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Now available in your local trade
store-and still your best book bar–
gain! These handsome paper-bound
reprints-edited and introduced by
eminent scholars-are priced at SOc,
6Sc and 7Sc. (A few special editions
are priced at 9Sc.)
have you seen
Anthology of Greek Drama
BALZAC ____________________________ Pere Goriot
BUTLER _________ The Way of All Flesh
JAMES ________________________ The American
JAMES _________" Selected Short Stories
FLAUBERT •______________ Madame Bovary
GOETHE __ Sorrows of Young Werther,
New Melusina, & Novelle
HAWTHORNE _____ The Scarlet Letter
HAWTHORNE
Selected Tales &
Sketches
MELVILLE _______________________
Moby Dick
MELVILLE __ Selected Tales and Poetry
MILTON __ Paradise Lost and Selected
Prose and Poetry
NORRIS _______________________________
McTeague
STERNE _______________•.____ Tristram Shandy
TURGENEV ____._ Fathers and Children
WHITMAN ______ Leaves of Grass and
Selected Prose
The above is only a sample of the
46 titles now published and the
many in preparation. Write for
complete listing or (if you teach a
related course) ask for compli–
mentary examination copies.
RINEHART
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232 madison avenue • new york, 16
volumes without style, purpose, or
selectivity. Surely, a vast number
of the world's myths are extraor–
dinarily empty, vapid, and boring.
Celtic myth, except as it centers
around King Arthur, is a very fool–
ish and vague body of literature.
Teutonic myth is a sort of dim and
monstrous comedy. And so with
many other mythologies. Greek
myth is the shining exception. The
American Indians (like the Amer–
ican whites) have an interesting
body of humorous mythology. The
Samoans have beautiful cosmogoniG
myths. But excellence is as rare in
myth as elsewhere, as we should
perhaps perceive more clearly
if
myth were not so much a fad as
it is at present.
After such a negative report,
what is there to say of myth? I
think there is a good deal. I should
like to be able to give you a com–
plete and final definition of myth;
but this I cannot do. It seems
to
me that the literary critic will do
well to start with the very general
statement that myth is a magical
tale. This emphasizes its literary
quality and indicates that
if
myth
is literature, it is also a certain kind
of literature, namely, that kind in
which the characters and events
are instinct with a superhuman or
quasi-transcendent force, or bril–
liance, and have about them an
aura of unusual and portentous
significance. It is frequently said
that myths may be distinguished
by the generality or typicality of an
idea which they seem to be stating
