Entries cover the Western allegorical tradition, as well as selected Indian, Middle Eastern, South American, and African works.

This is the first definitive reference work to address the substantive elements of oral storytelling, a form of communication that dates back to the dawn of humanity. It is an A to Z collection of over 700 entries covering such major storytelling elements as motifs, character types, tale types, place names, and creation mythologies and storytelling techniques of cultures around the world. Examples of subjects covered are the contributions of pioneering folklorists and mythologists such as: Franz Boas, Stith Thompson, and Joseph Campbell; descriptions of such well-known Western tales as Cinderella, the Greek myth of Persephone and Demeter, and the story of Exodus; as well as tales from Native American, African, and Asian cultures, including Indra and the Ants, tales of Anansi, the spider-trickster of the Ashanti, and the Cherokee Bear-man.

Stories centuries in the making, and many centuries worth of stories, are an integral part of modern society. Whether modern or ancient, every culture has its myths. Mythology forms our understanding of our origin, history, and traditions. They tell of our heroes and deities. Myths are vehicles for understanding religion, for learning language, and for understanding society, but they can often be difficult to understand and confusing. "The Handy Mythology Answer Book" examines and explains, in plain English, numerous myths and mythology.
From the ancient Greek and Roman to Egypt and Babylon, from Native North American Indian to Celtic, Middle Eastern, Indian, Asian, African, and the lesser known myths from around the world, "The Handy Mythology Answer Book" has them covered. Whether it is the modern retelling of a classic myth or an ancient story about a Norse god, this helpful resource demystifies the myth, looks at different archetypes and motifs, and even shows how myths help explain our existence and institutions. It answers nearly 600 questions and offers fun facts about the treachery and violence, the inspirational and epic, the supernatural monsters and heroic mortals found in mythology, such as
How and when did myths originate?
What are the three primary myth types?
What is the nature of Creation Myths?
How can myths be compared to dreams?
Why do humans tell myths?
What was the Egyptian Book of the Dead?
How is the epic of Gilgamesh like later epics?
Why is the biblical flood story so like the Babylonian flood myth?
What was the myth of Theseus, the Labyrinth, and the Minotaur?
What are the Homeric Hymns?
How and why are the Odyssey and the Iliad so different from each other?
What is the popular appeal of the Odyssey?
Did the Greeks see these myths as religion or as entertainment?
What was the background myth of the Oedipus plays?
What was the nature of Roman mythology during the Roman Republic?
What was the Metamorphosis?
How did Christian narrative and tradition fit into and come to dominate the Roman mythological tradition?
How is Celtic culture and mythology related to the culture and mythology of Greek, Roman, and other cultures?
How did the Vedas contribute to Hindu mythology?
Who invented Chinese writing?
What was the Aztec pantheon?
What is the story of the Cherokee Grandmother Sun?
Who are some Native American tricksters?
What is the story of Schrodinger's Cat?
How did Freud use myths?
How is myth used in politics?
A glossary of commonly used terms and an appendix of parallel mythology exploring universal themes, motifs, and archetypes from across various cultures further explains the world of mythology.

The mythologies of the world are collective cultural dreams, and as such should be analyzed first from cultural perspectives. How do myths of the ancient Egyptians or Greeks, for instance, reflect the realities of the Egyptian and Greek cultures? When compared, however, mythologies reveal certain universal themes or motifs that point to larger trans-cultural issues such as the place of the human species in creation or the nature of deity as a concept. World Mythology: A Very Short Introduction is organized around the universal motifs. Creation, the Flood, the Hero Quest, the Trickster/Culture Hero, the Pantheons, the High God, the Great Goddess. Veteran mythology scholar David Leeming examines examples of each motif from a variety of cultures-Greek, Egyptian, Norse, American Indian, African, Polynesian, Jewish, Christian, Hindu-treating them as reflections of the cultures that "dreamed" them. He compares and analyzes them, exposing their universal significance and creating a "world mythology."

The islands of Britain have been a crossroads of gods, heroes, and kings-those of flesh as well as those of myth-for thousands of years. Successive waves of invasion brought distinctive legends, rites, and beliefs. The ancient Celts displaced earlier indigenous peoples, only to find themselves displaced in turn by the Romans, who then abandoned the islands to Germanic tribes, a people themselves nearly overcome in time by an influx of Scandinavians. With each wave of invaders came a battle for the mythic mind of the Isles as the newcomer's belief system met with the existing systems of gods, legends, and myths.
In Gods, Heroes, and Kings, medievalist Christopher Fee and veteran myth scholar David Leeming unearth the layers of the British Isles' unique folkloric tradition to discover how this body of seemingly disparate tales developed. The authors find a virtual battlefield of myths in which pagan and Judeo-Christian beliefs fought for dominance, and classical, Anglo-Saxon, Germanic, and Celtic narrative threads became tangled together. The resulting body of legends became a strange but coherent hybrid, so that by the time Chaucer wrote "The Wife of Bath's Tale" in the fourteenth century, a Christian theme of redemption fought for prominence with a tripartite Celtic goddess and the Arthurian legends of Sir Gawain-itself a hybrid mythology.
Without a guide, the corpus of British mythology can seem impenetrable. Taking advantage of the latest research, Fee and Leeming employ a unique comparative approach to map the origins and development of one of the richest folkloric traditions. Copiously illustrated with excerpts in translation from the original sources, Gods, Heroes, and Kings provides a fascinating and accessible new perspective on the history of British mythology.