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Books > Social sciences > Sociology, social studies > Social institutions > Customs & folklore > Folklore
This anthropological work thoroughly illustrates the novel
synthesis of Christian religion and New Age spirituality in Greece.
It challenges the single-faith approach that traditionally ties
southern European countries to Christianity and focuses on how
processes of globalization influence and transform vernacular
religiosity. Based on long-term anthropological fieldwork in
Greece, this book demonstrates how the popular belief in the 'evil
eye' produces a creative affinity between religion and spirituality
in everyday practice. The author analyses a variety of significant
research themes, including lived and vernacular religion,
alternative spirituality and healing, ritual performance and
religious material culture. The book offers an innovative social
scientific interpretation of contemporary religiosity, while
engaging with a multiplicity of theoretical, analytic and empirical
directions. It contributes to current key debates in social
sciences with regard to globalization and secularization, religious
pluralism, contemporary spirituality and the New Age movement,
gender, power and the body, health, illness and alternative
therapeutic systems, senses, perception and the supernatural, the
spiritual marketplace, creativity and the individualization of
religion in a multicultural world.
In Folklore Figures of French and Creole Louisiana, Nathan J.
Rabalais examines the impact of Louisiana's remarkably diverse
cultural and ethnic groups on folklore characters and motifs during
the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Establishing connections
between Louisiana and France, West Africa, Canada, and the
Antilles, Rabalais explores how folk characters, motifs, and morals
adapted to their new contexts in Louisiana. By viewing the state's
folklore in the light of its immigration history, he demonstrates
how folktales can serve as indicators of sociocultural adaptation
as well as contact among cultural communities. In particular, he
examines the ways in which collective traumas experienced by
Louisiana's major ethnic groups-slavery, the grand d? (R)rangement,
linguistic discrimination-resulted in fundamental changes in these
folktales in relation to their European and African counterparts.
Rabalais points to the development of an altered moral economy in
Cajun and Creole folktales. Conventional heroic qualities, such as
physical strength, are subverted in Louisiana folklore in favor of
wit and cunning. Analyses of Black Creole animal tales like those
of Bouki et Lapin and Tortie demonstrate the trickster hero's
ability to overcome both literal and symbolic entrapment through
cleverness. Some elements of Louisiana's folklore tradition, such
as the rougarou and cauchemar, remain an integral presence in the
state's cultural landscape, apparent in humor, popular culture,
regional branding, and children's books. Through its adaptive use
of folklore, French and Creole Louisiana will continue to retell
old stories in innovative ways as well as create new stories for
future generations.
CAPTIVATING LOVE STORIES CELEBRATED AND RETOLD THE SUNDAY TIMES
BESTSELLER AND GLOBAL HIT As seen on BBC2 Between the Covers
'Perfection in short story form. So rarely is love expressed this
richly, this vividly, or this artfully.' CANDICE CARTY-WILLIAMS
'Beautifully written and full of joy. Bolu Babalola is a star.' MEG
CABOT 'Here is love as freedom, love as deep joy. Romance will
never be dead, as long as Bolu is writing it.' JESSIE BURTON
__________ Bolu Babalola takes the most beautiful love stories from
history and mythology and rewrites them with incredible new detail
and vivacity in her debut collection. Focusing on the magical
folktales of West Africa, Babalola also reimagines iconic Greek
myths, ancient legends from the Middle East, and stories from
countries that no longer exist in our world. A high-born Nigerian
goddess feels beaten down and unappreciated by her gregarious lover
and longs to be truly seen. A young businesswoman attempts to make
a great leap in her company, and an even greater one in her love
life. A powerful Ghanaian spokeswoman is forced to decide whether
to uphold her family's politics, or to be true to her heart.
Whether captured in the passion of love at first sight, or
realising that self-love takes precedent over the latter, the
characters in these vibrant stories try to navigate this most
complex human emotion and understand why it holds them hostage.
Moving exhilaratingly across perspectives, continents and genres,
from the historic to the vividly current, Love in Colour is a
celebration of romance in all of its forms. __________ PRAISE FOR
LOVE IN COLOUR: 'Captivating.' Vice 'Smart and joyful, witty and
heartbreaking.' Stylist 'Epic.' Bustle 'Vibrant.' Refinery29
'Brilliant and beautiful.' Net-a-Porter
Born into a wealthy and privileged family in Philadelphia, Charles
Godfrey Leland (1824-1903) showed a clear interest in the
supernatural and occult literature during his youth. Legend has it
that, soon after his birth, an old Dutch nurse carried him up to
the garret of the house and performed a ritual to guarantee that
Leland would be fortunate in his life and eventually become a
scholar and a wizard. Whether or not this incident ever occurred,
we do know that his interest in fairy tales, folklore, and the
supernatural would eventually lead him to a life of travel and
documentation of the stories of numerous groups across the United
States and Europe. Jack Zipes selected the tales in Charles Godfrey
Leland and His Magical Talesfrom five different books- The
Algonquin Legends (1884), Legends of Florence (1895-96), The
Unpublished Letters of Virgil (1901), The English Gypsies (1882),
and Gypsy Sorcery and Fortune-Telling (1891)-and has arranged them
thematically. Though these tales cannot be considered authentic
folk tales-not written verbatim from the lips of Romani, Native
Americans, or other sources of the tales-they are highly
significant because of their historical and cultural value. Like
most of the aspiring American folklorists of his time, who were
mainly all white, male, and from the middle classes, Leland
recorded these tales in personal encounters with his informants or
collected them from friends and acquaintances, before grooming them
for publication so that they became translations of the original
narratives. What distinguishes Leland from the major folklorists of
the nineteenth century is his literary embellishment to represent
his particular regard for their poetry, purity, and history.
Readers with an interest in folklore, oral tradition, and
nineteenth-century literature will value this curated and annotated
glimpse into a breadth of work.
Afghanistan in the 20th century was virtually unknown in Europe and
America. At peace until the 1970s, the country was seen as a remote
and exotic land, visited only by adventurous tourists or
researchers. Afghan Village Voices is a testament to this
little-known period of peace and captures a society and culture now
lost. Prepared by two of the most accomplished and well-known
anthropologists of the Middle East and Central Asia, Richard Tapper
and Nancy Tapper-Lindisfarne, this is a book of stories told by the
Piruzai, a rural Afghan community of some 200 families who farmed
in northern Afghanistan and in summer took their flocks to the
central Hazarajat mountains. The book comprises a collection of
remarkable stories, folktales and conversations and provides
unprecedented insight into the depth and colour of these people's
lives. Recorded in the early 1970s, the stories range from memories
of the Piruzai migration to the north a half century before, to the
feuds, ethnic strife and the doings of powerful khans. There are
also stories of falling in love, elopements, marriages, childbirth
and the world of spirits. The book includes vignettes of the
narrators, photographs, maps and a full glossary. It is a
remarkable document of Afghanistan at peace, told by a people whose
voices have rarely been heard.
Jeanne Pitre Soileau, winner of the 2018 Chicago Folklore Prize and
the 2018 Opie Prize for Yo' Mama, Mary Mack, and Boudreaux and
Thibodeaux: Louisiana Children's Folklore and Play, vividly
presents children's voices in What the Children Said: Child Lore of
South Louisiana. Including over six hundred handclaps, chants,
jokes, jump-rope rhymes, cheers, taunts, and teases, this book
takes the reader through a fifty-year history of child speech as it
has influenced children's lives. What the Children Said affirms
that children's play in south Louisiana is acquired along a network
of summer camps, schoolyards, church gatherings, and sleepovers
with friends. When children travel, they obtain new games and
rhymes, and bring them home. The volume also reveals, in the words
of the children themselves, how young people deal with racism and
sexism. The children argue and outshout one another, policing their
own conversations, stating their own prejudices, and vying with one
another for dominion. The first transcript in the book tracks a
conversation among three related boys and shows that racism is part
of the family interchange. Among second grade boys and girls at a
Catholic school another transcript presents numerous examples in
which boys use insults to dominate a conversation with girls, and
girls use giggles and sly comebacks to counter this aggression.
Though collected in the areas of New Orleans, Baton Rouge, and
Lafayette, Louisiana, this volume shows how south Louisiana child
lore is connected to other English-speaking places: England,
Scotland, Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand, as well as the rest
of the United States.
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