Mythic Resources


''Merlin Dreams'' by Alan Lee


Although this is by no means an exhaustive list, if you're looking for further information on fantasy, fairy tales, folklore, and mythic arts, here are some good places to start:


Reflections fairy tales, fantasy, children's literature, and the power of story:

  • Mirror Mirror on the Wall: Women Writers Explore Their Favorite Fairy Tales, edited by Kate Bernheimer
  • Brothers and Beasts: Men on Fairy Tales, edited by Kate Bernheimer
  • On Histories and Stories by A.S. Byatt
  • Fantasists on Fantasy, edited by Robert H. Boyer & Kenneth J. Zahorski
  • The Voice That Thunders by Alan Garner
  • The Language of the Night by Ursula K. Le Guin
  • Don't Tell the Grown-ups by Alison Lurie
  • Gossip from the Forest by Sara Maitland
  • The Child That Books Built by Francis Spufford
  • Enchanted Hunters: The Power of Stories in Childhood by Maria Tatar
  • What the Bee Knows: Reflections on Myth, Symbol, and Story by P.L. Travers
  • Touch Magic: Fantasy, Faerie and Folklore in the Literature of Childhood by Jane Yolen


Merlin Dreams by Alan Lee


Some useful books on fairy tales & their history:

  • Postmodern Fairy Tales by Cristina Bacchilega
  • Out of the Woods, edited by Nancy L. Canepa
  • A Companion to the Fairy Tale, edited by Hilda Ellis Davidson & Anna Chaudri
  • Twice Upon a Time by Elizabeth Wanning Harries
  • Fairy Tales and Feminism by Donald Haase
  • The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Folktales & Fairy Tales, edited by Donald Haase
  • Little Red Riding Hood Uncloaked by Catherine Orenstein
  • Clever Maids by Valerie Paradiz
  • Some Day Your Witch Will Come by Kay Stone
  • The Annotated Classic Fairy Tale by Maria Tatar
  • The Hard Facts of the Grimms Fairy Tales by Maria Tatar
  • From the Beast to the Blonde by Marina Warner
  • Stranger Magic by Marina Warner
  • Once Upon a Time by Marina Warner
  • The Great Fairy Tale Tradition by Jack Zipes
  • The Irresistible Fairy Tale: The Cultural and Social History of a Genre by Jack Zipes
  • The Oxford Companion to Fairy Tales, edited by Jack Zipes


The Scribe by Alan Lee


Other good reads on myth, folklore, and the animate world:

  • The Spell of the Sensuous by David Abram
  • Becoming Animal by David Abram
  • When Women Rose Rooted by Sharon Blackie
  • Women Who Run With the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes
  • The Gift by Lewis Hyde
  • Trickster Makes This World: Mischief, Myth, and Art by Lewis Hyde
  • Scatterlings by Martin Shaw
  • At the Bottom of the Garden by Diane Purkiss
  • Strange & Secret Peoples by Carole G. Silver
  • The Fairies in Tradition & Literature by Katherine Briggs
  • The Erotic World of Faery by Maureen Duffy

 

Personal and natural history with a mythic touch:

  • The Wildwood by Roger Deakin
  • Wild by Jay Griffiths
  • Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer
  • Dwellings by Linda Hogan
  • The Old Ways by Robert Macfarlane
  • Rising Ground by Philip Marsden
  • The Fish Ladder by Katherine Norbury
  • The Faraway Nearby by Rebecca Solnit
  • Crossing Open Ground by Barry Lopez
  • Wild Comfort by Kathleen Dean Moore
  • The Practice of the Wild by Gary Snyder
  • Zoologies by Alison Hawthorne Deming
  • Build Me an Ark: A Life With Animals by Brenda Peterson
  • Kissed by a Fox by Priscilla Stuckey
  • Eating the Underworld by Doris Brett
  • Writing from the Center by Scott Russell Sanders


Websites & blogs


Journals


Organizations

 

Classes of various kinds

 

The painting and drawings above are  by Alan Lee; all rights reserved by the artist. The drawings on the right are by H.J. Ford (1860-1941) and Arthur Rackham (1867-1939).

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