''Bulfinch's Mythology'' is a collection of
general audience works by American
Latinist
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...
and banker
Thomas Bulfinch
Thomas Bulfinch (July 15, 1796 – May 27, 1867) was an American author born in Newton, Massachusetts, known best for ''Bulfinch's Mythology'', a posthumous combination of his three volumes of mythologies.
Life
Bulfinch belonged to a well-educat ...
, named after him and published after his death in 1867. The work was a highly successful popularization of
Greek mythology
A major branch of classical mythology, Greek mythology is the body of myths originally told by the ancient Greeks, and a genre of Ancient Greek folklore. These stories concern the origin and nature of the world, the lives and activities ...
for English-speaking readers.
Carl J. Richard comments (with John Talbot of
Brigham Young University
Brigham Young University (BYU, sometimes referred to colloquially as The Y) is a private research university in Provo, Utah. It was founded in 1875 by religious leader Brigham Young and is sponsored by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-d ...
concurring) that it was "one of the most popular books ever published in the United States and the standard work on
classical mythology
Classical mythology, Greco-Roman mythology, or Greek and Roman mythology is both the body of and the study of myths from the ancient Greeks and ancient Romans as they are used or transformed by cultural reception. Along with philosophy and poli ...
for nearly a century", until the release of classicist
Edith Hamilton
Edith Hamilton (August 12, 1867 – May 31, 1963) was an American educator and internationally known author who was one of the most renowned classicists of her era in the United States. A graduate of Bryn Mawr College, she also studied in Germany ...
's 1942 ''
Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes''.
By 1987, there were more than 100 editions in the
National Union Catalog, and in a survey of
amazon.com
Amazon.com, Inc. ( ) is an American multinational technology company focusing on e-commerce, cloud computing, online advertising, digital streaming, and artificial intelligence. It has been referred to as "one of the most influential econo ...
in November 2014 there were 229 print editions and 19
e-book
An ebook (short for electronic book), also known as an e-book or eBook, is a book publication made available in digital form, consisting of text, images, or both, readable on the flat-panel display of computers or other electronic devices. Alt ...
s.
Talbot opined that of the many available Richard P. Martin's 1991 edition is "by far the most useful and extensive critical treatment".
Although the book is still in print, and still used as introductory reading for schoolchildren in the United States, professor of English at the
University of Connecticut
The University of Connecticut (UConn) is a public land-grant research university in Storrs, Connecticut, a village in the town of Mansfield. The primary 4,400-acre (17.8 km2) campus is in Storrs, approximately a half hour's drive from H ...
David Adams Leeming observes that both it and Hamilton's ''Mythology'' appear dated to a modern reader, more so than 20th century works such as
Robert Graves' 1955 ''The Greek Myths''.
Contents
The book is a prose recounting of
myths and stories from three eras: Greek and
Roman mythology
Roman mythology is the body of myths of ancient Rome as represented in the literature and visual arts of the Romans. One of a wide variety of genres of Roman folklore, ''Roman mythology'' may also refer to the modern study of these representa ...
,
King Arthur legends and
medieval romances.
Bulfinch intersperses the stories with his own commentary, and with quotations from writings by his contemporaries that refer to the story under discussion.
This combination of classical elements and modern literature was novel for his time.
Bulfinch expressly intended his work for the general reader, and not as a school textbook but as "a classical dictionary for the parlour".
In the preface to ''The Age of Fable'' he states "Our work is not for the learned, nor for the theologian, nor for the philosopher, but for the reader of English literature, of either sex, who wishes to comprehend the allusions so frequently made by public speakers, lecturers, essayists, and poets, and those which occur in polite conversation."
Despite this, the ''Mythology'' did actually displace earlier, and more comprehensive, school textbooks in the United States such as
Andrew Tooke
Andrew Tooke (1673–1732) was an English scholar, headmaster of Charterhouse School, Gresham Professor of Geometry, Fellow of the Royal Society and translator of ''Tooke's Pantheon'', a standard textbook for a century on Greek mythology.
Life
H ...
's 1698 ''
Pantheon
Pantheon may refer to:
* Pantheon (religion), a set of gods belonging to a particular religion or tradition, and a temple or sacred building
Arts and entertainment Comics
*Pantheon (Marvel Comics), a fictional organization
* ''Pantheon'' (Lone S ...
'', an English translation of
François Pomey
François () is a French masculine given name and surname, equivalent to the English name Francis.
People with the given name
* Francis I of France, King of France (), known as "the Father and Restorer of Letters"
* Francis II of France, Kin ...
's 1659 Latin ''Pantheum Mysticum''.
Five Colleges associate and classics teacher Marie S. Cleary described ''The Age of Fable'' as an "abridged, Bowdlerized, and rearranged Ovid", a description that was also applied by Victor Bers in his overview of mythographic literature in ''Yale Review'' in 1985.
Most of the material in it was drawn from
Ovid
Pūblius Ovidius Nāsō (; 20 March 43 BC – 17/18 AD), known in English as Ovid ( ), was a Roman poet who lived during the reign of Augustus. He was a contemporary of the older Virgil and Horace, with whom he is often ranked as one of the th ...
's ''
Metamorphoses
The ''Metamorphoses'' ( la, Metamorphōsēs, from grc, μεταμορφώσεις: "Transformations") is a Latin narrative poem from 8 CE by the Roman poet Ovid. It is considered his ''magnum opus''. The poem chronicles the history of the ...
'', mainly in much the same arrangement including the story of
Prometheus
In Greek mythology, Prometheus (; , , possibly meaning " forethought")Smith"Prometheus". is a Titan god of fire. Prometheus is best known for defying the gods by stealing fire from them and giving it to humanity in the form of technology, kn ...
followed by
Apollo and Daphne
Apollo and Daphne is a transformation myth from ancient Greek mythology, retold by Hellenistic and Roman authors in the form of an amorous vignette.
History
The earliest known source of this myth is Parthenius, a Greek poet who lived during t ...
,
Arachne
Arachne (; from , cognate with Latin ) is the protagonist of a tale in Greek mythology known primarily from the version told by the Roman poet Ovid (43 BCE–17 CE), which is the earliest extant source for the story. In Book Six of his ...
being linked to
Niobe
In Greek mythology, Niobe (; grc-gre, Νιόβη ) was a daughter of Tantalus and of either Dione, the most frequently cited, or of Eurythemista or Euryanassa, the wife of Amphion and the sister of Pelops and Broteas.
Her father was the r ...
, and
Pythagoras
Pythagoras of Samos ( grc, Πυθαγόρας ὁ Σάμιος, Pythagóras ho Sámios, Pythagoras the Samian, or simply ; in Ionian Greek; ) was an ancient Ionian Greek philosopher and the eponymous founder of Pythagoreanism. His politi ...
following the classical myths.
There are additional chapters on "Eastern" and "Northern" mythology,
Apuleius
Apuleius (; also called Lucius Apuleius Madaurensis; c. 124 – after 170) was a Numidian Latin-language prose writer, Platonist philosopher and rhetorician. He lived in the Roman province of Numidia, in the Berber city of Madauros, modern- ...
' ''
Cupid and Psyche
Cupid and Psyche is a story originally from ''Metamorphoses'' (also called '' The Golden Ass''), written in the 2nd century AD by Lucius Apuleius Madaurensis (or Platonicus). The tale concerns the overcoming of obstacles to the love between P ...
'', and some material from
Virgil
Publius Vergilius Maro (; traditional dates 15 October 7021 September 19 BC), usually called Virgil or Vergil ( ) in English, was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He composed three of the most famous poems in Latin literature: th ...
.
Some structural differences from Ovid include the combination of
Latona
In ancient Greek mythology and religion, Leto (; grc-gre, Λητώ , ''Lētṓ'', or , ''Lātṓ'' in Doric Greek) is a goddess and the mother of Apollo, the god of music, and Artemis, the goddess of the hunt.Hesiod, ''Theogony'404–409/ref ...
with
Io,
Callisto Callisto most commonly refers to:
*Callisto (mythology), a nymph
*Callisto (moon), a moon of Jupiter
Callisto may also refer to:
Art and entertainment
*''Callisto series'', a sequence of novels by Lin Carter
*''Callisto'', a novel by Torsten Kro ...
, and
Actaeon instead of Niobe.
As an example of the abridgment and
Bowdlerization
Expurgation, also known as bowdlerization, is a form of censorship that involves purging anything deemed noxious or offensive from an artistic work or other type of writing or media.
The term ''bowdlerization'' is a pejorative term for the practi ...
, Ovid's telling of the story of
Proserpine in the Underworld is, at over 300
hexameter
Hexameter is a metrical line of verses consisting of six feet (a "foot" here is the pulse, or major accent, of words in an English line of poetry; in Greek and Latin a "foot" is not an accent, but describes various combinations of syllables). It w ...
s twice as long as Bulfinch's; which latter omits several sub-plots, condenses Ovid's fragmentary account of
Arethusa, and excludes or alters all of Ovid's sexual references (e.g. Proserpine tucking flowers into her
apron
An apron is a garment that is worn over other clothing to cover the front of the body. The word comes from old French ''napron'' meaning a small piece of cloth, however over time "a napron" became "an apron", through a linguistics process cal ...
rather than into her
bosom
The breast is one of two prominences located on the upper ventral region of a primate's torso. Both females and males develop breasts from the same embryological tissues.
In females, it serves as the mammary gland, which produces and secre ...
as Ovid had it).
In general, Bulfinch excludes anything where Ovid is bawdy, and minimizes any violence and grotesquery.
Prometheus is platonic, rather than wily and cunning as
Hesiod
Hesiod (; grc-gre, Ἡσίοδος ''Hēsíodos'') was an ancient Greek poet generally thought to have been active between 750 and 650 BC, around the same time as Homer. He is generally regarded by western authors as 'the first written poet ...
had him.
Bulfinch added to the stories what he termed "poetical citations", drawn from the works of 40 poets (all bar 3 of which,
Longfellow
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (February 27, 1807 – March 24, 1882) was an American poet and educator. His original works include "Paul Revere's Ride", ''The Song of Hiawatha'', and ''Evangeline''. He was the first American to completely transl ...
, Lowell, and Bullfinch's brother
Stephen Greenleaf, were British).
These were illustrations of the use of the mythological tales in English literature.
The tales are structured to flow better than a straightforward encyclopaedic or dictionary treatment of them would:
Ariadne
Ariadne (; grc-gre, Ἀριάδνη; la, Ariadne) was a Cretan princess in Greek mythology. She was mostly associated with mazes and labyrinths because of her involvement in the myths of the Minotaur and Theseus. She is best known for havi ...
being used as a common character, for example, to link the tales of
Bacchus
In ancient Greek religion and Greek mythology, myth, Dionysus (; grc, wikt:Διόνυσος, Διόνυσος ) is the god of the grape-harvest, winemaking, orchards and fruit, vegetation, fertility, insanity, ritual madness, religious ecstas ...
and
Theseus
Theseus (, ; grc-gre, Θησεύς ) was the mythical king and founder-hero of Athens. The myths surrounding Theseus his journeys, exploits, and friends have provided material for fiction throughout the ages.
Theseus is sometimes describ ...
.
By combining classical learning with modern (19th century) literature, Bulfinch sought to give readers a way to connect such distant information to their contemporary lives, a pedagogical approach that, in contrast with Bulfinch's later reputation for being a prudish Victorian, was actually advanced for its time and only later to be seen in the work of
John Dewey.
Although not aimed at reading solely ''for'' pleasure, Bulfinch sought to offer a means of learning ''as'' pleasure, a "useful knowledge" that in turn would enhance the pleasure in reading other works.
He viewed the fact that in order to learn about the classical mythology people first had to learn classical languages, as a stumbling block on the road to learning; and that the era's greater emphasis on learning the sciences meant that there was less time to learn the classics, and as a consequence less understanding of a broad range of literature which referenced classical mythology.
Thus his target readership was that of people with no education in Latin or Greek, a growing section of the middle classes in North America and the United Kingdom at the time, who wished to learn the classics but were hampered by what was termed at the time an "English education".
In an age of science he was not expecting people to "devote study to a species of learning which relates wholly to false marvels of obsolete faiths", but rather he sought to enable people to better comprehend English literature, and his concluding every myth account with the "poetical citations" indicates that it was learning the English literature that was the point rather than learning the classical mythology.
This is further indicated by his selection of the mythology, and his preference for things like the
Keats
John Keats (31 October 1795 – 23 February 1821) was an English poet of the second generation of Romantic poets, with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley. His poems had been in publication for less than four years when he died of tuberculos ...
version of
Glaucus
In Greek mythology, Glaucus (; grc, Γλαῦκος, Glaûkos, glimmering) was a Greek prophetic sea-god, born mortal and turned immortal upon eating a magical herb. It was believed that he came to the rescue of sailors and fishermen in storms ...
and
Scylla (from ''
Endymion Endymion primarily refers to:
* Endymion (mythology), an Ancient Greek shepherd
* ''Endymion'' (poem), by John Keats
Endymion may also refer to:
Fictional characters
* Prince Endymion, a character in the ''Sailor Moon'' anime franchise
* Raul ...
'') rather than any Classical poet's version of the tale.
Publication history
Bulfinch originally published his work as three volumes: ''The Age of Fable, or Stories of Gods and Heroes'', published in 1855; ''The Age of Chivalry, or Legends of King Arthur'', published in 1858; and ''Legends of Charlemagne, or Romance of the Middle Ages,'' published in 1863.
''Guide to Reference Books'', 1929, page 89
/ref>
Bulfinch's original three volumes were posthumously combined into a single volume by Edward Everett Hale
Edward Everett Hale (April 3, 1822 – June 10, 1909) was an American author, historian, and Unitarian minister, best known for his writings such as " The Man Without a Country", published in '' Atlantic Monthly'', in support of the Union ...
in 1881, who gave them the title ''Bulfinch's Mythology''.
Some, but not all, editions of ''The Age of Fable'' were dedicated to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (February 27, 1807 – March 24, 1882) was an American poet and educator. His original works include " Paul Revere's Ride", '' The Song of Hiawatha'', and ''Evangeline''. He was the first American to completely tran ...
.
Bulfinch himself published the "poetical citations" standalone as ''Poetry of the Age of Fable'' in 1863.
In contrast, in 1942 Macmillan published a "simplified" edition that omitted all of Bulfinch's references to literature.
References
Bibliography
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Further reading
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External links
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* {{Google books, A6owAQAAMAAJ, The Age of Fable—a complete scan of the 1874 edition, browseable and downloadable.
Books published posthumously
Mythology books
References on Greek mythology
Lothrop, Lee & Shepard books
Works based on Metamorphoses