ENH251 - Mythology

This work offers comprehensive coverage of folklore throughout the African continent. Over 350 entries provide in-depth examinations of individual African countries, ethnic groups, religious practices, artistic genres, and numerous other concepts related to folklore.

In this marvelous collection of hundreds of fascinating, mysterious, and revealing tales, Harold Scheub captures the immense sweep and diversity of African mythology. Scheub offers an unprecedented collection of 400 stories, arranged alphabetically, that touch on virtually every aspect of religious belief. Here are gods and goddesses, epic heroes and divine tricksters, along with epics of the world's origins, the struggle between the human and the divine, and much more.

" . . . de Heusch has achieved a significant advance over Lévi-Strauss's formulations. . . . [A] landmark contribution to anthropological theory, historical methodology, structural analysis, and African studies." --Choice A major work that modifies and extends Lévi-Straussian myth analysis in profound and exciting ways. Roy Willis's masterful translation makes technical terms accessible to the general reader.

In Cameroon and Africa, lakes are sacred and often secret places. They fascinate curiosity and have often served as repositories of local histories, memories and dreams. In Mystique, Bime offers the reader a rich and seductive menu of reflection on the significance of legends and myths on and around lakes in Cameroon, Ghana, Benin and Tanzania.

This remarkable book is the most ambitious work on mythology since that of the renowned Mircea Eliade, who all but single-handedly invented the modern study of myth and religion. Focusing on the oldest available texts, buttressed by data from archeology, comparative linguistics and human population genetics, Michael Witzel reconstructs a single original African source for our collective myths, dating back some 100,000 years.

Myth and Mankind is a world history like no other. Every book in this series is filled with the strange stories, mystic rites, angry gods, vision quests and magic symbols that are at the heart of all cultures but are left out of most history books.

Wisdom and Initiation in Gabon: A Philosophical Analysis of Fang Tales, Myths, and Legends is a study of the philosophical significance of Fang mythology and the rituals of Initiation that lead to Wisdom. Bonaventure Mvé Ondo argues that Fang tales, myths, and legends are components of the foundation of a worldview that sustains and protects a unique, historical Fang identity.