The King and the Corpse: Tales of the Soul's Conquest of Evil (Mythos: The Princeton/Bollingen Series in World Mythology, 26) - Softcover

"This handsome volume of essays ... is the yield of what can be called an Indologist's holiday... Expertly edited by Joseph Campbell, these essays rest upon Zimmer's belief--a belief which he shares with Jung and others--that the spiritual heritage of archaic man still survives in "the deeper unconscious layers of our soul.'"--Saturday Review of Literature

Drawing from Eastern and Western literatures, Heinrich Zimmer presents a selection of stories linked together by their common concern for the problem of our eternal conflict with the forces of evil. Beginning with a tale from the Arabian Nights, this theme unfolds in legends from Irish paganism, medieval Christianity, the Arthurian cycle, and early Hinduism. In the retelling of these tales, Zimmer discloses the meanings within their seemingly unrelated symbols and suggests the philosophical wholeness of this assortment of myth.