Lexicon of Baltic mythology

• Běťáková, Marta Eva
• Blažek, Václav

ENThe book you are holding represents an updated translation of the book that was first published under the title Encyklopedie baltské mytologie by the Czech publishing house LIBRI (Praha 2012), as part of an edition of encyclopaedias dedicated to individual mythological traditions and religious systems. Our book was the first of its kind in this series, thanks to its systematic etymological analyses and the number of primary sources that had to be consulted. The topic of Baltic mythology is a half-forgotten field of study that, in Czech works at least, enjoyed a far greater attention 150 years ago. Nowadays it is mostly studied by Lithuanian and Latvian scholars, but it remains at the fringes of interest elsewhere in Europe. Only several articles on Baltic mythology have been written by Czech authors and it has been touched upon in translations of Baltic fiction. And yet, the tradition of Czech Baltic studies had already been founded by the writer and translator František Ladislav Čelakovský (1799-1852). This book hopes to remedy this blatant omission and to open up to its readers the so far nearly concealed area of Lithuanian and Latvian folklore, which in many ways has wondrously preserved ancient Indo-European archetypes. [...]. [Extract, p. 7]

• Etnologija / Ethnology
• Kalbotyra / Linguistics