Offering access to and bringing alive unique materials on the Chinese storytelling traditions, this volume has its origins in a project which recorded on film 360 hours of performances by the four masters of Yangzhou storytelling Dai Buzhang, Fei Zhengliang, Gao Zaihua and Ren Jitang. Sets of these films have been deposited (in Washington D.C., Taipei, Beijing and Copenhagen) to give future scholars access to the unique material. The purpose of Four Masters is twofold: first, as a guide to the collections; second, with its introductory chapters, teller autobiographies, performances, catalogue entries and film material, it stands as an independent and valuable contribution to research in Asian oral traditions. With all text appearing in both English and Chinese and with its subject matter brought alive by a wealth of photographs plus a 60-minute film on VCD, this volume promises to be a classic work in its field. Useful for students of Chinese culture by serving as a bilingual guide to the great masterworks of the Chinese novel (Three Kingdoms, Water Margin, and Journey to the West).

Here we find retold myths by the ancient Greeks, replete with amorous oddities and adventures. Discover divinities in all their fantastic eroticism, trickeries, and pursuits. Magic prevails, and transformations and wonders abound.

Zeus shared an ecstatic three-hundred-year honeymoon with his sister/wife Hera and later tallied up 125 liaisons (both male and female). In addition, we come to know how Endymion and Selene celebrate moon madness, how Eros wounds himself and chases Psyche, how Dionysus and the Maenads go wild on wine, and many more mythical diversities and entertainments.

This volume comprises selected papers from a Tristan symposium held at the Institute of Germanic Studies in London. The symposium was conceived by the organizers as an experiment in transatlantic dialogue and the papers represent the views of scholars from a variety of North American and British universities. The main focus of attention is Gottfried's Tristan. Familiar assumptions about the text are questioned and fresh perspectives are offered on many contentious issues: those disagreements which persist are themselves a reflection posed by Gottfried's masterpiece. In addition, new light is thrown on the treatment of the Tristan theme in medieval and modern times.Contributors are: MICHAEL CURSCHMANN, W.J. MCCANN, MARGARET BROWN, C. STEPHEN JAEGER, M.H. JONES, ADRIAN STEVENS, ARTHUR GROOS, THOMAS KERTH, MICHAEL BATTS, MARIANNE WYNN, JANET WHARTON, GEORGE GILLESPIE, JOAN M. FERRANTE, LESLIE SEIFFERT, SIDNEY M. JOHNSON, PETRUS W. TAX, AUGUST CLOSS, H.B. WILLSON, ROY WISBEY.

"An illuminating contribution to scholarship on the vampire figure."-Slavic Review Even before Bram Stoker immortalized Transylvania as the homeland of his fictional Count Dracula, the figure of the vampire was inextricably tied to Eastern Europe in the popular imagination. Drawing on a wealth of previously neglected sources, this book offers a fascinating account of how vampires-whose various incarnations originally emerged from folk traditions from all over the world-became so strongly identified with Eastern Europe. It demonstrates that the modern conception of the vampire was born in the crucible of the Enlightenment, embodying a mysterious, Eastern otherness that stood opposed to Western rationality. From the Prologue: From Original Sin to Eternal Life For a broad contemporary public, the vampire has become a star, a media sensation from Hollywood. Bestselling authors such as Bram Stoker, Anne Rice and Stephenie Meyer continue to fire the imaginations of young and old alike, and bloodsuckers have achieved immortality through films like Dracula, Interview with a Vampireand Twilight. It is no wonder that, in the teenage bedrooms of our globalized world, vampires even steal the show from Harry Potter. They have long since been assigned individual personalities and treated with sympathy. They may possess superhuman powers, but they are also burdened by their immortality and have to learn to come to terms with their craving for blood. Whereas the Southeast European vampire, discovered in the 1730s, underwent an Americanization and domestication in the media landscape of the twentieth century, the creole zombies that first became known through the cheap novels and horror films of the 1920s still continue to serve as brainless horror figures. Do bloodsuckers really exist and should we really be afraid of the dead? These are the questions that I seek to tackle, following the wishes of my daughter, who was ten when I started this project.

In the twenty-first century, American culture is experiencing a profound shift toward pluralism and secularization. In Fairy Tales in Contemporary American Culture: How We Hate to Love Them, Kate Koppy argues that the increasing popularity and presence of fairy tales within American culture is both indicative of and contributing to this shift. By analyzing contemporary fairy tale texts as both new versions in a particular tale type and as wholly new fairy-tale pastiches, Koppy shows that fairy tales have become a key part of American secular scripture, a corpus of shared stories that work to maintain a sense of community among diverse audiences in the United States, as much as biblical scripture and associated texts used to.

Monsters, Law, Crime, an edited collection composed of essays written by prominent U.S. and international experts in Law, Criminology, Sociology, Anthropology, Communication and Film, constitutes a rigorous attempt to explore fertile interdisciplinary inquiries into "monsters" and "monster-talk," and law and crime. "Monsters" may refer to allegorical or symbolic fantastic beings (as in literature, film, legends, myths, etc.), or actual or real life monsters, as well as the interplay/ambiguity between the two general types of "monsters." This edited collection thus explores and updates contemporary discussions of the emergent and evolving fronts of monster theory in relation to cutting-edge research on law and crime, and may be seen as extensions of a Gothic Criminology, generally construed. Gothic Criminology refers to a theoretical framework initially developed by Caroline Joan "Kay" S. Picart, a Philosophy and Film professor turned Attorney and Law professor, and Cecil Greek, a Sociologist (Picart and Greek 2008). Succinctly paraphrased, noting the proliferation of Gothic modes of narration and visualization in American popular culture, academia and even public policy, Picart and Greek proposed a framework, which they described as a "Gothic Criminology" to attempt to analyze the fertile lacunae connecting the "real" and the "reel" in the flow of Gothic metaphors and narratives that abound around criminological phenomena that populate not only popular culture but also academic and public policy discourses.

Sir James George Frazer originally set out to discover the origins of one ancient custom in Classical Rome - the plucking of the Golden Bough from a tree in the sacred grove of Diana, and the murderous succession of the priesthood there - and was led by his invetigations into a twenty-five year study of primitive customs, superstitions, magic and myth throughout the world. The monumental thirteen-volume work which resulted has been a rich source of anthropological material and a literary masterpiece for more than half a century. Both the wealth of his illustrative material and the broad sweep of his argument can be appreciated in this very readable single volume.

Spanning more than 400 years of America's past, this book brings together, for the first time, entries on the ways Americans have mythologized both the many wars the nation has fought and the men and women connected with those conflicts. Focusing on significant representations in popular culture, it provides information on fiction, drama, poems, songs, film and television, art, memorials, photographs, documentaries, and cartoons. From the colonial wars before 1775 to our 1997 peacekeeper role in Bosnia, the work briefly explores the historical background of each war period, enabling the reader to place the almost 500 entries into their proper context. The book includes particularly large sections dealing with the popular culture of the American Revolution, the Civil War, the Indian Wars West of the Mississippi, World War II, and Vietnam. It has been designed to be a useful reference tool for anyone interested in America's many wars, to provide answers, to teach, to inspire, and most of all, to be enjoyed.

A colorful illustration of Hawaii's most cherished origin story, the myth of Pele and Hiiaka. Pele and Hiiaka: A Myth From Hawaii (1915) is a collection of folktales by Nathaniel B. Emerson. Drawing from written histories, personal experience, and extensive interviews, Emerson provides a lyrical account of the myth surrounding these goddess sisters. Pele, the goddess of volcanoes and ruler of Kilauea, and her sister Hiiaka encounter adventure, tragedy, and love during their respective journeys. These stories are not only appreciated for their beauty, but also their deep religious and cultural impact. With a professionally designed cover and manuscript, this edition of Nathaniel B. Emerson's Pele and Hiiaka: A Myth From Hawaii is a classic of Hawaiian literature reimagined for modern readers.

Hawaiian Legends of Volcanoes (1916) explores Hawaiian folktales and myths collected by W. D. Westervelt. Connecting the origin story of Hawaii to the traditions of other Polynesian cultures, Westervelt provides an invaluable resource for understanding the historical and geographical scope of Hawaiian culture. Beginning with the origin story of Pele, the goddess of volcanoes, Westervelt introduces his groundbreaking collection of legends on the volcanic nature of the Hawaiian Islands. When the goddess Pele comes to the island of Hawaii seeking a permanent home, she finds Ai-laau, another god of fire, already in possession of the territory. Despite his fearsome power over creation and destruction, Ai-laau disappeared the moment he became aware of Pele's presence. Having traveled across the limitless ocean, her name was already known far and wide, along with her reputation for strength, anger, and envy. Establishing herself within the crater of Kilauea, Pele quickly took command over the gods, ghost-gods, and the people inhabiting the islands. Central to Hawaiian history and religion, Pele continues to be celebrated in Hawaii and across the Pacific today. With a professionally designed cover and manuscript, this edition of W. D. Westervelt's Hawaiian Legends of Volcanoes is a classic of Hawaiian literature reimagined for modern readers. Add this beautiful edition to your bookshelf, or enjoy the digital edition on any e-book device.

What's in a name? Using the example of a famous monster from Greek myth, this book challenges the dominant view that a mythical symbol denotes a single, clear-cut 'figure' and proposes instead to define the name 'Scylla' as a combination of three concepts - sea, dog and woman - whose articulation changes over time. While archaic and classical Greek versions usually emphasize the metaphorical coherence of Scylla's components, the name is increasingly treated as a well-defined but also paradoxical construct from the late fourth century BCE onward. Proceeding through detailed analyses of Greek and Roman texts and images, Professor Hopman shows how the same name can variously express anxieties about the sea, dogs, aggressive women and shy maidens, thus offering an empirical response to the semiotic puzzle raised by non-referential proper names.

Comprising three parts, this book is a companion volume to The Boggart: Folklore, History, Place-Names and Dialect. Part one, 'Boggart Ephemera', is a selection of about 40,000 words of nineteenth-century boggart writing (particularly material that is difficult to find in libraries). Part two presents a catalogue of 'Boggart Names' (place-names and personal names, totalling over 10,000 words). Finally, part three contains the entire 'Boggart Census' - a compendium of ground-breaking grassroots research. This census includes more than a thousand responses, totalling some 80,000 words, from older respondents in the north-west of England, to the question: 'What is a boggart?' The Boggart Sourcebook will be of interest to folklorists, historians and dialect scholars. It provides the three corpora on which the innovative monograph, The Boggart, is based.

Despite the homogenization of American life, areas of strong regional consciousness still persist in the United States, and there is a growing interest in regionalism among the public and among academics. In response to that interest ten folklorists here describe and interpret a variety of American regional cultures in the twentieth century. Their book is the first to deal specifically with regional culture and the first to employ the perspective of folklore in the study of regional identity and consciousness. The authors range widely over the United States, from the Eastern Shore to the Pacific Northwest, from the Southern Mountains to the Great Plains. They look at a variety of cultural expressions and practices -- legends, anecdotes, songs, foodways, architecture, and crafts. Tying their work together is a common consideration of how regional culture shapes and is shaped by the consciousness of living in a special place. In exploring this dimension of regional culture the authors consider the influence of natural environment and historical experience on the development of regional culture, the role of ethnicity in regional consciousness, the tensions between insiders and outsiders that stem from a sense of regional identity, and the changes in culture in response to social and economic change. With its focus on cultural manifestations and its folkloristic perspective this book provides a fresh and needed contribution to regional studies. Written in a clear, readable style, it will appeal to general readers interested in American regions and their cultures. At the same time the research and analytical approach make it useful not only to folklorists but to cultural geographers, anthropologists, and other scholars of regional studies.

Originally published in 1910, this book analyses the customs and superstitions of modern Greece as a means of gaining a greater understanding of ancient Greek belief structures. Analogies and coincidences between ancient and modern Greece had been pointed out prior to the publication of this edition, but no large attempt had been made to trace the continuity of the life and thought of the Greek people, and to exhibit modern Greek folklore as an essential factor in the interpretation of ancient Greek religion. The text is highly accessible, and all quotations from ancient and modern Greek are translated into English. This is a fascinating book that will be of value to anyone with an interest in anthropology and the classical world.

Dictionary of Authentic American Proverbs offers a comprehensive reference guide for distinctly American proverbs. Compiled by Wolfgang Mieder, a key figure in the field of proverb studies, this compendium features nearly 1,500 proverbs with American origins, spanning the 17th century to present day, including a scholarly introduction exploring the history of proverbs in America, the structure and variants of these proverbs, known authors and sources, and cultural values expressed in these proverbs. Along with a comprehensive bibliography of proverb collections and interpretive scholarship, this dictionary offers a glimpse into the history of American social and cultural attitudes through uniquely American language.