Author Description

"This fifth edition of our text incorporates into its cover design motifs that illustrate some of the ways we find mythology interesting: it represents a timeless tradition, and yet one that is ever being remade and reformulated to be completely fresh. This edition includes new chapters on the American blockbuster film Black Panther and on The Half-God of Rainfall, an African-American epic poem that fuses Classical Greek and Yoruba Nigerian mythology. Also in this edition, we have added considerable new material to the discussion of Joseph Campbell's Hero's Journey by offering insights from Christopher Vogler's Writer's Journey that include corrections and refinements of Campbell's thinking. This material contains significant discussion of I Am Legend, the 2007 film about the confrontation between Dr. Robert Neville and the vampire-like creatures that result from his research, and other versions of this story going back to the 1954 novel by Richard Matheson. In addition, Chapter 11 now provides extensive new material that enriches our understanding of the Mesoamerican Maya rituals and culture. As in previous editions, we delight in continuing and expanding the multiple perspectives we have been able to provide in this book for traditional stories, suggesting that they are in some ways eternal and immutable, while showing how we see them differently because of the world we live in and the particular kinds of insights that have become available to us as a result"--