats most of the major and many of the minor English poets since 1680 and includes a chapter on the use of myth in American verse. It provides an illuminating overview of English poetry since the end of the Renaissance.

In his Preface to the new printing, Bush briefly surveys the various approaches to classical myth over the centuries. "During the last two generations," he observes, "most of the leading British and American poets (not to mention Rilke and others) have renewed the mythic or mythological tradition with fresh power. Thus, in spite of the accumulated pressures and threats of our time, the vitality and the necessity of myth remain." He also reminisces engagingly about the writing of the book and acknowledges that after three decades he does not find a great deal in it that he would wish to change.

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This book contains a collection of Welsh fairy tales that were collected well over a hundred years ago. ... Read more

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NOTE: This edition has a linked "Table of Contents" and has been beautifully formatted (searchable and interlinked) to work on your Amazon e-book reader or iPod e-book reader.

A collection of German tales and legends, including the Nibelungen stories.

Written by Lewis Spence, a Scottish journalist, whose efforts as a compiler of Scottish folklore have proved more durable than his efforts as a poet and occult scholar.

Spence's researches into the mythology and culture of the New World, together with his examination of the cultures of western Europe and north-west Africa, led him almost inevitably to the question of Atlantis. During the 1920s he published a series of books which sought to rescue the topic from the occultists who had more or less brought it into disrepute.

A must-have for classic mythology fans! ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine
I grew up with these tales in Germany, and was looking for a good summary/translation in English. The selection gives a great overview over the tales, covers all the well known ones and also gives some useful historical back ground information.
It will be necessary to make some stylistic changes though, in order to bring some of them into a format to be read at a presentation. This is something I would have liked to have known beforehand.

Hero Tales from the Rhine
My wife and I are planning a river cruise along the Rhine.This book is the perfect accompanyment for a romantic trip.

Rhineland Legends
Perhaps the reviewer below should learn his German well enough to find and read the German sources, rather than criticise that stuffy Brit who wrote this book. Let him also consider that the Brits are cousins of the Germans and that these legends are as much a part of British tradition as German. As for the stuffy British style, the author was writing in the early 20th century when such language was considered proper, rather than the modern American travesty of the English language. Lewis Spence deserves great respect as a scholar. He is a most interesting writer.

Okay. Needs a New Working.
This would be a very good book if it were not written in boring, stuffy and stilted British English. Then again it was written in 1915, and by a Brit. This book first introduced English readers to the legends of the Lorelei, the Mouse Tower, the Wild Hunt. If only someone can come along and retell these stories as if a real Rhinelander was speaking and not some tedious British aristocrat this would be a marvelous book!!

Good book
Very good book of stories from the Rhine. It first came out in 1915 but the stories are time less, it not only deals with the German part of the Rhine but also the tales from France. ... Read more

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Oxford Children's Myths and Legends bring you the greatest stories ever told, from around the world and long ago. Heroes and villains, witches and wizards, warriors and royalty - there's something here for everyone.

Stories from Wales is filled with spell-binding tales of love, loyalty, greed and jealousy come from the mountains and valleys of Wales. From Pwyll, the prince of Dyfed, to Arthur's court, they tell of a world where peasants and kings live alongside the folk of the faery, and where reality and enchantment intertwine.

One of four collections being published to launch the Oxford Children's Myths and Legends series - other titles are Stories from Scotland, Stories from Ireland and
Stories from England ... Read more

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This collection of Welsh legends and folk-tales, read and enjoyed for over forty years, is now being reissued for a new generation of readers. These spellbinding tales of love, loyalty, greed, and jealousy tell of a world where peasants and kings live alongside the folk of the faery, and where reality and enchantment intertwine. Things are not always quite what they seem--because when spirit and human worlds meet almost anything is possible. Retold by an author known for his storytelling skills, this anthology features a mixture of well-known and less-known myths. ... Read more

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Mother Gruffyd was always so neat, with her black and white striped apron, her high peaked hat, with its scalloped lace and quilled fastening around her chin, her little short shawl, with its pointed, long tips, tied in a bow, and her bright red plaid petticoat folded back from her frock. Her snowy-white, rolling collar and neck cloth knotted at the top, and fringed at the ends, added fine touches to her picturesque costume. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Delightful easy to read tales with a Welsh flavor

W. E. Griffis, the author of this collection of twenty four short stories, lived between 1843 and 1928. His tales have a distinct Welsh flavor. They speak about the Welsh history, the countryside, and the customs of the people.

His first tale, for example, tells that the name Taffy used by the Welsh is a mispronunciation of David, a saint who came to the country and taught the people how to eat a good food without killing an animal. This was to melt a good cheese over bread. The British, who loved to eat rabbits, called this delicacy Welsh Rabbit, and many people today think that a Welsh Rabbit is a food made from animals.

The second has an interesting twist on the story of a warrior fighting a monster. In this tale, the hero is a beautiful young girl who perfumes herself and enchants the monster with her beauty and her smells and her lullaby, which causes him to fall asleep. The story is ostensibly is about the distant past and the origin of some famous Welsh places.

The third tells some adventures of Hugh the conjurer. He was a seventh son, and seventh sons in Wales have magical powers. Once he was told that people who came to a certain Inn were robbed, even though their rooms were locked and there was no sign that any human had entered. Hugh, willing to go anywhere to help people, agreed to solve the crimes.

The fourth allegedly relates the history of the country, how the people settled the land, the wars between tribes, how women were treated, and how customs like the "wake" were created (people had to stay awake all night to protect the dead from wild animals).

Light light reading
The readings in this book are light readings. I downloaded it because I thought it would give me brief readings that would not take too much time. This is does.

But the light readings are at a fairly low reader level and I found myself bored with the style. My expectation was a short storyformat that all ages could enjoy. My disappointment is that it is not for all ages - it's for pre-adult ages.

Perfect Welsh Children Learn to Make Cheese on Toast!
I read Dutch Fairy Tales for Young Folks by the same author, and was so terribly unimpressed with them that I only read enough of this one to ascertain that it was similar--except this one involves Welsh children learning the Secret of Cheese on Toast instead of Dutch ones learning the Secret of Flax. If you can handle the perfectly obedient children go ahead and read it, otherwise Welsh Fairy-Tales and Other Stories was much better.

Stories included are:

Welsh Rabbit and Hunted Hares
The Mighty Monster Afang
The Two Cat Witches
How the Cymry Land Became Inhabited
The Boy that was Named Trouble
The Golden Harp
The Great Red Dragon of Wales
The Touch of Clay
The Touch of Iron
The Maiden of the Green Forest
The Treasure Stone of the Fairies
Giant Tom and Giant Blubb
A Boy that Visited Fairyland
The Welshery and the Normans
The Welsh Fairies Hold a Meeting
King Arthur's Cave
The Lady of the Lake
The King's Foot Holder
Powell, Prince of Dyfed
Powell and his Bride
Why the Back Door was Front
The Red Bandits of Montgomery
The Fairy Congress
The Sword of Avalon ... Read more

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"We, the readers and students of literature, have been hijacked. The literary critics, our teachers, those assassins of culture, have put us up against the wall and held us captive." So begins Jonah Raskin's The Mythology of Imperialism. When first published in 1971, this book was nothing short of a call to arms, an open revolt against the literary establishment. In his critique of five well-known British writers—Joseph Conrad, Rudyard Kipling, D. H. Lawrence, E. M. Forster, and Joyce Cary—Raskin not only developed the model for a revolutionary anti-imperialist criticism, but, through this book's influence on Edward Said, helped usher in the field of postcolonial studies.

Nearly four decades later, The Mythology of Imperialism is all the more relevant. Its readings of British literature still offer bold and original insight into the relationship between text, artist, and historical context. But, perhaps more crucially, this book sends a revolutionary message to all readers and students of literature. Against much of today's postcolonialism—diluted by postmodern obfuscation and largely detached from its historical roots—Raskin locates the center of his anti-imperialist criticism in the anti-imperialist struggle itself and takes his cues not from "the assassins of culture" in the academy but from the national liberation movements of his time.

Written with absorbing passion and machete-sharp analysis, this new edition of The Mythology of Imperialism includes the original text, a new introduction and afterword by the author, and a preface by Bruce Robbins.

Customer Reviews (2)

A core addition to any collection focusing on British literature
How does the classic literature of Britain's imperial era come into play in today's world? "The Mythology of Imperialism: A Revolutionary Critique of British Literature and Society in the Modern Age" was first published in 1971, but today it still holds much ground as Britain and its former colonies continue to grow more distant from the principles of the Empire, as author Jonah Raskin predicted almost forty years ago. His work is a must read for anyone evaluating and criticizing modern English literature in comparison to the literature of the empire. "The Mythology of Imperialism" is a core addition to any collection focusing on British literature.

An inspiring, invigorating look at British writers of the Imperialist period through the eyes of a revolutionary.
I've been wanting to read this book, long out of print, since I found it mentioned in Edward Said's Culture and Imperialism.Said singled out Jonah Raskin's The Mythology of Imperialism as one of the few books that understood the connection between literature and imperialism.The book delivers on this promise.

Writing as a student for students, Raskin arms himself with the revolutionary philosophies of Castro, Mao, Minh and Debray against the literary and intellectual establishment of his time.As a student of British literature, Raskin felt it was unacceptable in the late 1960s to still be studying only white, male British writers, whose works had helped to prop up the imperialist value system of the late 19th and early 20th century.Moreover, he found his teachers (and revered critics like T.S. Eliot and F.R. Leavis) to still be entrenched in these values, particularly in his hometown of New York.In fact, as he explains in his new introduction, the publishing of this book (by Random House, no less), hurt rather than helped his chance at a tenured faculty position.This irony is compounded by the fact that in the UK, where Raskin completed the dissertation that would serve as the basis for this book, he found his professors to be more open to his radical theories about British literature than in the USA.It turns out Raskin was ahead of his time, writing about colonialism and post-colonialism years before it earned its place in the universities; The Mythology of Imperialism predates Said's landmark book on the subject, Orientalism, by a decade.

The book begins with what Raskin calls a "clarion call to arms," an introduction full of poetic vigor that outlines the radical philosophical framework of the book.Raskin's mission is to discuss the works of writers like Kipling, Conrad, Forster, and Lawrence in order to show to what degree they are either on the side of imperialism or on the side of revolution. The book itself is an exciting mix of culture, politics and literature.Raskin's is not the tone of the sedentary literature critic/student, and he isn't neutral; on the contrary, he is perfectly comfortable praising or criticizing sacred figures of British literature.His non-academic style is as irreverent as his beliefs, and the lack of footnotes makes him simultaneously accessible and anti-establishment.In addition to its iconoclastic, eye-opening literary criticism, I found The Mythology of Imperialism to be an invaluable survey of major and minor works of authors who underscored belief systems for generations of students from the elementary to the university level.The book has inspired me, as a graduate student, to read these and other texts in order to make my own large scale critiques.

I can understand why tenured professors and the literary establishment balked at Raskin's book.Not only is he promoting cultural and academic revolution, he also writes as if his was the last word on the subject.At times, I was put off by his cocksure tone, and I often felt like I missed a more academic edge.But largely I attribute this to my own conventionalism.Raskin questions why we venerate certain authors and their canonical texts and why we confine them to what he calls the "literary museum," rather than critically examine and judge their social and political implications.These questions may be common now, but they were revolutionary in the 1960s, as was Raskin's uncompromising ethical stance that writers should be socially conscious and revolutionaries themselves.I hope his message of revolution resonates with today's students and reinvigorates the literary community in a time of rehabilitated political and cultural conservatism.
... Read more

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For lovers of music and poetry the legendary figure of Orpheus probably suggests a romantic ideal. But for the Renaissance he is essentially a political figure. Dealing with plays, poems, songs, and the iconography of musical instruments, Robin Headlam Wells reexamines the myth, central to the Orpheus story, of the civilizing power of music and poetry. In doing so he acknowledges a debt to the New Historicism and its recovery of political meanings that traditional historical scholarship has sometimes been guilty of obscuring. But he is also critical of certain faulty premises in New Historicist criticism that have led to some radical misinterpretations of the period. ... Read more

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A collection and discussion of the literary, place-name and archaeological materials concerning giants in Wales and the Marches, the text includes three basic registers: tales and materials about place-names containing Welsh "cawr" or "cewri", or English "giant"; tales and materials for place-names with associated giant traditions; and tales and materials associated with personal names of giants. The preface includes a discussion of the linguistic, inscriptional and literary materials of Gaulish "cavar" and a description of the Welsh materials. There is also a new text and translation of Sion Dafydd Rhys's 34-folio chapter on giants from his 16th-century prose defence of Geoffrey of Monmouth's "Historia". National Grid and Cantref/Shire cross-indexes to all primary and secondary place-names in the study have been provided, and a Stith Thompson motif-index for Welsh giants is also included. ... Read more