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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Alzrius" data-source="post: 9708116" data-attributes="member: 8461">I just finished reading Norse Myths / Classical Myths, part of the "Classic Library" series of books.I'll note right off the bat that I'm not at all sure I've gotten that title right, largely because of the slash mark in there. That's because this book is actually two different books that have been bundled together between a single set of covers, with the title and authors of one listed above the front cover's illustration and the title and author of the second listed below it. The point is further driven home by how there are actually two different tables of contents, (AD&D 1E) Unearthed Arcana style, where the second table of contents is halfway through the actual book.Thankfully, the names of the original books are listed on the legal page, so it's possible to better articulate what's here. Specifically, this is a mash-up of Children's Stories from the Northern Legends, by M. Dorothy Belgrave and Hilda Hart, and what seems to be a combination of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanglewood_Tales" target="_blank">Tanglewood Tales</a> and Long, Long Ago by Nathaniel Hawthorne.Both works are quite comprehensive in relaying what have long since become famous myths of the Norse and Greek varieties, though while I'm not sure when Belgrave and Hart wrote the Norse tales, I'm given to wonder if Hawthorne is at least part of the reason that the Greek tales have maintained so familiar to us in the modern day. As it was, I was surprised to find out that he wrote multiple works of Greek mythology (Tanglewood Tales was his second), as the only thing I knew him for was The Scarlet Letter.At the risk of becoming someone who can only express their affinity for something by noting its flaws, I have to point out that as much as I liked Belgrave and Hart's Norse myths, I confess myself a tad bit confused by some of the details they elected to keep versus those that they glossed over. For instance, when relating the story about the binding of Fenris, they not only note that Thor twice tried to forge chains mighty enough to hold the wolf, but give the names of both failed chains (Laeding and Dromi). But when the story then focuses on how the dwarves finally made a chain powerful enough to get the job done, it goes into detail about why their chain is powerful enough to hold Fenris, but never actually say that it's name is <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gleipnir" target="_blank">Gleipnir</a>. Odd little omissions like that are found throughout the Norse stories.Hawthorne, by contrast, introduces quite a few more notable changes to the Greek myths that he presents. While his style of writing is remarkably affable (though perhaps unsurprising, as he intended the book to be read to children), he goes out of his way to not only remove anything that smacks of sexuality, but also downplays the idea that the Greek gods are gods at all (as a note, he uses the Roman names very consistently throughout). Instead, he refers to them as the "Shining People of the Mountain" or the "Bright Ones of Olympus" or similar epithets. While he still presents them as immortal and having various dominions over the natural world (e.g. Venus is the "Queen of Love"), there's perhaps a single reference to someone offering them a prayer; otherwise they could just as easily be powerful faeries as much as gods.Likewise, the alterations to downplay sexuality are, in some cases, remarkable. Female characters that are the subject of male gods' desires in the original stories are often reduced to being children here, who are spirited away because the men take a platonic admiration for their wholesome purity, such as how Pluto kidnaps Proserpina simply because he thinks her bright smile and joyous laughter will lighten the dour halls of his underground kingdom. In that way, the basic theme is retained even as the details are bowdlerized. It's perhaps an understandable change given that the book was, to reiterate, made for children, but even so I can't help but take issue with the censorship...even if Hawthorne's conversational presentation is enjoyable to read.Having said all that, I still very much enjoyed what was here. The minor glossing over of a few details in the Norse myths is a nitpick rather than any sort of serious indictment, and while Hawthorne's sweeping sanitizing of the Greek stories is a more serious issue, his having done so makes them his own in a way that's interesting in-and-of itself. It's like the "Hawthorne cut" of Greek myths; it will never be the standard, but at the same time its distinctive enough that it becomes its own thing. For that reason alone, this was entertaining reading.</blockquote>

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