Gods, Heroes, and Kings: The Battle for Mythic Britain

Elegant contributions to the vast literature on mythology, these well-informed and thoroughly documented studies enhance our understanding of this elusive topic. Originally a series of lectures, Leeming's Myth is divided into four complementary essays covering myths and religious faith, creation stories, gender, and hero stories. The essays investigate the role of ancient beliefs in modern culture, clarifying the relationship between myth and fact and showing how myths evolve and endure in the works of noted authors

(Yeats, Woolf), scientists (Einstein), environmentalists (Thomas Berry), and others. Attentive to the subjects' complexities, this book is nonetheless comprehensible to nonspecialists. In Gods, Heroes, and Kings, Leeming teams with Fee to delineate the complex patchwork of belief systems found in the British Isles. The authors, both academic authorities with many previous publications on the topic, offer a thoroughgoing and instructive overview of the isles's many folkloric traditions, including rites, legends, and beliefs drawn from Anglo-Saxon, Judeo-Christian, Germanic, and Celtic traditions