Myth: A New Symposium - Tapa dura

Almost 50 years ago, Myth: A Symposium, ed. by Thomas Seboek (1955), offered scholars from many fields the opportunity to contemplate-in print-varying, often dissenting, assessments of the nature and meaning of myth across cultures. Schrempp and Hansen's sequel, comprising essays derived from a conference titled The Symposium on Myth, is larger than the earlier collection and includes both essays referring to significant contributions to the earlier volume and narrowly focused essays on particular aspects of myth (e.g., its visual representation in the culture of Rome preserved by the catastrophic eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE). The range of contributions testifies to the complexity of myth as defined and redefined by scholars across many disciplines. Indeed, the opening essays (one each by Hansen and John McDowell) consider the difficulties and challenges posed when luminaries in the field attempt to define, classify, and analyze myth. McDowell's essay in particular provides entry for both scholars and interested lay readers. Robert Ivie's contribution, Distempered Demos: Myth, Metaphor, and US Political Culture, expands the borders of the study of myth, identifying competing and contradictory myths at the heart of the political divide between James Madison's vision of democracy and Thomas Jefferson's. Summing Up: Recommended. Graduate and research collections; large public libraries. -- R. Nadelhaft * emerita, University of Maine , 2003may CHOICE *

Myth: A New Symposium offers a broad-based assessment of the present state of myth study. It was inspired by a revisiting of the influential mid-century work Myth: A Symposium (edited by Thomas Sebeok). A systematic introduction and 15 contributions from a wide spectrum of disciplines offer a range of views on past myth study and suggest directions for the future. Contributors blend theoretical analysis with richly documented historical, ethnographic, and literary illustrations and examples drawn from Native American, classical, medieval, and modern sources.