Emily Lyle

This book consists of a collection of scholarly articles, all but one of them deriving from a series of colloquia held between 2013 and 2015 by the Department of Celtic and Scottish Studies at the University of Edinburgh on the topic “Thinking about Celtic Mythology in the 21st Century”. To quote from the Series Editor Jonathan M. Wooding’s introduction, “[t]his collection, as a whole, models a series of approaches that offer new and imaginative uses of mythology as a method of criticism”.

I ordered this book after information about it was posted in an Facebook discussion group by Sharon Paice MacLeod, one of the authors. The topics listed seemed to me to make it a suitable subject for a review, and I was right. The writing styles and approaches to their material of the twelve authors vary considerably, but I found most of the pieces interesting, enjoyable, and even exciting. The notes at the end of each article were also useful, sending me off on a quest for new publications to aid in my own research and writing, while at the same time I was pleased to see references to old friends.

This is not, however, a book for the beginner in Celtic mythological studies. A few of the articles are highly technical, most appear to be directed to the professional scholar rather than the casual reader, and almost all assume some familiarity with the material. Despite the reference to “a global perspective” in the title, most of the discussion centers on Irish and to a lesser extent Welsh and Breton material, with a couple of leaps to India and Greece for brief comparisons.

Despite these caveats, I enjoyed reading this book and am glad I acquired it.… (meer)