Those of us who have been teaching classical mythology for decades share a common grievance: the absence of a textbook that presents the material with genuine intelligence and respect for its intrinsic nature, as well as respect for the student’s capacity for understanding such an approach. Hansen’s book should be, for many instructors, the one we have been waiting for.
This volume’s one great virtue—from which the other virtues inevitably flow—is that among the several mythology textbooks on the market, this is the only one whose author is a scholar of myth and folklore who has published interesting and original books and articles in these fields. Thus Hansen’s approach is quite unlike that of his predecessors. He does not re-package and re-tell the myths as creation stories, foundation stories, adventure stories, and so on, but chooses instead to begin with two full chapters on the Greek conception of the universe, its origins, its structure and geography, and the nature of its diverse inhabitants, divine, human, and in-between. This presentation is ambitious and carried out with admirable clarity, balance, and insight. Hansen’s desire to create “a sort of ethnography of the imaginary” (xiii) is a welcome inspiration and well carried out.
Chapter One, “Introduction,” presents the physical universe as the Greeks understood it, describing the important places (Earth, Sky, Death Realm, and Tartaros) and the characters that inhabit them (greater and lesser gods, humans, and nature spirits). A section titled “The Relationship of Gods and Humans” gives a clear account of this complex topic in only three and a half pages. The chapter concludes with “Peculiarities of Mythological Narrative,” introducing concepts and ways of thinking about Greek myth that are found in no other introductory textbook and reveal the author’s long-time immersion in this subject. “Supernaturalism,” “Personification and Reification,” “Binatural Beings versus Composite Beings,” and “Reversible and Irreversible Changes” are the four topics presented. They will make rewarding reading for those who already know Greek myth, and stimulating challenges for undergraduates who will hopefully use these concepts to enrich their classroom discussion and written essays (as I found to be the case in the mythology course I taught in spring 2006 at Haverford College).
Chapter Two, “Time: What Happens in Greek Myth,” deals with creation of the world and its evolution up to the Heroic Age. Much of it is taken up with Hesiod’s account of the progression from Chaos to the rule of the Titans to the final triumph of the Olympians. This is followed by a brief treatment of the Trojan War, including its antecedents and aftermath, and an intriguing final section called “What Does Classical Mythology Say?” Here Hansen seeks to extract the essential truths, and ultimately the deep wisdom, embodied in this imaginative body of stories. He does remarkably well in only four pages. The final page (94), under the rubric “Behavior Options,” is both succinct and insightful in its claim that these traditions of past times, with their great range of personalities, behaviors, relationships, and successes and failures, were preserved for their value in illustrating the range of behavior options available to men and women of later generations.
This overview is impressively economical, occupying only the first 94 pages of a 393-page book. The bulk of what remains (Chapter Three, 95-335) is in the form of a dictionary of “Deities, Themes, and Concepts” that make up Greek myth. These entries range from a half page to several pages, are thoroughly cross-referenced, and conclude with “Suggestions for Further Reading” that display an impressive range of scholarship in both classics and folklore. Especially gratifying here is Hansen’s inclusion of items characteristic of folklore but rarely if ever addressed in mythology textbooks and handbooks. Examples include Culture Hero, Fabulous People and Places, Hunters, Monsters, Mountains, Personified Abstractions, Sex-changers, Special Rules and Properties, Tasks, Triads, Waters, Wondrous Animals, and Wondrous Objects. “Deities” runs the gamut from Aeolus to Zeus (with the intriguing Absent Deity as the first entry), but also includes “in-between” creatures like Kouretes, Nymphs, and Satyrs, and heroes as well (Argonauts, Jason, Kadmos, Odysseus, Perseus, et al.), although heroes are really a different category (thus the chapter might have been titled “Deities, Heroes, Themes, and Concepts”). Of course many secondary figures do not have entries, and if the reader wishes to learn something about, e.g., Antaeus, Atlas, Harpies, the Muses, Prokrustes, and others, he or she must use the Index, where every person, place, and creature can be found.
Instructors customarily build their course around a central text like this and supplement it with some primary sources and supplementary handouts. I usually add Hesiod, Homeric Hymns, some Greek plays, and a xerox pack of essays on myth interpretation, and the teacher who uses Hansen’s book may decide to do the same. Whether or not myth theory is covered in the same course is always a difficult question, and some instructors or programs may have a separate course on theories of myth. Hansen generally avoids issues of theory, leaving this an open choice for the instructor.
The concluding Chapter 4 is an extremely useful compilation of “Annotated Print and Nonprint Resources,” including ancient sources, an extensive bibliography of modern studies, a list of reference works, a short list of nonprint resources (electronic archives, databases, and multimedia libraries), a list of abbreviations, a Glossary, and an Index.
In every way this book is well produced, easy to use, and pleasant to look at. (The only error I noticed is the mistake “Penelope” for “Antikleia” on page 309, five lines from the bottom.) The text is generously accompanied with black-and-white line drawings and illustrations taken from classical art, offering us a vision of how those who used these myths imagined their principal characters and scenes. The cover features a beautifully seductive William Waterhouse painting of Hylas being seduced by the water nymphs. I see it as iconic of the seductive power of Hansen’s new and welcome invitation to plunge into the world of classical mythology.
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[Review length: 1001 words • Review posted on October 31, 2006]