As he explains in the introduction, this was the first book (it was published in 1991) to provide a comprehensive look at the raven cycles of stories in North America since the old work by Boas and Swanton (which I will write about later this week). You can see from this map the coverage; click on the image for a larger view:
Even better, Goodchild provides different versions of the stories to show how the tales take shape across different storytelling traditions, along with a helpful overview in the introduction before the stories begin, plus some contextual information about the different peoples whose Raven tales are included. There is also a concluding chapter speculating about the stories overall.
One thing that is of interest to me, although perhaps not surprising, is that Goodchild has not tried to incorporate trickster / trickster-creator traditions from Africa anywhere in his analysis, but I know there is much to ponder there too! (And yes, the Internet Archive version makes it super-easy to check for any reference to Africa in the text!)
So, lots ot learn and think about in this book, and I will be back with more raven resources tomorrow!
by Peter Goodchild
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