What do you think?
Rate this book
The Concept of the Goddess
The Concept of the Goddess explores the function and nature of goddesses and their cults in many cultures,
* Celtic
* Roman
* Norse
* Caucasian
* Japanese traditions.
The contributors explore the reasons for the existence of so many goddesses in the mythology of patriarchal societies and show that goddesses have also assumed more masculine roles, with war, hunting and sovereignty being equally important aspects of their cults.
* Celtic
* Roman
* Norse
* Caucasian
* Japanese traditions.
The contributors explore the reasons for the existence of so many goddesses in the mythology of patriarchal societies and show that goddesses have also assumed more masculine roles, with war, hunting and sovereignty being equally important aspects of their cults.
206 pages, Paperback
First published October 8, 1996
4 people are currently reading
107 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
September 3, 2021
So here's the story. I love the Iliad, I die for the Iliad, and I remembered my school library has a HUGE database, so I was like uummmmmmm it's my time to go full time fangirl mode and search for essays on the Iliad. I didn't find much that interested me, but I did find this book that my dear Clarita the librarian lent to me... and I got obsessed.
You can't tell me women impulsively gave jewels to their goddess because they loved them so much and expect me not to get excited. Like, I could have cried if I didn't was at school.
Anyway, great book.
You can't tell me women impulsively gave jewels to their goddess because they loved them so much and expect me not to get excited. Like, I could have cried if I didn't was at school.
Anyway, great book.
December 10, 2012
The blurb on the back of this book suggests it’s ‘a scholarly yet highly readable study of the place of the goddess in past and present belief systems and mythologies’. As a convinced agnostic and casual student of history and myth, I thought it would be a useful book to augment my knowledge of these subjects. I was, unfortunately, disappointed.
The book is mainly an annotated list of references to other works with the occasional piece of narrative inserted to reduce the boredom: a trick that doesn’t work, by the way. Scholarly, it no doubt is. But highly readable it most certainly ain’t! It came across to me as a series of pieces by writers desperate to illustrate how well-read they are. It, perhaps, doesn’t help that there are various references and asides in untranslated Latin and some Scandinavian language I’m unable to identify, since I speak none of that collection of tongues.
Perhaps the book is intended as an introductory text for university students studying mythology; I could envisage it having a place in such course material. But, for the general reader, it appears dense, uninformative in those areas of most interest, self-congratulatory, obtuse and often plain boring.
I found myself skipping the frequent, not to say, innumerable, references in a vain attempt to find some meat. I rarely discovered anything more than the leavings of a dog-chavelled bone. In fact, I learned almost nothing, discovered very little that I didn’t already know from former reading around the subject.
I suspect you’ll deduce from the foregoing that I was unimpressed. You will be correct, Watson. I cannot, in all honesty, recommend the book.
The book is mainly an annotated list of references to other works with the occasional piece of narrative inserted to reduce the boredom: a trick that doesn’t work, by the way. Scholarly, it no doubt is. But highly readable it most certainly ain’t! It came across to me as a series of pieces by writers desperate to illustrate how well-read they are. It, perhaps, doesn’t help that there are various references and asides in untranslated Latin and some Scandinavian language I’m unable to identify, since I speak none of that collection of tongues.
Perhaps the book is intended as an introductory text for university students studying mythology; I could envisage it having a place in such course material. But, for the general reader, it appears dense, uninformative in those areas of most interest, self-congratulatory, obtuse and often plain boring.
I found myself skipping the frequent, not to say, innumerable, references in a vain attempt to find some meat. I rarely discovered anything more than the leavings of a dog-chavelled bone. In fact, I learned almost nothing, discovered very little that I didn’t already know from former reading around the subject.
I suspect you’ll deduce from the foregoing that I was unimpressed. You will be correct, Watson. I cannot, in all honesty, recommend the book.
March 8, 2010
Please see my website for the full review: The Concept of the Goddess
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews