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Books > Religion & Spirituality > Myths & mythology
With more than one hundred-fifty books and three hundred published
articles on proverb studies that have attracted wide attention of
folklorists around the world, it is little wonder that
international scholars look upon Wolfgang Mieder as the modern-day
Pied Piper of paremiology. For this festschrift, some of the
world's leading proverb and folklore scholars have come together to
commemorate Mieder's sixty-fifth birthday. Authors from Russia,
Eastern and Western Europe, Israel, and the United States have
contributed essays representative of the scope and breadth of
Mieder's own impressive scholarship. The Proverbial «Pied Piper
honors Wolfgang Mieder's legendary contributions to the study of
proverbs and contains new scholarship by some of the best
paremiologists in the world.
The legend of Prester John has received much scholarly attention
over the last hundred years, but never before have the sources been
collected and coherently presented to readers. This book now brings
together a fully-representative set of texts setting out the many
and various sources from which we get our knowledge of the legend.
These texts, spanning a time period from the Crusades to the
Enlightenment, are presented in their original languages and in
English translation (for many it is the first time they have been
available in English). The story of the mysterious oriental leader
Prester John, ruler of a land teeming with marvels who may come to
the aid of Christians in the Levant, held an intense grip on the
medieval mind from the first references in twelfth-century Crusader
literature and into the early-modern period. But Prester John was a
man of shifting identity, being at different times and for
different reasons associated with Chingis Khan and the Mongols,
with the Christian kingdom of Ethiopia, with China, Tibet, South
Africa and West Africa. In order to orient the reader, each of
these iterations is explained in the comprehensive introduction,
and in the introductions to texts and sections. The introduction
also raises a thorny question not often considered: whether or not
medieval audiences believed in the reality of Prester John and the
Prester John Letter. The book is completed with three valuable
appendices: a list of all known references to Prester John in
medieval and early modern sources, a thorough description of the
manuscript traditions of the all-important Prester John Letter, and
a brief description of Prester John in the history of cartography.
This encyclopedia aims to provide a ready reference to various
aspects of American culture. The time frame is from the colonial
period to the end of the 20th century. The areas covered are fine
arts (painting, sculpture, photography); performing arts (music,
ballet, theatre, film); architecture; literature; and various
non-artistic forms of culture (symbolic, material, culinary).
The first study to examine the origins, development, political
exploitation and decline of the legend of St Helena, tracing its
momentum and adaptive power from Anglo-Saxon England onwards. St
Helena, mother of Constantine the Great and legendary finder of the
True Cross, was appropriated in the middle ages as a British saint.
The rise and persistence of this legend harnessed Helena's imperial
and sacred status to portray her as a romance heroine, source of
national pride, and a legitimising link to imperial Rome. This
study is the first to examine the origins, development, political
exploitation and decline of this legend, tracing its momentum and
adaptive power from Anglo-Saxon England to the twentieth century.
Using Latin, English, and Welsh texts, as well as church
dedications and visual arts, the author examines the positive
effect of the British legend on the cult of St Helena and the
reasons for its wide appeal and durability in both secular and
religious contexts. Two previously unpublished vitae of St Helena
are included in the volume: a Middle English verse vita from the
South English Legendary, and a Latin prose vita by the
twelfth-century hagiographer, Jocelin of Furness. Antonina Harbus
is Professor in the Department of English at Macquarie University,
Sydney, Australia.
Wonderful catalog real and fanciful beasts: manticore, griffin, phoenix, amphivius, jaculus, many more. White's witty erudite commentary on scientific, historical aspects enhances fascinating glimpse of medieval mind. 128 black-and-white illustrations.
Anthropology from Asian Missiological Insights embraces and
incorporates a combination of practical experiences, useful
strategies, and grounded theories. Readers, regardless of their
cultural background, will acquire new practical tools for missions.
Man Soo (Abraham) Mok insightfully uses anthropological issues to
examine folk beliefs, customs, and commitment. In addition, the
author analyzes Korean culture to help readers grasp how the gospel
took root in Korea - as it might have happened in any other
culture.
Hidden in the margins of history books, classical literature, and
thousands of years of stories, myths and legends, through to
contemporary literature, TV and film, there is a diverse and
other-worldly super community of queer heroes to discover, learn
from, and celebrate. Be captivated by stories of forbidden love
like Patroclus & Achilles (explored in Madeleine Miller's
bestseller Song of Achilles), join the cult of Antinous
(inspiration for Oscar Wilde), get down with pansexual god Set in
Egyptian myth, and fall for Zimbabwe's trans God Mawi. And from
modern pop-culture, through Dan Jones's witty, upbeat style, learn
more about 90s fan obsessions Xena: Warrior Princess and Buffy the
Vampire Slayer, Neil Gaiman's American Gods and the BBC's Doctor
Who. Queer Heroes of Myth & Legend brings to life characters
who are romantic, brave, mysterious, and always fantastical. It is
a magnificent celebration of queerness through the ages in all its
legendary glory.
Recording Oral History, now available in its third edition,
provides a comprehensive guide to oral history for researchers and
students in diverse fields including history, sociology,
anthropology, education, psychology, social work, and ethnographic
methods. Writing in a clear, accessible style, Valerie Yow builds
on the foundations laid in prior editions of her widely used and
highly regarded text to tackle not just the practicalities of
interviewing but also the varied ethical, legal, and philosophical
questions that can arise. The text-now twelve chapters-allows for
dedicated discussion of both legalities and ethics. Other new
material include recent research on how brain functions affect
memory, more comprehensive demonstration of how to analyze an
interview, and details on making the most of technology, both old
and new. Each chapter concludes with updated and annotated
Recommended Readings and tailored appendixes address new
developments, such as institutional review boards and the Oral
History Association's new Principles and Best Practices.
Chile had long forgotten about the existence of the country's Black
population when, in 2003, the music and dance called the tumbe
carnaval appeared on the streets of the city of Arica. Featuring
turbaned dancers accompanied by a lively rhythm played on hide-head
drums, the tumbe resonated with cosmopolitan images of what the
African Diaspora looks like, and so helped bring attention to a
community seeking legal recognition from the Chilean government
which denied its existence. Tumbe carnaval, however, was not the
only type of music and dance that Afro-Chileans have participated
in and identified with over the years. In Styling Blackness in
Chile, Juan Eduardo Wolf explores the multiple ways that Black
individuals in Arica have performed music and dance to frame their
Blackness in relationship to other groups of performers-a process
he calls styling. Combining ethnography and semiotic analysis, Wolf
illustrates how styling Blackness as Criollo, Moreno, and Indigena
through genres like the baile de tierra, morenos de paso, and
caporales simultaneously offered individuals alternative ways of
identifying and contributed to the invisibility of Afro-descendants
in Chilean society. While the styling of the tumbe as
Afro-descendant helped make Chile's Black community visible once
again, Wolf also notes that its success raises issues of
representation as more people begin to perform the genre in ways
that resonate less with local cultural memory and Afro-Chilean
activists' goals. At a moment when Chile's government continues to
discuss whether to recognize the Afro-Chilean population and
Chilean society struggles to come to terms with an increase in
Latin American Afro-descendant immigrants, Wolf's book raises
awareness of Blackness in Chile and the variety of Black
music-dance throughout the African Diaspora, while also providing
tools that ethnomusicologists and other scholars of expressive
culture can use to study the role of music-dance in other cultural
contexts.
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