Author: Heinrich Zimmer
Editor(s): Joseph Campbell
Publisher: Motilal Banarsidass
Year: 1999
Language: English
Pages: 338
ISBN/UPC (if available): 9788120816299
Description
Beginning with a tale from the Arabian Nights, this theme unfolds in legends from Irish paganism, medieval Christianity, the Arthurian cycle, and early Hinduism.
REVIEWS
This collection of tales, drawn from the West as well as the East, is held together by the running commentary and also the tension of a continuous argument.
-K R Srinivasa Iyengar
The tales are all a part of our common cultural heritage; they are conceived, committed to writing, devoured and apparently forgotten. The few which survive are blown like a scattering of seeds across the generations.
-Adele Brandeis
These essays rest upon Zimmer's belief-a belief which he shares with Jung and others-that the spiritual heritage of archaic man still survives in the deeper unconscious layers of our soul. His meditations are a compound of psychology and mythology. They are ingratiating because they are not meant to be more than the musings of a learned dilettante.
-Siegfried Kracauer
This book presents several popular tales from Oriental and Occidental literature; it explains the symbolic meanings of each important incident and character; then there is developed a consistent and courageous philosophy for modern man; for the stories are linked one to another by their mutual concern for the problem of man's eternal conflict with the forces of evil.
-C.M.W
Contents
Editor's Foreword
List of Plates
The Dilettante among Symbols
PART I
Abu Kasem's Slippers
A Pagan Hero and a Christian Saint
Four Romances from the Cycle of King Arthur
Gawain and the Green Knight
The Knight with the Lion
Lancelot
Merlin
The King and the Corpse
PART II
Four Episodes from the Romance of the Goddess
The Involuntary Creation
The Involuntary Marriage
The Voluntary Death
Shiva Mad
On the Sipra Shore
Index