Epics for Students is designed to provide students and other researchers with a guide to understanding and enjoying the epic literature that is most studied in classrooms. Each entry includes an introductory essay; biographical information on the author; a plot summary; an examination of the epic’s principal themes, style, construction, historical background and critical reception; and an original critical essay supplemented by excerpted previously published criticism. In addition, entries typically include information on media adaptations; reading recommendations; a list of study questions; and more.
Who's Who in Classical Mythology is an indispensable guide to all the Greek and Roman mythological characters, from major deities such as Athena and Bacchus, to the lesser-known wood nymphs and centaurs. Also included, of course, are the heroic mortals, figures such as Jason, Aeneas, Helen, Achilles, and Odysseus, all brought to life in a fascinating series of portraits drawn from a wide variety of ancient literary sources. Each entry offers a small window into a timeless mythological world, one filled with epic battles, bizarre metamorphoses, and all sorts of hideous and fantastic monsters.
This landmark work presents the most illuminating portrait we have to date of goddesses and sacred female imagery in Western culture--from prehistory to contemporary goddess movements. Beautifully written, lucidly conceived, and far-ranging in its implications, this work will help readers gain a better appreciation of the complexity of the social forces-- mostly androcentric--that have shaped the symbolism of the sacred feminine. At the same time, it charts a new direction for finding a truly egalitarian vision of God and human relations through a feminist-ecological spirituality.
This little book aims at calling the attention to the general reader to the mythology of Britain, that as yet little-known store of Celtic tradition which reflects the religious conceptions of their earliest articulate ancestors. The author based his work upon the studies of the leading Celtic scholars and he believes that the reader may safely accept it as in line with the latest research.
An enlightening history of the concept of evil in Western culture Cole takes the position that evil itself may in fact not exist, and works from the concept of the idea of evil, which most definitely does exist. He closely examines traditional explanation of evil as a force which creates monsters in human shape as well as the notion that evil is the result of the actions of misguided or deranged agents and finds fault in both; evil is a myth, he writes, that we have created about ourselves. In the process he faces such evidence of evil as crime, war, genocide and violent perversion, leading to an evaluation of the evil currently assigned to terrorism."
