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Texts
& Readings This page is designed to give students easy access to full texts and critical readings related to class topics. Where possible, multiple links are listed, and (I hope!) alternative translations. The main places to look for topics and stories not covered below is Folklore and Mythology Electronic Texts (by D. L. Ashliman) and the Internet Sacred Text Archive (a huge compilation which also includes some scholarly critical works). Toward the bottom of the list I've included sources for myths not discussed in class. |
The
nature of myth, archetypes, mythic cycles
The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion by Sir James George Frazer is one of the foundational works in the field of mythology and religion. Scroll down the page for chapter headings. The website's introductory blurb is helpful: "A monumental study in comparative folklore, magic and religion, The Golden Bough shows parallels between the rites and beliefs, superstitions and taboos of early cultures and those of Christianity. It had a great impact on psychology and literature and remains an early classic anthropological resource."
In Search of Cupid and Psyche: Myth and Legend in Children's Literature is a course page from Rutgers that deals with a particular archetype: the beast marriage. The site includes many texts of different versions and many critical readings. Particularly helpful is the instructor's inclusion of "The Structure of Myths" from Mircea Eliade's Myth and Reality.
Hesiod, the Homeric Hymns and Homerica: Fragments of the Epic Cycle (War of the Titans to the Epigoni). Internet Classics Archive.
Homerica: Fragments of the Epic Cycle, translated by Hugh G. Evelyn-White (1914): War of the Titans to the Epigoni.
Proclus, The Epic Cycle (ed. Gregory Nagy) from the Center for Hellenic Studies.The Wikipedia article on Wagner's Ring Cycle will get you started if you don't know anything about it.
Alex Ross's piece for the New Yorker on the relationship between Wagner's Ring and Tolkien's trilogy: The Ring and the Rings.
Tolkien's Ring and Der Ring des Nibelungen from One Ring to Rule Them All, A Study of the History, Symbolism and Meaning of the One Ring in J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-earth by David Harvey.
Both Rings Were Round and There the Resemblence Eases: Tolkien, Wagner, Nationalism, and Modernity, by Bradley J. Birzer. A lecture for a conference on opera.
Gilgamesh
Book of Genesis (Revised Standard Version)
Notes for the Translation of Gilgamesh, and a translation by Yanita Chen for MythHome. The MythHome pages also include some comments on the need for mythology.
The Epic of Gilgamesh (Translated by Maureen Gallery Kovacs) from Academy for Ancient Texts.
Information on the text and background of Gilgamesh from the School of Oriental and African Studies in London.
Flood narrative from the Gilgamesh Epic translated by E. A. Speiser.
Enuma Elish: the Epic of Creation, translated by L. W. King (1902). From The Seven Tablets of Creation.
L. W. King's Legends of Babylon and Egypt in Relation to Hebrew Tradition--a series of lectures on the parallels.
Samuel Noah Kramer's Sumerian Mythology--a seminal work in Ancient Near Eastern religious studies. The introduction to the page reads as follows: "The Sumerians were a non-Semitic, non-Indo-European people who lived in southern Babylonia from 4000-3000 B.C.E. They invented cuneiform writing, and their spiritual beliefs influenced all successive Near Eastern religions, including Judaism, Christianity and Islam. They produced an extensive body of literature, among the oldest in the world. Samuel Noah Kramer spent most of his life studying this literature, by piecing together clay tablets in far-flung museums. This short work gives translations or summaries of the most important Sumerian myths."
The Chaldean Account of the Deluge, by George Smith (1873). "This paper, which was read before the Society of Biblical Archaeology in London on December 3rd, 1872, caused a sensation . . . Smith started to find bits and pieces which suggested an account of a flood. In 1872, Smith found a large fragment covered with a thick deposit which, when removed, revealed a large part of the flood narrative. Reportedly, he exclaimed, "I am the first man to read that after more than two thousand years of oblivion," put the tablet on a table, and ran around the room maniacally, taking off his clothes! . . . The tablet had the story of a deluge, which resembled the account in Genesis, but which was obviously older than the Bible. Today, we know this as the eleventh tablet of the Gilgamesh epic."
Timaeus: Internet Classics Archive (from MIT; trans. Benjamin Jowett)
Critias: Internet Classics Archive (trans. Benjamin Jowett)
Active Mind's page on Plato & Atlantis (uncredited translations of both dialogues, plus additional information)
Jowett's translation of the Critias with notes & commentary from Ancient Texts
Truth Lies and History in Plato's Timaeus-Critias by Thomas K. Johansen (University of Bristol/Center for Hellenic Studies)
Additional textual resources for other mythic traditions
Theseus
Ovid, Aegeus, and Theseus (Metamorphoses Bk.7)
The Perseus Project's translation (edited by Brookes More) of the Minotaur section of Book 8
Sir Samuel Garth, John Dryden, etc., translation of Metamorphoses, Book 8 (second from top)
Plutarch's Life of Theseus
The Heroes. Or, Greek Fairy Tales for my Children. By Charles Kingsley (1901)
Theseus: Legendary King of Athens (from Prof. Bernard Suzanne). The focus of the website is Plato's dialogues, and his times.
Nathaniel Hawthorne's version of the Minotaur story from Tanglewood Tales.
Arthur
Texts on Arthur from the Camelot Project.
Explorations in Arthurian History and Legends lists texts, with some links, that have to do with Arthur.
King Arthur: Tales of the Round Table. Edited by Andrew Lang (from Sacred Texts). This is not properly a primary source, but is rather a compilation of some of the tales by a well-regarded scholar of fairy tales and legends.
Sir Thomas Mallory's Le Morte D'Arthur from the Electronic Text Center, University of Virginia Library.
The Mabinogion, translated by Lady Charlotte Guest (1877). Sacred Texts.
India
The Creation of the World According to the Upanishads from
The Bhagavad Gita Translated by Ramanand Prasad (From Exploring Ancient World Cultures)
The Historical Context of The Bhagavad Gita and Its Relation to Indian Religious Doctrines by Soumen De (EAWC)
The Bhagavad Gita Translated by Edwin Arnold (1885). From Sacred Texts.
Also from Sacred Texts: an introduction to the Gita, with a section-by-section gloss.
History and Story Behind the Gita is a brief summary (be sure to go to part 2 as well)
Indian Fairy Tales and Jakata Tales from Sacred Texts (two compilation/translations, both from 1912 of Indian stories).
Miscellaneous Short Buddhist Texts includes both Indian and Chinese examples.
Scandinavia/Anglo-Saxon
The Volsung Saga translated by William Morris
The Prose Edda of Snorri Sturlson. Translated by Arthur Gilchrist Brodeur (1916)
The Nibelungenlied (trans. Georg Henry Needler)
Northvegr (Iceland): primary texts, translations, folk & fairy tales, lots more.
Beowulf in Cyberspace (Beowulf on Steorarum): terrifically cool online edition of the poem.
Beowulf: An Anglo-Saxon Heroic Poem (segment translated by Alan Sullivan & Timothy Murphy, with links to other texts)
The Kalevala (Finland) by Elias Lönnrot, translated by John Martin Crawford (1888) from Sacred Texts. More Scandinavian texts are available on this page devoted to Tolkien's sources for Lord of the Rings.
China
The Chinese Classics, from Sacred Texts, includes most of the central religious texts of China
Miscellaneous Short Chinese Texts, also from Sacred Texts; see also Miscellaneous Short Buddhist Texts.
The Sacred Books of China - The Texts of Confucianism. Translated by James Legge (1879). Part I (Sacred Books of the East, Volume 3).
For more texts from both China and India, see the Sacred Texts index of Sacred Books of the East.C. G. Jung's forward to the I Ching (Jung's own analysis of one of China's sacred books; very long, but very informative).