"Oh grandmama, what great big teeth you have!"Charles Perrault's versions gave classic status to the humble fairy tale, and it is in his telling that the stories of Little Red Riding-Hood, Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella and the rest have been passed down...

In Trickster Makes This World, Lewis Hyde brings to life the playful and disruptive side of human imagination as it is embodied in trickster mythology. He first visits the old stories―Hermes in Greece, Eshu in West Africa, Krishna in India, Coyote in...

Forty of the most famous and celebrated stories from the Brothers Grimm translated and edited by a leading professor of folklore.Even after two hundred years, the tales collected by the Brothers Grimm remain among our most powerful stories. Their scenes...

Vast in its scope, incomparably dense in its imagery, Parzival ranks alongside Dante's Divine Comedy as one of the foremost narrative works to emerge from medieval Europe. Written in the first decade of the thirteenth century, Parzival is the greatest of...

What were the twelve labours of Herakles? Why did Zeus turn himself into a shower of gold? What was the name of the guard-dog of the Underworld? Which two-faced Roman god gave his name to the month January? What is the answer to the riddle of the Sphinx?...

A classic study of the beliefs and institutions of mankind, and the progress through magic and religion to scientific thought, The Golden Bough has a unique status in modern anthropology and literature. First published in 1890, The Golden Bough was...

Presenting the stories of Zeus and Europa, Theseus and Ariadne, the birth of Athens and the fall of Troy, in all their variants, Calasso also uncovers the distant origins of secrets and tragedy, virginity, and rape. "A perfect work like no other...

'[A] brilliant and altogether engaging new translation' (Los Angeles Times) of the greatest epic in Irish literatureThe Tain Bo Cualinge, centrepiece of the eighth-century Ulster cycle of heroic tales, is Ireland's great epic, on par with Beowulf and The...

Erec by Hartmann von Aue is a translation, by Michael Resler, of the earliest example of the German Arthurian legend and the beginning of the golden era-1170 to 1240-of Middle High German literature. An extensive introduction to this translation...

Since its release in 1949, The Hero with a Thousand Faces has influenced millions of readers by combining the insights of modern psychology with Joseph Campbell's revolutionary understanding of comparative mythology. In these pages, Campbell outlines the...

A collection of the world's most beloved fablesJean de la Fontaine popularized some of our most loved proverbial tales, including "The Hare and the Tortoise" and "The Hen Who Laid Golden Eggs," transforming the world's great fables into charming works of...

Overview: Husain Haddawy's rapturously received translation of The Arabian Nights is based on a landmark reconstruction of the earliest extant manuscript version. These stories (and stories within stories, and stories within stories within stories), told...

*Includes "The Little Mermaid," now a major motion picture from Disney starring Halle Bailey and directed by Rob Marshall*The famous tales of Hans Christian Andersen—some of the best-known fairy tales in the world—in a sparkling translation by...

A great king, strong as the stars in Heaven. Enkidu, a wild and mighty hero, is created by the gods to challenge the arrogant King Gilgamesh. But instead of killing each other, the two become friends. Travelling together to the Cedar Forest, they fight...

Gathering a wide range of traditional African myths, this compelling new collection offers tales of heroes battling mighty serpents and monstrous birds, brutal family conflict and vengeance, and desperate migrations across vast and alien lands. From...

An Icelandic saga which mixes realism with wild gothic imagination and history with eerie tales of hauntings. It dramatizes a 13th century view of the past, from the pagan anarchy of the Viking age to the settlement of Iceland, the coming of Christianity...

From Zeus and Europa, to Diana, Pan, and Prometheus, the myths of ancient Greece and Rome seem to exert a timeless power over us. But what do those myths represent, and why are they so enduringly fascinating? Why do they seem to be such a potent way of...

Gilgamesh is considered one of the masterpieces of world literature, but until now there has not been a version that is a superlative literary text in its own right.Acclaimed by critics and scholars, Stephen Mitchell's version allows us to enter an...

Written in Iceland a century after the close of the Viking Age, The Prose Edda is the source of most of what we know of Norse mythology. Its tales are peopled by giants, dwarves, and elves, superhuman heroes and indomitable warrior queens. Its gods live...

The fairy tale may be one of the most important cultural and social influences on children's lives. But until Fairy Tales and the Art of Subversion, little attention had been paid to the ways in which the writers and collectors of tales used traditional...