Review by Choice Review
In this unique, far-ranging study, Trout (emer., English, Montana State Univ.) argues that the fear of animal predators had a profound impact on the development of human mythmaking and of various narrative forms. He supports his argument with an extraordinarily wide range of examples, myths and art forms that cut across geographical and cultural boundaries; he concludes his study by offering evidence that the theme of animal predation of humans still turns up with great frequency in popular culture. Trout builds on the work of Joseph Campbell and modern anthropologists, and he provides a strong scholarly apparatus for academic readers, but the book will nevertheless appeal to a general audience because of its quirky, often-bloody examples and its generous supply of illustrations. Trout's argument is far ranging, but he organizes his volume carefully and provides helpful summary sections at the end of each chapter. Trout's prose is witty, sometimes irreverent and playful, and the book offers a rather welcome change from traditional academic prose. The book defies easy categorization, but it nicely complements David Quammen's Monster of God: The Man-Eating Predator in the Jungles of History and the Mind (CH, Feb'04, 41-3448). Summing Up: Recommended. All readers. R. D. Morrison Morehead State University
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
A former associate professor of English at Montana State University, Trout travels two million years into the past to a time when humankind's ancestors were prey, and returns with a provocative theory: our prehistoric ancestors turned to mythmaking as a survival strategy in the face of the constant threat of Pleistocene predators. He notes that scholars have previously regarded myths from a psychological perspective, "as if the mammals, raptors, and reptiles found throughout mythology never existed anywhere but in the human imagination." Well before the development of language, such stories could have been acted out as warnings, and one chapter examines the possibility, theorized by others, that women, with vocalizations and "baby talk," could have played a leading role in the emergence of language. From the Hawaiian shark-man to the giant Aboriginal rainbow snake, monsters prowl Trout's mythic landscape, which Ehrenreich calls "the most ambitious survey to date of the relationship between humans and the wild carnivores that preyed on them as long as Homo sapiens, or our hominid ancestors, have existed." Today, we are still obsessed with nonhuman predators, as indicated in a closing cinematic survey from Jaws to Jurassic Park. Trout's conclusions are necessarily speculative but also compelling. (Nov. 22) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
