This volume begins with Roman myths and traces their influence in early Christian and later European literature. Ninety-five entries by leading scholars cover subjects such as sacrificial cults and rites in pre-Roman Italy, Roman religion and its origins, the mythologies of paganism, the survival of the ancient gods in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, gypsy myths and rituals, romanticism and myth in Blake, Nerval, and Balzac, and myth in twentieth-century English literature. Mythologies offers illuminating examples of the workings of myth in the structure of societies past and present--how we create, use, and are guided by systems of myth to answer fundamental questions about ourselves and our world. Many of the sections in Mythologies, originally published as a two-volume cloth set, will soon be available in four paperback volumes (two are announced here; two more are scheduled for 1993). These volumes will reproduce the articles, introductory essays, and illustrations as they appeared in the full Mythologies set.
