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79 of 80 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A remarkable reference book, 22 Sep 2004
By A Customer
This book is remarkable for many reasons. It covers the entire cannon of greek myths and legends in a refreshing and illuminating way. Graves cross-indexes the entire book with a kind of "internet-link hypertext" (this book was written WAY before the WWW) that can lead to surprising connections. And yes, he does present his ingenious "key" to understanding the "true" meanings "hidden" behind these stories, but he had the decency to separate these from the more generally accepted "University course" interpretations. And, as even critical reviewers have pointed out, even if you disagree with what he has to say, he was an extremely well read and scholarly man with an astonishing knack for rendering the past vivid and meaningful. His opinions are always thought provoking and worth reading...
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215 of 222 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An Exhaustive Text for Advanced Students of Greek Mythology, 13 April 2003
Robert Graves' THE GREEK MYTHS falls between the Victorian bombast of Bulfinch and the popular style of Edith Hamilton, less stylistically intimidating than the former and more scholarly than the latter. Originally published as a two volume set in 1955 with author revisions in 1957 and 1960, this single volume text does not abridge the original text but merely confines it to a single binding. One's reaction to THE GREEK MYTHS will depend to some extent on one's purpose in acquiring it. This is an exhaustive collection of Greek mythology that far outstrips any other modern anthology that I have encountered, including myths both better known and extremely obscure. Each myth is presented in concise, graceful prose, and where possible Graves includes genealogies of the characters and major variations of each myth; an interpretive essay also follows each myth. While Graves' retelling of the myths themselves have been widely praised, his interpretations of the myths have been somewhat criticized--and justly so. Graves tends to see incarnations of the "White Goddess" and the "Sacrificial King" in every third story; more dangerously, he tends to tie the myths to historical events in a highly speculative way. While this does not undercut the interest of his interpretations, it does hold a number of traps for the casual reader, who may assume that Graves' essays offer standard, scholastically unbiased interpretations based on proven historical events. For myself, I use Graves' THE GREEK MYTHS as both reference and pleasure-reading, and I enjoy it a great deal; it is an indispensable purchase for any one with a serious interest in Greek mythology or for any one who must frequently reference the same for scholarly purposes, and I strongly recommend it to them. At the same time, however, I would hesitate to recommend it to readers who have not previously been exposed to Greek mythology or who wish only a general knowledge of the major Greek myths; in such cases I would instead recommend Edith Hamilton's MYTHOLOGY: TIMELESS TALES OF GODS AND HEROES.
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79 of 88 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The most exhaustive comparison of Greek Myth & stories extan, 4 Feb 1999
By A Customer
Robert Graves, like Joseph Campbell, is one of half a dozen mythographers who are in the top rank of this century. His exhaustive research and comparisons of sources are stunning in scope but instead of being bewildering he has captured the themes and synergies between stories and come to some remarkably cogent conclusions. Graves sees history in the myths rather than psychology, primarily, and believes that they tell veiled stories of real happenings that became emotionally and spiritually significant and therefore ripened into the orthodox Greek religion of the millenium B.C.. Just as the stories, therefore, of Jesus and Moses are also cloaked in a real history, he analyzes the probabilities that the coming of Zeus' patriarchy played a huge role in the formation of the Greek myths, and he tells us credibly how this influence clashed with the beliefs of earlier times. Graves has few peers in the depth and scope and detail of his understanding and because his research is so comprehensive, his conclusions must be given great weight.
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