I just finished rereading the book Elementals: Stories of Fire and Ice. It’s a collection of tales from A. S. Byatt. Yes, the author of The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye and Possession - both of which, incidentally, I’ve written about here at Mythography.
One story, provocatively called “A Lamia in the Cévennes”, caught my attention. [...]
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“My soul would sing of metamorphoses.
But since, o gods, you were the source of these
bodies becoming other bodies, breathe
your breath into my book of changes: may
the song I sing be seamless as its way
weaves from the world’s beginning to our day.”
(prologue to the Metamorphoses of Ovid)
You could say that it was love at first read. [...]
I am trying really hard to honor my promise of no spoilers from the book The Orphan’s Tales: In The Night Garden. Yes, I know you’re waiting for the “but”, so here it is. The one exception is the story of the Selkie. Sorry, I can’t resist sharing this tale here. It starts with “The [...]
Recently, I started reading a book that was so compelling, I could scarcely force myself to put it down. Indeed, I have stayed up far past my bedtime on several occasions, greedily devouring more and more of the chapters. This book is called The Orphans Tales: In the Night Garden, and it was written by [...]
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Recently, I decided to reread a book I had originally studied long ago. Don’t worry, the topic is indeed related to both art and mythology. Okay, I will stop teasing you now and tell you more about this book, which is called, compellingly, Olympian Dreamers. The subtitle is “Victorian Classical Painters 1860-1914″.
Let’s begin the review [...]
There has been a great deal of controversy about the identity of Homer. He is the author credited with “writing” (or creating) the two great epics from ancient Greek civilization: the Iliad and the Odyssey. Scholars debated (and some still do) for decades about whether there was an actual man known as Homer, or if [...]
For Valentine’s Day this year, I thought it would be fun to take another look at that quintessential goddess of love, Aphrodite. So in honor of the holiday, I would like to celebrate this beguiling figure from myth by discussing a book devoted to her. The book is Worshipping Aphrodite. As the subtitle “Art and [...]
Naturally, Hera - the queen of the Olympian gods - appears both in the Iliad and the Odyssey of Homer. In these two epics her personality is revealed in a series of events. In my opinion, the most compelling of these episodes is the scene in the Iliad where Hera manipulates her husband Zeus. Here, [...]
Once upon a time…
These words are a familiar beginning to those of us who enjoy reading - or hearing - a good, old fashioned fairy tale. I mention this, because a couple of the tales in the collection called The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye start with this exact line. And if this weren’t enough [...]
Are you looking for a couple of mythology book recommendations? Well then today, I have some suggestions just for you. After all, reading and writing about myth is what I do here at Mythography.
Bulfinch’s Mythology is an old school retelling of some of the main stories of Western myth. In all honesty, I feel that [...]