Tuesday, November 3, 2026 · 天火 · tianmu.org
Myth Religion and Art
Greek religious studies that connect myth, ritual, art, archaeology, and classical scholarship in historically situated editions.
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Texts
A Wonder Book and Tanglewood Tales — Nathaniel HawthorneNathaniel Hawthorne’s twelve Greek myths retold for children, from Perseus, Midas, Pandora and Bellerophon to Theseus, Cadmus, Circe, Proserpina and Jason, told by the student Eustace Bright to the children of Tanglewood, in the 1910 Duffield edition of both books in one volume with pictures by Maxfield Parrish.Ancient Art and Ritual — Jane HarrisonAncient Art and Ritual by Jane Ellen Harrison — the foundational work connecting Greek art, myth, and religious ritual. Harrison argues that art and ritual share a common origin in the emotions of the prehistoric community, and that Greek drama grew directly from the ritual dances of Dionysus.Cerberus, the Dog of Hades — Maurice BloomfieldMaurice Bloomfield’s 1905 essay in comparative mythology, tracing the dog of Hades from Homer, Hesiod, Greek vase-painting and the Roman poets back to the two four-eyed dogs of Yama in the Veda, which he reads as the sun and the moon, with the Avestan and Norse parallels and the old equation of the name Çabala with Kerberos.Eleusinian and Bacchic MysteriesThomas Taylor's foundational exposition of the ancient Greek Mystery rites — the soul's descent into matter, suffering, purification, and return to divine unity.Greek Popular Religion — NilssonMartin Nilsson's authoritative survey of Greek popular religion — the rural cults, chthonic powers, mystery rites, hero worship, and oracles that lay beneath the Olympian surface. The religion as ordinary Greeks practiced it, not as Homer imagined it.Herakles, the Hero of Thebes, and Other Heroes of the Myth — Mary E. Burt and Zenaïde A. RagozinMary E. Burt and Zenaïde A. Ragozin’s 1900 school reader of Greek hero stories, adapted from the second reading book of the primary schools of Athens: the birth and twelve labors of Herakles, Theseus, Jason and the Golden Fleece, Orpheus, Pelops, Perseus, Demeter and Triptolemos, Prometheus, Deukalion, Dædalos and Phaethon, with a pronouncing vocabulary.Margaret and Her Friends — Caroline W. HealeyCaroline W. Healey’s reports of the ten evening Conversations that Margaret Fuller held on Greek mythology and its expression in art at George Ripley’s house in Boston from March to May 1841, with Emerson, Alcott, Elisabeth Peabody, Hedge, Clarke and others taking part, written down from her own short-hand notes and printed in 1895 with her preface and a list of the class.Mycenaean Origin of Greek Mythology — NilssonMartin Nilsson's Sather Lectures arguing that Greek mythology originated in the Mycenaean Bronze Age — that Mycenae, Tiryns, Thebes, and Orchomenos were the real places behind the myths of heroes, and that the collapse of the Mycenaean world in the 12th century BCE crystallized the mythological tradition.Myths of Crete and Pre-Hellenic Europe — MackenzieDonald Mackenzie's exploration of Minoan and Mycenaean mythology — the pre-Greek religious world of Crete, the Great Mother goddess, the bull cult, and the Bronze Age foundations beneath classical Greek myth.Myths of Greece and Rome — HarrisonJane Harrison's survey of Greek and Roman mythology — the creation myths, the Olympians, the hero cycles, and the mystery cults — by the pioneer of ritual approaches to ancient religion.Myths of Hellas, or Greek Tales — C. WittFrances Younghusband’s English translation of Professor C. Witt’s German retelling for children of the Greek myths, from the beginning of all things and the war of the gods through Heracles, the Argonauts, Theseus, Oedipus and the Seven against Thebes to Eros and Psyche, with a preface by Arthur Sidgwick, in the fifth edition of 1891.Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion — Jane Ellen HarrisonJane Ellen Harrison's complete 1903 ritualist study of Greek religion, with critical appendix, footnotes, and indexes.Religion and Art in Ancient Greece — Ernest A. GardnerErnest A. Gardner's complete 1910 study of Greek religious images, sculpture, anthropomorphism, and symbolism.Tales of Troy and Greece — Andrew LangAndrew Lang’s 1907 prose retelling of Greek heroic legend, illustrated by H. J. Ford: the war at Troy and its fall told through the life of Ulysses, his wanderings and homecoming to Ithaca, Jason and the Fleece of Gold, Theseus and the Minotaur, and Perseus, Andromeda and the Gorgon’s head.The Adventures of Ulysses the Wanderer — C. Ranger-GullC. Ranger-Gull’s 1902 prose retelling of the wanderings of Ulysses in five episodes, from the blinding of Polyphemus, Circe, Hades, the Sirens and Scylla and the years with Calypso to the homecoming and the slaying of the suitors, with a foreword, an account of the principal characters and an essay on Homer and Ulysses.The Golden Fleece and the Heroes Who Lived before Achilles — Padraig ColumPadraic Colum’s 1921 prose retelling, for young readers, of Jason’s voyage on the Argo to Colchis for the Golden Fleece and back, with the stories the heroes tell on the way, from the beginning of things, Demeter and Persephone and Prometheus to Perseus and the Battle of the Frogs and Mice, and the lives of Atalanta, Peleus, Theseus, Heracles, Admetus and Orpheus.The Heroes — Charles KingsleyCharles Kingsley's classic retelling of the Greek hero myths for children — Perseus and the Gorgon, the Argonauts and the Golden Fleece, Theseus and the Minotaur. The Victorian mythological primer that shaped generations of readers.The Mythology of Greece and Rome — O. SeemannO. Seemann’s handbook of Greek and Roman mythology in its English version edited by G. H. Bianchi, covering the creation of the world and the descent of the gods, the gods of Olympus, the sea, the earth and the lower world, the Roman household gods, and the heroic legends from Prometheus and Heracles to the Argonauts, Thebes and Troy, with attention throughout to how the gods and heroes were represented in ancient and modern art.The Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome — E. M. BerensE. M. Berens’s handbook of classical mythology for schools, published in New York by Maynard, Merrill, & Co.: the Greek and Roman gods from Uranus and Gæa to the Roman household deities, an account of public worship and festivals, and the legends of the heroes from Cadmus and Perseus to the siege of Troy and the return of the Greeks, with a pronouncing index.