Product Description

This book is not about myths, but about approaches to myth, from all of the major disciplines, including science, religion, philosophy, literature, and psychology. The fate of the preternaturally beautiful Adonis is one of the main fables upon which Segal focuses, in an attempt to analyse the various different theories of myth. Where the theory does not work, he substitutes another myth, showing that, for all their claims to all-inclusiveness, certain theories, in fact, only apply to specific kinds of myths. A uniform set of questions is provided, to elucidate both the strengths and the weaknesses of the conjectures. A survey of the past 300 years of theorizing on myth, this book takes into account the work of such prominent thinkers as Albert Camus, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Roland Barthes, C. G. Jung, and Sigmund Freud. Finally, Segal considers the future study of myth, and the possible function of myth in the world as the adult equivalent of play.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #230078 in Books
• Published on: 2004-07-08
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 176 pages

Independent on Sunday, August 22, 2004
Segal's writing is entirely lucid.

About the Author
Robert Segal lectures in the Department of Religious Studies, at Lancaster University, specialising in theories of myth, theories of religion, and gnosticism. He is the author of The Poimandres as Myth, Religion and the Social Sciences, Explaining and Interpreting Religion, Joseph Campbell, and Theorising about Myth (forthcoming). He has also edited numerous books, including The Gnostic Jung, The Allure of Gnosticism, The Myth
and Ritual Theory, and Hero Myth Reader (forthcoming). He has also written the introduction to In Quest of the Hero.

Customer Reviews

Introduction to Myth Criticism
What readers, and buyers, need to be aware of, is that this book is not a general overview of world myths - and by myths in this case I mean the mythological stories. Instead, it is a thorough, albeit short, introduction to myth criticism. 'Myth' guides the reader through the landscape of myth criticism and mythological theories and covers most of the important myth critics: Freud, Jung, Campbell, Frye, Frazer, Strauss to name but a few. This academic book is not interested in searching for `the one true theory' concerning myth, but to present critics and their theories in accessible language; I think it succeeds wonderfully. While this book is probably not of much interest to the casual reader of myths (as a literary phenomenon), it is to those readers who want to read more concerning theories of myth and myth-criticism as a whole.

Very confusing
I had hoped that this book would give me a framework from which to further explore the world of myths and their meanings. Instead I found myself more confused than ever at the end of the book. I rely on the Very Short Introduction series when all else fails and so I was deeply disappointed in this book. It feels like the author was trying to fit too much in to the framework of what should be an overview at best. Because of that I found it hard to follow many of the arguments and ideas he proposes. It seemed like he started to say lots of things but never quite finished any of them and instead drifted off into other ideas and arguments half way through. As this is quite a complex subject anyway, this approach really didn't help. I would recommend the book on myths in the Canongate Myths series by Karen Armstrong as a better place to start your journey into myth. This book may make more sense when revisited with a great deal more knowledge.

Not very enlightening
Anyone who thought that he or she would learn anything of the rich heritage of world or even classical mythology in this book may be disappointed with Robert Segal's work. Segal concentrates on academic theory on the significance of myth. Basically he homes in on one story, that of Adonis, and and uses it to illustrate the views of a raft of commentators on the meanings they perceived the myth to have, in terms of philosophy, ritual, literature, psychology et al. The authors include Lucien Levy-Bruh, Claude Levi-Strauss, Karl Popper, Paul Radin and many many many others; twenty-two by my count.
In my view this book should have been entitled 'Theory of Myth; A Very Short Introduction'. This would have indicated that it by an academic - no problem with that - for academics in a very narrow specialism. But unlike most of the other titles in this largely excellent series, I found this very short introduction not nearly short enough.