Prolonged Echoes: The Myths

by Margaret Clunies Ross

Genres: Religion

310 pages, Hardcover

First published December 1, 1994

About the author

Margaret Beryl Clunies Ross is a medievalist who was until her retirement in 2009 the McCaughey Professor of English Language and Early English Literature and Director of the Centre for Medieval Studies at the University of Sydney.

Reviews

[Neil · Rating 5 out of 5]

Up until Ursula Dronke's works on the Eddic poems, most of the text books on Norse myth were historical/descriptive accounts. These works, whilst very good, never really explored the literary value of these texts. In this first volume of a two volume set, Ross uses all the tools of modern scholarship to write an analytical study of the Eddic myths. The book explores the myths from the viewpoint of anthropological, feminist and critical theory.

While works of this nature are fast becoming the standard in Germanic studies, for a full grasp of the subject, the reader will still need to supplement this with a more descriptive study such as John Lindow's guide or Turville-Petre's study of norse myth.

On a personal note, I've found that these two volumes are excellent supplements to the authors other works on the history of Norse Poetry and Sagas.

[Carl · Rating 5 out of 5]

This ambitious, interpretive overview of the whole of Norse Mythology has been tremendously influential in my own work-- the first book where I really "got" the sort of scholarship I now do. Runs across a wide range of theoretical disciplines, from anthropological theory (for example, her analysis of the state of negative reciprocity between gods and giants) to structuralism to psychoanalysis to feminism, and yet she manages to keep it all coherent. Rather than attempting some reconstruction of a neat, coherent pagan religion (an impossible task), she takes into account the later Medieval (Christian!) context of the myths as we have them (for the most part) recorded, and develops an interesting analysis rooted in that context. I strongly recommend this book for anyone who is ready to go beyond just the myths themselves and to explore their meaning for the culture in which they were written down-- and of course I would expect that academics in the field would have already read this book!

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Important work and insight into the reception and impact of the Old Norse Myths