/lit/ - Literature

>>16548240
Depends on what you want, do you want exposition (the tales being told), or scholarly analysis and discussion?

If the former, T W Rolleston has a good book, "Celtic Myths and Legends" or "Myths and Legends of the Celtic Race", which covers well pretty much every facet of Celtic myth, be it Irish, Welsh, some of the Christian peregrination (Immrama) stories with Celtic elements, and also has a pretty good introduction to the Celtic people, their culture and religion. Maybe some concepts in the intro are a bit outdated (such as the idea of a Celtic empire, we know the ancient Celts were more of a loose confederation of tribes), as it's an old book with plenty of political baggage of the time, but I think it still holds up very well, it wouldn't be republished otherwise. It's also beautifully illustrated.

Another very good entrance level author to read on the subject is Peter Berresford Ellis, he has a tome called the "Mammoth Book of Celtic Myths and Legends" that retells pretty much every popular Irish myth, as well as stories from Wales and Scotland. His stories even if they are a bit reworked, or retellings, are still 99% the same as the originals, just with a more modern and easier to understand language, since most tales and legends have been translated from scholarship of the turn of the century. Pretty much anything written by him is great, not only as intro but also in scholarly depth, he writes in a language ideal for people who want to be introduced to the Celtic world, and has a bunch of other books, dicitonaries and even fiction ambiented in the historic Celtic and old Irish context.

For scholarship and a discussion on a bunch of themes, dissecting the stories and so on, other than the two just mentioned, then you have a bunch of authors and shcolars such as Miranda J. Aldhouse-Green, John and Caitlin Mathews, Proinsias Mac Cana, Anne Ross, Marie-Louise Sjoestedt, Rees Alwyn and a host of others.

The Rolleston book and much of the authors I just mentioned you can find on the archive. Berresford's Mammoth Book you can find a decent preview on Google Books. As for the Tain Bo Cuailnge, I'd highly recommend Thomas Kinsella's translation, it's fantastic as well as a scholarly work (and you can also find it on the archive).

Looking at my archive history right now, in case you want more options of books and authors that tell the old sagas and stories, there's also "Early Irish myths and sagas"
by Gantz, Jeffrey, "Celtic myth, legend, poetry and romance" by Charles Squire and "Ancient Irish tales" by Cross and Slover. If you find Rolleston too old fashioned, you can try another one of these. they're all in the archive too.

>>14977940
Women don't want it less, they are just sexually inhibited for cultural reasons. Women actually have more sex than men, and have broader sexual interests. There have been cultures in the past where alpha women were praised for their sexual exploits. For instance among the pagan Celts, women having a lot of sex with multiple partners actually increased their honour and social status. Queen Medb (pronounced Maeve, pic related), a pagan Irish queen was apparently so insatiable that it took 20 men to satisfy her, and this was seen as a positive thing that goes along with and cements her high social status as a ruler. Being good enough in bed to be a lover to such a woman was also a mark of a real man, just as much as battlefield victories and poetry.

So before you judge men for being extra randy, think for a moment that it's probably just social conditioning. In our culture, the "worth" of men is judged according to how many women want him. On the other hand, the more a woman "holds out" the more she is "worth" on the sexual market. Moreover, the more a man can get a woman to do with him, the higher his status.

Literally your question boils down to; "why do men see getting women into bed as a judged sport like Olympic figure skating or gymnastics, even though women have assigned themselves the role of judges of the sport of getting them naked?" The hypocrisy is self-evident, you women create the dynamic and then complain that men find the game you've made entertaining. It's a great game, and there's a fun reward for winning, but there are losers, and when you loose a very important game, the game that has been made out of your desire for personal affirmation, believe me those people will find ways to cheat, by rape, sexual assault, and perversion. I'm afraid them's just the breaks kid.

6 memes that everybody keeps parroting? I don't mean to say these things are of a low quality, just that people tend to bang on about them.

1. Norse mythology.
2. Wagner.
3. Joyce.
4. Nietzsche.
5. Stirner.
6. Jung/Freud.

4 things that deserve more attention?

1. The Ulster and Ossianic cycles.
2. Ezra Pound.
3. George Berkeley.
4. Julius Evola.

Love of my life if I could only see you flitting above my head in troubles times, outside my sight though I was only ever searching for you. Why when once I tasted the spring could I not leave the search for it alone when that same spring was an indwelling. All those hours wasted in lonely wandering through junk temples, breathing toxic dust, dreaming toxic thoughts. There you were, all the time, in the waves, those senseless beating waves. All of my lust. All of my anger. Every cry, every sharp pain in the night, all crashing in on itself at the closing and the opening of the gates.