The Mythic Fantasy of Robert Holdstock

 

The Mythic Fantasy of Robert Holdstock: Critical Essays on the Fiction (Critical Explorations in Science Fiction and Fantasy) edited by Donald E. Morse and Kálmán Matolcsy is another one of the books that I received for review from McFarland Publishers.

  

And this is where I admit I have never read any of Holdstock's works. He's only been on the fringes of my awareness and after browsing through this collection of essays about his work, I am more interested in him than before.  Previously, he's been on my "interesting, perhaps someday" list. So in the end, that is the best recommendation I have for this book, it will spark your interest in Holdstock's worlds. He used myth and some fairy tale to inform his worlds.

Book description from the publisher:

Robert Holdstock was a prolific writer whose oeuvre included horror, fantasy, mystery and the novelization of films, often published under pseudonyms. These twelve critical essays explore Holdstock’s varied output by displaying his works against the backdrop of folk and fairy tales, dissecting their spatiotemporal order, and examining them as psychic fantasies of our unconscious life or as exempla of the sublime. The individual novels of the Mythago Wood sequence are explored, as is Holdstock’s early science fiction and the Merlin Codex series.

About the Editors
Donald E. Morse is a professor at the University of Debrecen, in Hungary, and is an emeritus professor at the University of Oakland in Michigan. He is the author of a dozen books and over 100 scholarly articles. Kalman Matolcsy is a translator, poet, composer, and a professor at the University of Debrecen. He has written numerous scholarly articles on the literature of horror, fantasy and science fiction. Donald E. Palumbo is a professor of English at East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina. He lives in Greenville. C.W. Sullivan III is Distinguished Professor of arts and sciences at East Carolina University and a full member of the Welsh Academy. He is the author of numerous books and the on-line journal Celtic Cultural Studies.

Table of Contents:

Acknowledgments xi
Foreword: Under the Spell of a Magician
BRIAN W. ALDISS 1
Introduction: Mythago Wood—“A Source of Visions and Adventure”
DONALD E. MORSE 3

Part One: Approaches
1. The Embodiment of Abstraction in the Mythago Novels
W. A. SENIOR 13
2. Masks in the Forest: The Dynamics of Surface and Depth in the Mythago Cycle
KÁLMÁN MATOLCSY 26
3. Exploring the Habitats of Myths: The Spatiotemporal Structure of Ryhope Wood
STEFAN EKMAN 46

Part Two: The Novels
4. Time Winds: Early Science Fiction
ANDY SAWYER 67
5. Profusion Sublime and the Fantastic: Mythago Wood MAREK OZIEWICZ 81
6. Tallis, the Feminine Presence in Mythago Wood: Lavondyss: Journey to an Unknown Region
ELIZABETH A. WHITTINGHAM 96
7. Embedded Narratives in Lavondyss and Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Left Hand of DarknessVERA BENCZIK 114
8. Stories to Illuminate Truth and Lies to Hide Pain: Gate of Ivory, Gate of Horn DONALD E. MORSE 129
9. “A Heap of Broken Images”—The Mythological Wasteland of the Mind: The Hollowing and Ancient Echoes
ILDIKÓ LIMPÁR 141
10. “So many names in so many tongues...”: Allusive Mythology in
Celtika C. W. SULLIVAN III 156
11. Thresholds, Polders, and Crosshatches in the Merlin Codex
TOM SHIPPEY 165

Robert Holdstock Bibliography 177
About the Contributors 183
Index 187

   

  

So do we have any Holdstock fans out in the SurLaLune readership?

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Mythology for the Holidays (Or Anytime)

Encyclopedia Mythologica: Gods and Heroes Pop-Up by Robert Sabuda and Matthew Reinhart (who we all know I love) was released earlier this year and I never posted about it here.  I finally bought a copy last month and now I have to share. 

Here's the book description:

For all of recorded history, humans have sought to understand Earth’s mysteries in the realm of the divine — and aspired to conduct themselves as heroes. Only gods, of course, could push the sun across the sky,forge entire continents, and impel mountains to touch the clouds. In this stunning volume, the incomparable team of Matthew Reinhart and Robert Sabuda take us to Ra-Atum’s land in Ancient Egypt; above the Grecian clouds to Zeus’s Mount Olympus; up to Norse god Odin’s frozen north; to the Far East, where the Jade Emperor sits in the heavens; into the wilds of Oceania, where Pele’s volcanic rage simmers below the earth; and to many more lands and times, all rich with sacred myths and legends.

Essentially this book offers two page spreads of various mythologies from around the world ranging from the Egyptian and Greek to the Norse, Chinese and Native American. The pop-ups are intricate and interesting as to be expected from Sabuda and Reinhart. A great book for anyone who loves mythology, especially children learning about it for the first time.  My niece was on her way to becoming a Greek mythology scholar earlier this year thanks to Percy Jackson and her own insatiable reading habits. A trip to Nashville's Parthenon was a grand success.

Of course, the all time best-selling and beloved mythology collection for young readers for decades has been D'Aulaires' Book of Greek Myths by Ingri d'Aulaire and Edgar Parin d'Aulaire.  If you are acquiring that one, you might as well add in their D'Aulaires' Book of Norse Myths, too.  I have to say that since I am a full quarter Norwegian and quite a bit Scandinavian in general. I wish someone had given either one of these books to me as a child. But if someone had, this might be a mythology blog instead of more fairy tale oriented.  All for the lack of a gift book to a precocious child reader, here we are today.  :)

 

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The Hero with an African Face: Mythic Wisdom of Traditional Africa by Clyde W. Ford

The Hero with an African Face: Mythic Wisdom of Traditional Africa by Clyde W. Ford.  I have been hunkered down with lots of work, but just rememebered a book that was discussed at Faerie Escape a few weeks ago.  I'm not as astute in Joseph Campbell's philosophies since I work primarily with fairy tales instead of myths, but his work continues to be very influential as well as problematic in the world of folklore in general.  This book helps fill in a few of the gaps from what I have been told and read, although I haven't read the book itself yet.  It is now on my list though! I wanted to share it here before it fell off my radar again, at least for a while.

Book description from the publisher:

In this remarkable book, Clyde Ford restores to us the lost treasure of African mythology, bringing to life the ancient tales and showing why they matter so much to us today.

African myths convey the perennial wisdom of humanity: the creation of the world, the hero's journey, our relationship with nature, death, and resurrection. From the Ashanti comes the moving account of the grief-stricken Kwasi Benefo's journey to the underworld to seek his beloved wives. From Uganda we learn of the legendary Kintu, who won the love of a goddess and created a nation from a handful of isolated clans. The Congo's epic hero Mwindo is the sacred warrior who shows us the path each person must travel to discover his true destiny.

These and other important African myths show us the history of African Americans in a new light--as a hero's journey, a courageous passage to a hard-won victory. The Hero with an African Face enriches us all by restoring this vital tradition to the world.

From from Publishers Weekly:

Extending the sensibility of Joseph Campbell, Ford exposes readers to African myths and folk tales, finding that they harbor both culturally specific and universal motifs. Ford (Where Healing Waters Meet) has a diverse background in business, chiropractic, psychotherapy and African-American history. He recounts many traditional African stories, exploring their metaphors, symbols and archetypal figures, their answers to the timeless questions of how to live, how life began and how it will end. While these tales have been notoriously absent from world literature, they are strikingly similar to Eastern, Western and Middle-Eastern mythology in many ways. As Ford splices the myths with his engaging analyses of them, he illuminates universal themes and values, symbols and characters. Applying the hero's journey to the African diaspora ("the massive forceful displacement of millions of Africans"), he ruminates: "there is every reason to believe that African slaves... understood their capture and travails in just such mythic terms." Likely to find its way into college classrooms, Ford's comprehensive work supplies a missing piece of world mythology.

So is anyone else familiar with this book? It has been highly recommended to me and I look forward to adding it to my library someday soon.

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