Kinda glad I stumbled upon this. One of my personal projects I'm working on right now deals a lot with the idea of a labyrinth. Hopefully my fascination with both mythology and Lovecraft horror will pay off. Just out of curiosity, what are some books you'd recommend for further research and understanding of the "labyrinth" myth? I'll be sure to check out the Authoritative Work on Labyrinths, but if anyone comes upon something which strikes you, please let me know.

The authoritative one is _Through the Labyrinth_ by Hermann Kern. I don't have anything else in particular to recommend. But if you pick which version of the labyrinth mythology you want to go with, you could find books in more depth on bull symbolism, ancient ritual dance, history of prisons, human sacrifice, use of labyrinths and mandalas in meditation, customs of ancient Crete and Greece, snake symbolism in Orphic cults, Mithraism, or anything else which this book mentions only in passing.

@sunandshadow, have you been to the library this week? Let me know what you think of that book.

Sorry, haven't finished my current pile of library books. Maybe this upcoming weekend. I did look at the table of contents on Amazon. Doesn't look like the hardcore structural analysis I would really like to see but more of an encyclopedia covering about a dozen common topics in fairy tales; might have some good stuff in it anyway.

This sounds really interesting, although I'm a little confused:

Quote: Original post by sunandshadow
A labyrinth is, technically, not a maze. A maze has branches and dead ends, whereas a labyrinth has one passage, twisty but otherwise straightforward, from the outside to the center.

Quote: Original post by sunandshadow
Theseus used a ball of thread to reach the center of the labyrinth without losing his way and slay the minotaur.

Does this mean that the Theseus myth has been significantly altered over time as 'labyrinth' has come to be synonymous with 'maze', or that the labyrinth in that myth was incorrectly named and was really a maze?

Quote: Original post by lucky_monkey
This sounds really interesting, although I'm a little confused:

Quote: Original post by sunandshadow
A labyrinth is, technically, not a maze. A maze has branches and dead ends, whereas a labyrinth has one passage, twisty but otherwise straightforward, from the outside to the center.

Quote: Original post by sunandshadow
Theseus used a ball of thread to reach the center of the labyrinth without losing his way and slay the minotaur.

Does this mean that the Theseus myth has been significantly altered over time as 'labyrinth' has come to be synonymous with 'maze', or that the labyrinth in that myth was incorrectly named and was really a maze?

Well, all myths are significantly altered over time, but from what I've read this error seems to have been present from the beginning of the story. Whether the labyrinth was actually a dance floor, a prison, or simply the name of the royal palace, about the one thing we can be sure of is that it was not a mazelike dungeon where a minotaur lived. The idea of a mazelike dungeon is kind of a fundamentally stupid concept because no maze could be confusing enough that an animal placed in the middle would spend years in there without ever finding its way out through familiarity or sheer luck, yet at the same time always be able to find enough food and water, and I'd rather not even speculate about where the monster's sewage would be going. Probably the myth (at least in the general form we have it today) was made up by someone who had never even been to Crete.

But anyway if you want to take the Theseus and the minotaur myth as it is, then yes calling the minotaur's prison a labyrinth is technically incorrect, even though it's traditional.

Quote: Original post by LessBread
Another labyrinth movie yet unmentioned is El Laberinto del fauno, wherein the labyrinth isn't a maze so much as a lair.

Pan's Labyrinth in the US.

Quote: Original post by sunandshadow
Sorry, haven't finished my current pile of library books. Maybe this upcoming weekend. I did look at the table of contents on Amazon. Doesn't look like the hardcore structural analysis I would really like to see but more of an encyclopedia covering about a dozen common topics in fairy tales; might have some good stuff in it anyway.

It's closer to a structural analysis than an encyclopedia. After reading it, you'll never look at fairy tales the same way again.

Yesterday I came across a review of a book that might fall into your search criteria: Review - Folk Psychological Narratives.