Retelling 30 myths and legends of the Eastern Cherokee, this book presents the stories with important details providing a culturally authentic and historically accurate context. Background information given within each story so the reader may avoid reliance on glossaries, endnotes, or other explanatory aids. The reader may thus experience the stories more as their original audiences would have. This approach to adapting traditional literature derives from ideas found in reader response and translation theory, and from research in cognitive psychology and sociolinguistics.

Focusing upon contemporary young adult literature, this collection features an academic look at the use of the classic fairy tale and its Gothic elements in the creation of both new tales and retellings of classic stories.

The Vikings Reimagined explores the changing perception of Norse and Viking cultures across different cultural forms, and the complex legacy of the Vikings in the present day. Bringing together experts in literature, history and heritage engagement, this highly interdisciplinary collection aims to reconsider the impact of the discipline of Old Norse Viking Studies outside the academy and to broaden our understanding of the ways in which the material and textual remains of the Viking Age are given new meanings in the present. The diverse collection draws attention to the many roles that the Vikings play across contemporary culture: from the importance of Viking tourism, to the role of Norse sub-cultures in the formation of local and international identities. Together these collected essays challenge the academy to rethink its engagement with popular reiterations of the Vikings and to reassess the position afforded to 'reception' within the discipline.

This book will interest clinicians who have wondered what professional practice would be like in the corporate setting and want to learn more about the psychological and organizational dynamics that 'drive' executive behavior. Based on the premise that leadership effectiveness is a function of both leader productivity and health, this book reviews the latest information and research data and offers case studies to illustrate specific strategies for maximizing executive health. Len Sperry has been consulting to executives and organizations for 30 years and has written numerous articles and several books on executives and workplace dynamics.

Ukrainian epic, or dumy, were first recorded from blind mendicant minstrels in the nineteenth century. Yet they reflect events dating back to as early as the 1300's. Ukrainian Epic and Historical Song provides new translations in contemporary English. It also explains the historical events celebrated in epic and other historical songs: fierce battles, rebellion against tyranny, the struggles of captivity, the joys of escape from slavery. Natalie Kononenko's expert translation and analysis of Ukrainian epics provides a sweeping social history of folklore that is vital to Ukrainian identity. A translation of at least one variant of every known epic is included. Whereas earlier trends in folklore scholarship emphasized genre purity and compartmentalization, Kononenko critically examines the events about which songs were sung. Her emphasis on the lives of ordinary people rather than on leaders reshapes our understanding of how epics were composed and performed. Kononenko's ground-breaking analysis also illuminates Ukrainian self-understanding and explains how songs preserve and perpetuate historical memory. Scholars interested in epic song, history, and general folklore will benefit from this work. Members of the Ukrainian diaspora will find new appreciation of Ukrainian folklore.

In "Unsettling Assumptions," editors Pauline Greenhill and Diane Tye link gender studies with traditional and popular culture studies to examine how tradition and gender can intersect to unsettle assumptions about culture and its study.

Contributors explore the intersections of traditional expressive culture and sex/gender systems by challenging their conventional constructions, using sex/gender as a lens to question, investigate, or upset concepts like family, ethics, and authenticity. Individual essays consider myriad topics such as Thanksgiving turkeys, rockabilly and bar fights, Chinese tales of female ghosts, selkie stories, a noisy Mennonite New Year's celebration, the Distaff Gospels, Kentucky tobacco farmers, international adoptions, and more.

In "Unsettling Assumptions," expressive culture emerges as fundamental both to our sense of belonging to a family, an occupation, or friendship group and, most notably, to identity performativity. Within larger contexts, these works offer a better understanding of cultural attitudes like misogyny, homophobia, and racism as well as the construction and negotiation of power.

Originally published in 1996, the articles in this book are revised, expanded papers from a session at the 17th International Congress of the Arthurian Society held in 1993. The chapters cover Arthurian studies' directions at the time, showcasing analysis of varied aspects of visual representation and relation to literary themes. Close attention to the historical context is a key feature of this work, investigating the linkage between texts and images in the Middle Ages and beyond.

Discrete inquiries into 15 forms of the Arthurian legends produced over the last century explore how they have altered the tradition. They consider works from the US and Europe, and those aimed at popular and elite audiences. The overall conclusion is that the "Arthurian revival" is an ongoing event, and has become multivalent, multinational, and multimedia. Originally published in 1992.

The focus of this book is medieval vernacular literature in Western Europe. Chapters are written by experts in the area and present the current scholarship at the time this book was originally published in 1996. Each chapter has a bibliography of important works in that area as well. This is a thorough and reliable guide to trends in research on medieval Arthuriana.

"A love letter to the Welsh language... Ellis' detailed watercolor illustrations are the main attraction, providing fresh artistic representations to inspire a new generation of readers. Mythology fans and art enthusiasts alike will enjoy this beautiful book." - Booklist ''Packed with lore, history, and beautiful illustrations, Welsh Monsters & Mythical Beasts is an indispensable registry of everything that lurks in the shadows, glides just beneath the surface, or goes bump in the night. I love it!'' - Todd Lockwood My first thought upon seeing Welsh Monsters was "Goodness, what a useful book!" -John Howe Upon the dramatic landscape of Wales there have been born many creatures and beings of legend. This lushly illustrated guide delves into the dragons, beasts, fair folk, and spirits of Wales. Tales become blended and one with history, and this history meets illustration with C.C.J. Ellis' rich renderings of these creatures. Detail and colour lift these beings off the page and bring this compendium to life. Now available worldwide, this new edition includes a Welsh language guide so that each of the creatures might be known by their original Welsh names. You may have heard of the Red Dragon (Draig Goch) featured on the national flag of Wales, but have you heard of the Water Leaper (Llamhigyn Y Dwr) or of the Mary White (Mari Lwyd)? Ellis aims to re-introduce the beasts of Welsh myth and legend to the world and bring a touch of Wales to your shelves. Part of the Wool of Bat series focused on the preservation and promotion of folklore and oral history from around the world.

Women's mythic revision is a tradition at the heart of twentieth-century literature. Medea's Chorus explores post-WWII women's poetry that takes Greek mythology as its central topos. The book investigates five of the most influential poets writing in the twentieth century (H.D., Sylvia Plath, Adrienne Rich, Margaret Atwood, Eavan Boland) who challenge both the ancient literary representations of women and the high modernist appropriations of the classics. In their poetry and prose, the women engage with cultural discourses about literary authority, gender, oppression, violence, and age. Yet even while the poets rework certain aspects of the Greek myths that they find troubling, they see the inherent power in the stories and use that power for personal and social revelation. Because myths exist in multiple versions, ancient writers did not create from scratch; their artistic contribution lay in how they changed the stories. Modern female poets are engaging in a several millennia-old tradition of mythic revision, a tradition that has ruthlessly posited that there is no place for women in the creation and transmission of mythological poetry. Medea's Chorus tracks mythic revision from the 1950s through the second-wave feminist movement and into turn-of-the-century feminism to highlight individual achievements and to show the collective effect of the poets' highly varied works on post-WWII literature and feminist thought and practice. This engaging and beautifully written book is a must-read for any student, teacher, or scholar of the Classical Tradition, revisionist mythmaking, and twentieth-century poetry.

First Published in 1970. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Over the millennia, many great writers, from Pliny and Plutarch to C.S. Lewis and John Steinbeck, have addressed diverse canine themes in their work, usually in a broader, human context. Late in the 20th century it was conclusively established by modern science that all dogs, without exception, are descended from wolves. Viewed within the dynamic lens of this new model, the constantly evolving relationship between humankind and canines, both wild and domesticated, appears more complex and intertwined than ever before. This survey reviews what 20 selected authors from the Western tradition have had to say on the same subject matter leading up to our present times.

The story of Jason and the Argonauts is one of the most famous in Greek myth, and its development from the oldest layers of Greek mythology down to the modern age encapsulates the dramatic changes in faith, power and culture that Western civilisation has seen over the past three millennia. From the Bronze Age to the Classical Age, from the medieval world to today, the Jason story has been told and retold with new stories, details and meanings. This book explores the epic history of a colourful myth and probes the most ancient origins of the quest for the Golden Fleece - a quest that takes us to the very dawn of Greek religion and its close relationship with Near Eastern peoples and cultures.

" . . . Kapferer's introduction is an intellectual tour de force, perhaps the most important rethinking of the problems of rationality that underlie the study of witchcraft and sorcery since Evans-Pritchard." . American Anthropologist " . . . teems with interesting theoretical insights, and all the chapters are particularly strong in delineating local meanings within the framework of broader processes." . African Studies Review ." . . shows that the discourses on 'occult economies' are multiple . . . The presented essays are an excellent illustration of their variety of forms and constitute a valuable contribution to their understanding." . Anthropos This book seeks a reconsideration of the phenomenon of sorcery and related categories. The contributors to the volume explore the different perspectives on human sociality and social and political constitution that practices typically understood as sorcery, magic and ritual reveal. In doing so the authors are concerned to break away from the dictates of a western externalist rationalist understanding of these phenomena without falling into the trap of mysticism. The articles address a diversity of ethnographic contexts in Africa, Asia, the Pacific and the Americas. Bruce Kapferer is Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Bergen, Adjunct Professor at James Cook University and Honorary Professor at University College London."

Sherwood Anderson, an important American novelist and short-story writer of the early twentieth century, is probably best known for his novel Winesburg, Ohio. His realistic and nonformulaic writing style would influence the next generation of authors, most notably Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner. Walter Rideout s Sherwood Anderson: A Writer in America is a seminal work that reintroduces us to this important, yet recently neglected, American writer, giving him long overdue attention. This second volume of the monumental two-volume work covers Anderson s life after his move in the mid-1920s to Ripshin, his house near Marion, Virginia (where Volume 1 ended.) The second volume covers his return to business pursuits; his extensive travels in the South touring factories, which resulted in his political involvement in labor struggles and several books on the topic; and finally his unexpected death in 1941. No other existing Anderson biography, the most recent of which was published nearly twenty years ago, is as thoroughly researched, so extensively based on primary sources and interviews with a range of Anderson s friends and family members, or as complete in its vision of the man and the writer. Rideout uncovers much new information about events and people in Anderson s life and provides a new perspective on many of his works. This two-volume biography presents Anderson s many remarkable attributes more clearly than ever before, while astutely placing his life and writings in the broader social, political, and artistic movements of his times. Outstanding Book, selected by the American Association of School Librarians, and Best Books for General Audiences, selected by the Public Library Association Outstanding Academic Title, Choice Magazine Winner, Biography Award, Society of Midland Authors"

First Published in 2003. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

For the first time, the real story of ""The Yellow Rose of Texas"" is told in full, revealing a host of new insights and perspectives on one of America's most popular stories. For generations, the Yellow Rose of Texas has been one of America's most popular western myths, growing larger over time to eventually little resemble the truth of what really happened on decisive April 21, 1836, at the battle of San Jacinto, where a new Texas Republic won its independence. The real Yellow Rose was an ordinary but also quite remarkable free black woman from the North, Emily D. West. This is the first full-length biography of her-which explores the evolution of one of the most popular myths in American, Texas and western history.

Adopting a multi-disciplinary approach, this comparative study of a selection of The Arabian Nights stories in a cross-cultural context, brings together a number of disciplines and subject areas to examine the workings of narrative. It predominantly focuses on the ways in which the Arabian Nights have transformed as its stories have travelled across historical eras, cultures, genres and media. Departing from the familiar approaches of influence and textual studies, this book locates its central inquiry in the theoretical questions surrounding the workings of ideology, genre and genre ideology in shaping and transforming stories. The ten essays included in this volume respond to a general question, what can the transformation of Nights stories in their travels tell us about narrative and storytelling, and their function in a particular culture?

Following a Nights story in its travels from past to present, from Middle East to Europe and from literature to film, the book engages in close comparative analyses of ideological variations found in a variety of texts. These analyses allow new modes of reading texts and make it possible to breach new horizons for thinking about narrative.

This Book was previously published as a special issue of Middle Eastern Literatures entitled Ideological Variations and Narrative Horizons: New Perspectives on Arabian Nights.

The macroeconomic development of south-eastern Europe has been profoundly affected not only by the region's major historical events - for example, liberation from the Ottoman Empire, the outbreak of civil wars, and the birth of new nations - but also by global events, such as the world-wide conflicts of the twentieth century, and the recent transnational processes of globalisation and European integration. The rationale of this book is to employ a comprehensive micro-history - that is, the history of one particular community: in this case, the village of Tsamantas, in north-western Greece - as a means of providing a detailed picture that will permit extrapolation to a wider context. Situated in one of the most isolated parts of the region of Epirus, Tsamantas has a complex history and a rich folk culture. At times, it has been a textbook example of how decision-making within a community can impact upon the success of the local economy. Its inhabitants have been rational problem-solvers, with a sense of what is in their family's best interests, rather than passive victims of circumstance, and their choices at critical points in the village's history have resulted either in growth or decline. The author focuses his groundbreaking analysis on these choices, drawing upon publications, archived materials, and illuminating oral accounts of local events.

This book provides an insider view of Haida language, history, and culture, and offers a perspective on Haida culture that comes not only from external research but also from intimate knowledge and experiences the author has had as a Haida Nation citizen. The book's focus on language - past, present, and future - allows insight into the Haida language documentation and revitalization process that will benefit other cultures currently addressing similar issues with their language. Being able to write and discuss Haida culture as an insider affords the opportunity to instantiate the role of a First Nations scholar including the intricacies involved in having a voice about one's own culture and history. A First Nations person publishing a book about his or her own culture is a rare opportunity. However, such publications will become more common as other indigenous scholars and writers emerge from other margins around the world.

Authentic vampire tales exist in Transylvanian folklore. Yet the Transylvanian vampire is nothing like the bloodthirsty Count of Bram Stoker's imagination or the romantic hero of popular fiction. The Romanian tradition comes from the villages, reflecting the norms of peasant life and wisdom embedded in age-old communities. This book consists of 21 narratives created by the author, developed from the brief accounts recorded by local amateur anthropologists and cultural historians from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The goal is to capture the major themes found in the existing sources, retrieving the narrative thread and bringing the stories back to life. The book also includes translations of 17 brief folk stories about Vlad Tepes, known as Dracula. Contrary to the prevailing fictive image, these stories portray Vlad as a wise although strict ruler and a proud defender of his country's autonomy. An introduction discusses the Transylvanian village and its rich folk traditions, making explicit the comparison to the historic and to the fictional Dracula. An interlude analyses the characteristics of the Transylvanian vampire, including village superstitions regarding how to recognise and destroy one. Transylvania deserves commemoration of its own vampire stories, rather than those artificially created for it.