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Great Mythologies of the World  By  cover art

Great Mythologies of the World

By: The Great Courses,Grant L. Voth,Julius H. Bailey,Kathryn McClymond,Robert André LaFleur
Narrated by: Grant L. Voth,Julius H. Bailey,Kathryn McClymond,Robert André LaFleur
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Publisher's summary

The deep-seated origins and wide-reaching lessons of ancient myths built the foundation for our modern legacies. Explore the mythologies of Europe, the Americas, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. Learn what makes these stories so important, distinctive, and able to withstand the test of time. Discover how, despite geographical implausibilities, many myths from across the oceans share themes, morals, and archetypes.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio.
©2015 The Great Courses (P)2015 The Teaching Company, LLC

What listeners say about Great Mythologies of the World

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Three Fantastic Lecturers, + one iffy one.

Multi-lecturer courses are always prone to fluctuations in quality… But 3 out of 4 ain't bad!

Kathryn McClymond covers the myths of ancient Europe, the Middle East, and South Asia. Her lectures are fantastic, offering a good balance of storytelling and interpretation. She tells the stories, then uses them to construct a coherent cosmology of each culture, so you get a sense of their view of the real world and of the cosmos. It's also nice to have a woman's perspective on this stuff; history is still so male dominated, and she calls due attention to the sexism inherent in a lot of the myths, and what it says about the relevant culture.

After her, Julius Bailey, who covers African myths, is a letdown. African myth is a huge subject, so his task is difficult. But he chooses to organize his myths by topic, NOT by culture, so it's impossible to get that sense of a coherent cosmology for any one culture. He's also not a good orator; he trips over the emphasis of every third sentence.

Andre LaFleur's lectures on Asian and Pacific myths picks things right up again though. He provides a good balance of story and interpretation, and he steers clear of the typical pitfalls of a white guy teaching "foreign" cultures -- avoiding essentialism, or romanticizing the role of Westerners in documenting the material, for instance.

Grant Voth's lectures on Native American myths are some of the best of the pack, even though -- according to his CV in the PDF -- he doesn't seem to have any formal experience with the topic. His task is like Bailey's, but he organizes his lectures by broad regions wherein there is a common mythic tradition (with variations), and so it's possible to get a sense of each culture -- or family of cultures, if you will -- and their cosmology.

All in all, I recommend it -- you're bound to learn a lot.

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325 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

mostly awesome

The sections on European, Asian, and Native American mys were awesome. I could tell that the scholars had really spent a significant amount of time to organize the lectures into a cohesive and comprehensible course. The section on African myths needs development - I liked what I learned of the stories, themselves, but the course was significantly lacking in organization and attempting to connect the themes into larger issues of relevance. my favorite section was on Native American myths. It was obvious that the scholar had spent a lifetime researching and teaching these stories. The way these were presented stands in marked contrast to the these-are-some-cool-things-I've learned-about approach of the African myths.

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187 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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Amazing Course!

This course is one of the best audio book I ever listened to! It will take you from the myths of ancient Europe, turn south to Africa then East to reach China, Korea, Japan and the Pacific islands, to ends perfectly with the Native Americans myths. Incredible and fascinating.

However, I have to point out like many other reviews that the performance in part 2 is bad. The speaker's talk is with a very monotone voice while stuttering and hesitating all the time. The way the lesson is built is also problematic for a better understanding. This decrease the interest of the African myths, which is a bummer.

That being said, the 3 others parts are amazing, and this class should be mandatory to everybody on Audible!

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126 people found this helpful

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    1 out of 5 stars
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Intersectionality gone awry

Intersectionality at its very worst. Bad traits exhibited by the goddesses is stereotypical while bad traits exhibited by gods...well no disclaimer. Instead of taking the time to try and explain why the gods and goddesses of certain mythologies exhibited such extreme personality traits and how that reflects on the societies that created them the lecturer just virtue signaled. Is this what is promoted as a good education these days? Yikes.

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123 people found this helpful

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    1 out of 5 stars
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    1 out of 5 stars

Very Feminism Centric

Every 10 minutes, the speaker bring up "feminism". She cites Paris Hilton and the show the "The Good Wife". I paid for a class on mythology and want to learn about the past. But instead the focus is making mythology very modern day. Very disappointing.

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113 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

What about the Norse

This was a great course spending hours on European, African, Asian, Australia, Oceania, and the Americas myths, religions, and cultures. Sadly the Norse barely get a mention by a scholar who is very adept in Greek and Roman myth obviously knows little about the Norse religion or culture. It was exceptionally disappointing, there are many great scholars who teach Norse myth that could have been used.

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91 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    2 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Good material.

The material was interesting, but one of the lecturers (the second one, lecturing on the myths of Africa) was so difficult to listen to I almost abandoned the whole lecture.

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46 people found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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Uneven but overall excellent.

The first third was by far the best; she is an excellent reader. The "Africa" section failed to engage me. But the "American" section that ended the series had me involved again. How much our schools do not teach us!!

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36 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Uneven due to different lecturers.

What did you like best about Great Mythologies of the World? What did you like least?

Appreciated the in depth knowledge of the professors and in general their delivery and presentation. There is not enough material or rather differences between the mythologies of the various African countries to have spent so much time on them. It became repetitive and boring.

What was the most interesting aspect of this story? The least interesting?

Obviously the myths are most interesting. Least interesting is too subjective to present with any validity.

What three words best describe the narrators’s voice?

Cannot accurately rate

Was Great Mythologies of the World worth the listening time?

Yes generally it was, with exception of African lectures - but only due to repetitive nature

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32 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
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    1 out of 5 stars

Treated subject matter like it was a joke

Myths were very serious to those people who relied on them to explain their world. The presenters attitude was something akin to can you believe some people used to believe this stuff? I would have expected the presenters to spend much more time developing the historical and environmental context in which these myths helped people explain their world and cope. It wasn't a joke to them.

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24 people found this helpful