New World Myth

The Nazis' use and misuse of Nietzsche is well known. In this pioneering book, Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal excavates the trail of long-obscured Nietzschean ideas that took root in late Imperial Russia, intertwining with other elements in the culture to become a vital ingredient of Bolshevism and Stalinism.

There is an emphasis on de-constructing, de-centring, de-stabilizing, and especially de-mythologizing in the study that illustrates New World myth narrators questioning the past in the present and carrying out their original investigations of myth, place, and identity. Underlining the fact that political realities are encoded in the language and narrative of the works, Vautier argues that the reworkings of literary, religious, and historical myths and political ideologies in these novels are grounded in their shared situation of being in and of the New World.

"The Myths of the New World" is a treatise on the symbolism and the mythology of the Native Americans of the United States. Scholar and author Daniel G. Brinto poses the questions, "What are man's earliest ideas of a soul and a God, and of his own origin and destiny? Why do we find certain myths, such as of a creation, a flood, an after-world; certain symbols, as the bird, the serpent, the cross; certain numbers, as the three, the four, the seven—intimately associated with these ideas by every race? What are the laws of growth of natural religions? How do they acquire such an influence, and is this influence for good or evil? Such are some of the universally interesting questions which I attempt to solve by an analysis of the simple faiths of a savage race."

Deviating from the typical thematically organized mythology anthology, Barry Powell organizes this text first by geography and then by chronology. By doing this the text becomes a 'history of the world,' showing us how different peoples understood their environment and its challenges through myth.

Excerpt from The Myths of the New World: A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America I have written this work more for the thoughtful general reader than the antiquary. It is a study of an obscure portion of the intellectual history of our species as exemplified in one of its varieties. What are man's earliest ideas of a soul and a God, and of his own origin and destiny? Why do we find certain myths, such as of a creation, a flood, an after world; certain symbols, as the bird, the serpent, the cross; certain numbers, as the three, the four, the seven - intimately associated with these ideas by every race? What are the laws of growth of natural reli gions? How do they acquire such an influence, and is this influence for good or evil? Such are some of the universally interesting questions which I attempt to solve by an analysis of the simple faiths of a savage race. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.