Chinese Myths (British Museum--Legendary Past Series) | 
| Author: Anne Birrell
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Category: Book
List Price: $14.95
Buy New: $8.84
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Avg. Customer Rating:  2 reviews
Sales Rank: 841490
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1st Univer
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 80
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 9.2 x 6.5 x 0.3
ISBN: 0292708793
Dewey Decimal Number: 299.51
EAN: 9780292708792
ASIN: 0292708793
Publication Date: September 15, 2000
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Product Description
Chinese myths were primarily a diffuse and fragmentary oral tradition, eventually preserved in writing only in a piecemeal fashion. Many classical texts are unavailable in translation, and the stories have been unknown to Western readers. Anne Birrell here introduces the general reader to a selection of narratives organized by themes and motifs that help set Chinese myths in the context of world mythology. The contents include: - Origin and creation myths
- Myths of the flood
- The divine cosmos
- Gender in myth
- Metamorphoses
- Mythic heroes and heroines
- Fabled plants and animals
- Major sources of myth
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| Customer Reviews:
 This is NOT an introduction to Chinese mythological literature July 23, 2007
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
Which I was expecting. If you are looking for something along the lines of the "poetic edda", "the tain" or "metamorphosis" then look elsewhere.
This effort, at best, is a textbook presentation of chinese mythology lumped by subject matter. At worst, imagine someone taking a heavily annotated version of Ovid's "metamorpohsis", rearranging the text by topic, excising all extraneous text other than what specifically represents the topic, and then printing the annotations with this remainder tagged at the end of chapter. This is essentiall what you get. For each "subject" listed in the editioral review Anne Birrel gives us 2 to 5 pages of her analysis and interpretation of the text sources as well as comparisions to other mythological systems and then we get 2-4 paragraphs of the original text.
It is commented in the introduction that Chinese mythology is hampered by the source material being fragementary, but this presentation's limited text of the source material is so sterile, so minimal that one has to wonder why any attempt to include the original material was made.
If you are looking for an introduction and comparative analysis of Chinese Mythology as it relates to other better known western mythologies then this is an interesting book. If you are looking for an introduction to the literature that preserves Chinese mythology, fragmentary though it may be --- there has to be a better selection somewhere.
 Good Transaction February 12, 2007
0 out of 8 found this review helpful
This was a good transaction. Delivery was slow, but not terrible. Thanks a lot!
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