Larousse World Mythology

Edited by Pierre Grimal

Translated from Mythologies de la Meditarranee au Gange and Mythologies des Steppes, des Iles et des Forets by Patricia Beardsworth

The Hamlyn Publishing Group, 1989, ISBN 060056505X, photographic colour plates, colour and black and white photographs throughout, colour photographic frontispiece, large hardcover, dustjacket

Very Good Condition, minor edge and shelf wear, minor rubbing and bumping to edges and corners, dustjacket shows a little edge and shelf wear with a little rubbing and bumping to edges and corners (see photographs)

“All races without exception have possessed a mythology.  To trace the outline of the world’s mythology is to trace also the pattern of man’s development.  There has been no age, no civilization that has not probed the mysteries of life and sought to explain them by the graphic means to myth.  The preoccupying questions have remained constant – how was the world created, what forces govern man’s life, and how best can he make them favourable to him?  The answers have been as varied as the societies that have produced them ranging from the primitive to the near-sophisticated.
In Larousse World Mythology, under the editorship of Pierre Grimal of the Institut de France, twenty-three authors provide an authoritative survey of the myths of the world’s principal societies.  They analyse the form and function of myth, note its variations and evolution, and examine recurrent themes.  They range form the dark, cave-bound rites of prehistoric man, through the system of Egyptian gods, the monotheistic patterns of the ancient near east, the Indian pantheon, and the gods and heroes of classical Greece and Rome.  In less commonly charted areas they survey the polytheistic cults of northern Europe, the nature spirits of the American Indians, the sacrificial cults of Central America, totemism in Africa, and ancestry and fetish worship in Oceania.”