Myths in Crisis: The Crisis of Myth

This trilingual volume examines the extent to which myths are affected by the crises of the 20th and 21st centuries. It brings together four theoretical studies which analyse both the crisis of structure – implying the distortion or disappearance of myth – and the crisis of concepts and terminology that currently threaten the study of mythology.The largest section of the volume focuses on the crises that have affected ancient, medieval and modern literary myths from a global perspective, taking into account psychology, ethics, politics and contemporary meta-literature. The final section examines the crisis experienced by those myths which permeate the material world, investigating historical and fictitious characters, mythologized places, and languages.The volume is a remarkable collection of 30 texts that were selected from 300 proposals by prestigious researchers from over 30 countries during the 3rd International Conference of Myth Criticism held in Madrid in October 2014.

About the Author :
José Manuel Losada studied at the Sorbonne, Harvard, Montreal and Oxford universities. He is Professor of French and Comparative Literature at Complutense University, Madrid. Among his books, the Bibliography of the Myth of Don Juan (1997) and Victor Hugo et l'Espagne (2014) have been highly acclaimed. Mito y mundo contemporáneo received the 2011 Giovi International Research Award. He is Editor of Amaltea: Journal of Myth Criticism, and President of Asteria: International Association of Myth Criticism.Antonella Lipscomb has studied at the universities of Oxford, Kent and Bologna. She is currently Lecturer of European Literature and Cinema at the University Antonio de Nebrija, Madrid. She is an external reviewer of Amaltea: Journal of Myth Criticism, and is part of the Research Group "ACIS. Myth Criticism Research Group" and the Research Project I+D "New forms of myth: an interdisciplinary methodology" at Complutense University, Madrid. She is co-editor of the book Mito e interdisciplinariedad (2013).

Review :
'This is an impressive volume, not only in terms of the quantity and rigor of the papers included, but also in their comprehensive perspective. It presents an up-to-date response to an increasing demand to dissect the oxymoronic concepts of eternal myth and temporary crisis. [...] It should be considered an extremely valuable twist in the road to the contemporary study of myths, for specialized scholars as for general readers. The balanced content and the wealth of information are a clear asset in a volume that anatomizes some of the hidden aspects of myths' modern collective and private catharses. Accounting for the multifaceted complexities of myths and of their crises constitutes the key strength of such an important contribution to myth-criticism. This is what this volume set out to do, and with great success; producing extremely sound academic criticism.'Juan González EtxeberríaUniversidad Complutense MadridJournal of Comparative Literature and Aesthetics, 39 (2016)'A resacralization of the world is required to give more hope of saving not just our community life but our planet as well. That is why this volume is important, because it outlines various critical outlooks based on complex indicators and material culture such as television, film, language and, of course, literature.'Luis Alberto Pérez AmezcuaCentro Universitario del Sur, Universidad de GuadalajaraAmaltea: Revista de mitocrítica, Vol. 8 (2016)