More sophisticated than the typical gods-for-clods survey, but far less interesting.
An overview, dry as the dust of the Parthenon, of the major streams of ancient European mythmaking and of modern scholarship thereon.
Leeming (English, Comp. Lit./Univ. of Conn., Storrs; Stephen Spender: A Life in Modernism, 1999, etc.) is working on fertile ground here; who could fail to be fascinated, for instance, by stories of magical men who turn themselves into maggots to infest sacred cows, of giant oak trees that block out the sun, of screeching harridans whose scary hovels rest on stilts made of chicken bones? Yet, darting from one mythic tradition—Slavic, Hellenic, Celtic—to another, Leeming spends little time retelling such stories, instead offering schematic summaries of such grand tales as the Tain, the Mabinogion, and the Prose Edda, buttressed by snippets of history—a couple of pages on archaic Greece here, a paragraph on the arrival of Christianity to Ireland there. His forays into the scholarship on, say, proto-Indo-European society are similarly cursory, and they overlook the considerable controversies that have developed around such matters as the Dumezilian elaboration of that society into “tripartite functions” headed by priests and warriors (a reconstruction that, some have charged, reflects the late Georges Dumezil’s devotion to fascism more than the historical record). Leeming peppers his slender narrative with provocative remarks that bear further discussion, as when he links Adam Smith’s notion of the “invisible hand,” a metaphysical construct through and through, to “the old Judeo-Christian mythology,” adding that the modern marketplace is itself something of a mythological being. One imagines that this will be most useful for students in courses on comparative mythology. General readers certainly won’t find it a gripping read; they’ll do better to turn to The Golden Bough, whose doubtful scholarship is at least offset by good storytelling.
More sophisticated than the typical gods-for-clods survey, but far less interesting.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-19-514361-2
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2003
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.
Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955
ISBN: 0670717797
Page Count: -
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955
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