Hero Myths: a Reader

Folklore, August, 2004 by Steven F. Walker

Hero Myths: A Reader. Edited by Robert A. Segal. Oxford: Blackwell, 2000. ix 219 pp. 17.99 [pounds sterling]/$37.95 (pbk), 50.00 [pounds sterling]/$78.95 (hbk). ISBN 0-63121-515-8 (pbk), 0-63121-514-X (hbk)

Anyone looking for an intelligently organised and comprehensive survey of hero myths around the world can do no better than to settle on Robert Segal's Hero Myths as a course book and, for that matter, as a reference work for any discussion of hero myths in a global context. Segal has already proved himself a master of popularisation with his Joseph Campbell: an Introduction (1997), which Oxford University Press is about to publish in a revised edition; Oxford will also be publishing this year his Myth: a Very Short Introduction. In the wave of interest in myth that has swept over campuses in the past decade or so, it is crucial to have scholars with proven expertise in the field provide usable and readable texts for courses with enrollments in the hundreds, and Robert Segal has shouldered this burden with alacrity. Blackwell have gone the extra mile in including (and presumably paying the fees) for recent translations and texts, which helps a lot in making this volume attractive to undergraduate teaching.

Segal's introductory chapter reviews various theories of the myth of the hero from Thomas Carlyle's "Great Man" view of history to Rene Girard's theory of the scapegoat and his attack on Frazer. The twenty-two chapters dedicated to twenty-two different heroes from Sigurd ("hero as warrior") to Elvis Presley ("hero as entertainer") include a short introduction before a usually well-chosen short and readable text. One might regret that only four of the twenty-two come from the non-Western world, and that only three are women (Penthesilea, Eve, and Joan of Arc); a revised edition might well include Savitri and Antigone, for starters. And if Oedipus certainly exemplifies the "Tragic Hero," is Davy Crockett the best choice for "Comic Hero"? Some minor quibbles: in the chapter headings the Duke of Wellington is classified as "English" (fair enough), but Penthesilea is classified as "Amazonian": does that mean she fought on the banks of the Amazon? And in the short bibliography at the end of the introduction, Segal cites William Blake Tyrell's study Amazons: a Study of Athenian Mythmaking (1984), but in his introduction neglects him in favour of Bachofen, who finds in the Amazon's defeat the beginnings of patriarchy, a theory that has the disadvantage of neglecting the specifically Athenian cultural context. Sisyphus is classified as "Ancient Greek," but the text selected is from Camus; I rather doubt that in the Greek cultural context Sisyphus would have been represented as being "happy" as an "Absurd Hero." However, the choice of an excerpt from Camus' The Myth of Sisyphus would certainly make for an interesting class discussion.

But, quibbling aside, the strong point of Hero Myths: A Reader is that it can be used effectively in the classroom. It is an example of popularisation of the highest sort, and is certain to prove its value in the spread of the study of myth and folklore in undergraduate education.

Steven F. Walker, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey, USA