The Táin: From the Irish Epic Táin Bó Cúailnge
10 best books like The Táin: From the Irish Epic Táin Bó Cúailnge (Anonymous): The Romance of Tristan and Iseult, The Prose Edda, The Poetic Edda, Orlando Furioso, The Nibelungenlied, The History of the Kings of Britain, The Lais of Marie de France, Arthurian Romances, Gods and Fighting Men: The Story of the Tuatha De Danaan and the Fianna of Ireland, Irish Fairy and Folk Tales
| Author | M. Joseph Bédier |
| ISBN | 0679750169 |
A tale of chivalry and doomed, transcendent love, The Romance of Tristan and Iseult is one of the most resonant works of Western literature, as well as the basis for our enduring idea of romance. The story of the Cornish knight and the Irish princess who meet by deception, fall in love by magic, and pursue...
| Author | Snorri Sturluson |
| ISBN | 0140447555 |
'What was the beginning, or how did things start? What was there before?'
The Prose Edda is the most renowned of all works of Scandinavian literature and our most extensive source for Norse mythology. Written in Iceland a century after the close of the Viking Age, it tells ancient stories...
| Author | Snorri Sturluson |
| ISBN | 0292764995 |
The Poetic Edda comprises a treasure trove of mythic and spiritual verse holding an important place in Nordic culture, literature, and heritage. Its tales of strife and death form a repository, in poetic form, of Norse mythology and heroic lore, embodying both the ethical views and the cultural life...
| Author | Ludovico Ariosto |
| ISBN | 0192836773 |
Perhaps it speaks more to the age I live in than that of the author, but I'm always surprised to find a reasonable, rational mind on the other end of the pen. Though Ariosto's unusual work is full of prejudice and idealism, it is constantly shifting, so that now one side seems right, and now the other.
His...
| Author | Unknown |
| ISBN | 0140441379 |
Written by an unknown author in the twelfth century, this powerful tale of murder and revenge reaches back to the earliest epochs of German antiquity, transforming centuries-old legend into a masterpiece of chivalric drama. Siegfried, a great prince of the Netherlands, wins the hand of the beautiful...
| Author | Geoffrey of Monmouth |
| ISBN | 0140441700 |
Completed in 1136, The History of the Kings of Britain traces the story of the realm from its supposed foundation by Brutus to the coming of the Saxons some two thousand years later. Vividly portraying legendary and semi-legendary figures such as Lear, Cymbeline, Merlin the magician and the most famous...
| Author | Marie de France |
| ISBN | 0140447598 |
This is a prose translation of the lais or poems attributed to Marie de France. Little is known of her but she was probably the Abbess of the abbey at Shaftesbury in the late 12th century, illegitimate daughter of Geoffrey Plantagenet and hence the half-sister of Henry II of England. It was to a king, and...
| Author | Chrétien de Troyes |
| ISBN | 0140445218 |
Taking the legends surrounding King Arthur and weaving in new psychological elements of personal desire and courtly manner, Chrétien de Troyes fashioned a new form of medieval Romance. The Knight of the Cart is the first telling of the adulterous relationship between Lancelot and Arthur's Queen...
| Author | Lady Augusta Gregory |
| ISBN | 0901072370 |
It's always weird to read a book that's essentially a twice-over translation. First the original author translated the myths to English, and that was over a hundred years ago... and then the Polish translator, while trying to keep the archaic and mythical sound of the original, translated it into Polish......
-- Nobel Prize winning writer and poet W.B. Yeats included almost every sort of Irish folk in this marvelous compendium of fairy tales and songs that he collected and edited for publication in 1892.
-- Yeats was fascinated by Irish myths and folklore, and joined forces with the writers of the Irish...
In North Seamus Heaney found a myth which allowed him to articulate a vision of Ireland - its people, history and landscape. Here the Irish experience is refracted through images drawn from different parts of the Northern European experience, and the idea of the north allows the poet to contemplate...
| Author | Peter Berresford Ellis |
| ISBN | 0786711078 |
This is an enchantingly told collection of the stirring sagas of gods and goddesses, fabulous beasts, strange creatures, and such heroes as Cuchulain, Fingal, and King Arthur from the ancient Celtic world. Included are popular myths and legends from all six Celtic cultures of Western Europe-Irish,...
| Author | Unknown |
| ISBN | 0520034147 |
The title Mabinogi refers to the first four stories in this collection of tales from Welsh tradition. They are best known as the "Four Branches of the Mabinogi," and comprise the tales of Pwyll, Branwen, Manawydan, and Math. The remaining stories also spring from the same tree, and together they form...
Whether you're interested in Irish legends or are familiar with them and want to read them over again, this book provides a decent handful of such tales. From the infamous stories of Cuchulainn and his short life, to the stories of Finn, and the tales that came before of the Tuatha De Danaan, the inhabitants...
| Author | J.M. Synge |
| ISBN | 0140184325 |
In 1907 J. M. Synge achieved both notoriety and lasting fame with The Playboy of the Western World. The Aran Islands, published in the same year, records his visits to the islands in 1898-1901, when he was gathering the folklore and anecdotes out of which he forged The Playboy and his other major dramas.
Yet...
