The Way to Rainy Mountain recalls the journey of Tai-me, the sacred Sun Dance doll, and of Tai-me's people in three unique voices: the legendary, the historical, and the contemporary. It is also the personal journey of N. Scott Momaday, who on a pilgrimage to the grave of his Kiowa grandmother traversed the same route taken by his forebears and in so doing confronted his Kiowa heritage. It is an evocation of three things in particular: a landscape that is incomparable, a time that is gone forever, and the human spirit, which endures. Celebrating fifty years since its 1969 release, this new edition offers a moving new preface and invites a new generation of readers to explore the Kiowa myths, legends, and history with Pulitzer Prize-winning author N. Scott Momaday.

The mythical werewolf is known for its sudden transformation under the full moon, but the creature also underwent a narrative evolution from bloodthirsty creature to antihero. Beginning with ""The Epic of Gilgamesh"", Ovid's ""Metamorphoses"", and accounts in Petronius' ""Satyricon"", the book analyzes the context that created the traditional image of the werewolf as a savage beast. The Catholic Church's response to the popular belief in were wolves and medieval literature's sympathetic depiction of the werewolf as victim are presented to support a modern view of the werewolf not only as 'the beast within', but as a complex and varied cultural symbol.

There are literally hundreds if not thousands of books written about Judaism and Jews, but this book is unlike any previously published. It focuses on the topic of 'circumventing custom' with special emphasis on the ingenious ways Orthodox (and other) Jews have devised to avoid breaking the extensive list of activities forbidden on the Sabbath. After examining the sources of Sabbath observance as set forth in the Old Testament, the New Testament, and rabbinical writings, some of the most salient forms of circumvention are described. These include: riding a special Shabbat elevator, unscrewing the lightbulb in the refrigerator, constructing an eruv (a space extending one's domicile so that objects may be carried outside the home), and relying on the services of the so-called 'Shabbes Goy, ' among others. Dundes respectfully analyzes such facets of Jewish characteristics as an undue concern with purity, and a long-established tradition of indulging in nit-picking and argumentation. The resultant picture of Jewish character is drawn from an unusual mixture of religious written texts and oral tradition (jokes and proverbs). The sources range from ancient Israel to works from the twenty-first century. In many ways, it is an authentic and striking Jewish self-portrait that is painted for the very first time in this fascinating volume

First Published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This is a golden treasury of over one hundred English folktales captured in the form they were first collected in past centuries. Read these classic tales as they would have been told when storytelling was a living art - when the audience believed in boggarts and hobgoblins, local witches and will-o'-the-wisps, ghosts and giants, cunning foxes and royal frogs. Find "Jack the Giantkiller", "Tom Tit Tot" and other quintessentially English favourites, alongside interesting borrowings, such as an English version of the Grimms' "Little Snow White" - as well as bedtime frighteners, including "Captain Murderer", as told to Charles Dickens by his childhood nurse. Neil Philip has provided a full introduction and source notes on each story that illustrate each tale's journey from mouth to page, and what has happened to them on the way. These tales rank among the finest English short stories of all time in their richness of metaphor and plot and their great verbal dash and daring.

Designed for communication/media educators and graduate students, Teaching Communication and Media Studies is a practical and conceptual guide to teaching university courses in communication and media studies. Relying on her extensive experience instructing graduate students on the ins and outs of teaching, Jan Fernback discusses theoretical and applied topics central to contemporary mediated communication instruction, offering instructors at all levels strategies they can use to create a successful classroom experience. Fernback also considers the logic, design and delivery of courses in communication and media studies, while encouraging readers to reflect on their own strategic pedagogical decisions. Supplemented with interviews of successful communication instructors and sample exercises, this book is a must-have resource for all those teaching communication and media studies courses, regardless of level of experience.

Orality has been central to the transmission of Sephardic customs, wisdom, and values for centuries. Throughout the Middle Ages, Spanish Jews were known for their linguistic skills, and as translators and storytellers they were the main transmitters of Eastern/Islamic culture to the Christian world. Derived from a distinguished heritage, Judeo-Spanish storytelling has evolved over five hundred years through constant contact with the surrounding societies of the past and with modern Israeli influences, making it more universal than other Sephardic oral genres. Told in order to entertain but also to teach, Judeo-Spanish folktales convey timeless wisdom and a colorful depiction of Sephardic communities up to the first half of the twentieth century. King Solomon and the Golden Fish is a selection of fifty-four folktales taken from Matilda Koen-Sarano's collection of stories recorded in Ladino (Judeo-Spanish) and translated by Reginetta Haboucha into fluent and idiomatic English that preserves the flavor and oral nuances of each text. Haboucha provides commentary and annotations to the folktales that enlighten both the academic and the lay reader, making this book at once appealing to s

Dancing through Time presents a rich and incisive analysis of person, time, and identity among the Karawari speakers of Ambonwari village in the East Sepik Province, Papua New Guinea, through the examination of everyday practices, language, social institutions, kinship, myths, spirit-things, rituals, and dances. In addition to its descriptive value, the book offers a fresh theoretical approach to the study of Melanesian cultures.

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.

Like ancient peoples the world over, the Cherokees of the southern Appalachian Mountains passed along their traditions and beliefs through stories, songs, dances, and religious and healing rituals. With the creation of Cherokee writing by Sequoyah, some of the traditions were also recorded in books. While evoking local geography and natural phenomena, the stories were also enhanced by powerful psychological and spiritual dynamics. This work examines seven myths that grew out of Cherokee culture, looking at how they emerged to explain archetypal issues. Each of the seven stories is told in full and is followed by a detailed history and analysis that provides its background, its associated rituals, and its psychological basis. One quickly discovers that while the myths are ancient, they are strikingly modern in their understanding of human personality development, family dynamics, community solidarity, and the reality of religion or spirituality. Grounded in the experience of this American Indian people and the land they inhabited, the myths tell universal truths.

Contributions by Allan Amanik, Kelly B. Arehart, Sue Fawn Chung, Kami Fletcher, Rosina Hassoun, James S. Pula, Jeffrey E. Smith, and Martina Will de Chaparro Till Death Do Us Part: American Ethnic Cemeteries as Borders Uncrossed explores the tendency among most Americans to separate their dead along communal lines rooted in race, faith, ethnicity, or social standing and asks what a deeper exploration of that phenomenon can tell us about American history more broadly. Comparative in scope, and regionally diverse, chapters look to immigrants, communities of color, the colonized, the enslaved, rich and poor, and religious minorities as they buried kith and kin in locales spanning the Northeast to the Spanish American Southwest. Whether African Americans, Muslim or Christian Arabs, Indians, mestizos, Chinese, Jews, Poles, Catholics, Protestants, or various whites of European descent, one thing that united these Americans was a drive to keep their dead apart. At times, they did so for internal preference. At others, it was a function of external prejudice. Invisible and institutional borders built around and into ethnic cemeteries also tell a powerful story of the ways in which Americans have negotiated race, culture, class, national origin, and religious difference in the United States during its formative centuries.

Jokes and Targets takes up an appealing and entertaining topic the social and historical origins of jokes about familiar targets such as rustics, Jewish spouses, used car salesmen, and dumb blondes. Christie Davies explains why political jokes flourished in the Soviet Union, why Europeans tell jokes about American lawyers but not about their own lawyers, and why sex jokes often refer to France rather than to other countries. One of the world s leading experts on the study of humor, Davies provides a wide-ranging and detailed study of the jokes that make up an important part of everyday conversation."

Can the study of folklore survive brutal wars and nationalized misappropriations? Does folklore make sense in an age of fearsome technology? These are two of several questions this book addresses with specific and profound reference to the history of folklore studies in Germany. There in the early nineteenth century in the ideological context of romantic nationalism, the works of the Brothers Grimm pioneered the discipline. The sublimation of folklore studies with the nation's political history reached a peak in the 1930s under the Nazi regime. This book takes a full look at what happened to folklore after the end of World War II and the defeat of the Nazis. A special focus on Lutz Rohrich (1923-2006), whose work spans the decades from 1955 to 2006, makes this book a unique window into a monumental reclamation.

In 1945 Rohrich returned from the warfront at the age of twenty-three, a wounded amputee. Resuming his education, he published his seminal "Marchen und Wirklichkeit (Folktale and Reality)" in 1956. Naithani argues that through this and a huge body of scholarship on folktale, folksong, proverbs, and riddles over the next decades, Rohrich transformed folklore scholarship by critically challenging the legacies of Romanticism and Nazism in German folklore work. Sadhana Naithani's book is the first full-length treatment of this extraordinary German scholar written in English."

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.

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.

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

This is a best-selling series of fantastic folktales, myths, and legends from around the world - many available in English for the first time. It includes tales from Iceland, Sudan, Palestine, Lebanon, Tibet, amongst others.It features a dedicated mailing and e-mail campaign to targeted media and organisations.Rich in cultural significance, social commentary, and popular beliefs, the tales found in this series represent the best, the most intriguing, and the most curious of oral literature from cultures whose legends, myths, and folklore have been largely unavailable in English until now.Each volume includes 20 to 30 tales, accompanied by an introduction and a historical overview which give the reader compelling insights into the culture, the folk literature, and the lives of the people in the region.

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

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.

A selection of readings by Joseph Campbell, including the editor's comments on the influence of mythology on personal and societal behaviour and the evolution of the creative mythologies of today. The development of Campbell's thought is traced and an analysis of _The Hero's Journey_ is included.

To visiting geologists Black Rock, New Mexico, is a basaltic escarpment and an ideal natural laboratory. To hospital workers, Black Rock is a picturesque place to earn a living. To the Zuni, the mesas, arroyos, and the rock itself are a stage on which the passion of their elders is relived. William A. Dodge explores how a shared sense of place evolves over time and through multiple cultures that claim the landscape.

Through stories told over many generations, this landscape has given the Zuni an understanding of how they came to be in this world. More recently, paleogeographers have studied the rocks and landforms to better understand the world as it once was. Archaeologists have conducted research on ancestral Zuni sites in the vicinity of Black Rock to explore the cultural history of the region. In addition, the Anglo-American employees of the Bureau of Indian Affairs came to Black Rock to advance the federal Indian policy of assimilation and brought with them their own sense of place.

Black Rock has been an educational complex, an agency town, and an Anglo community. Today it is a health care center, commercial zone, and multi-ethnic subdivision. By describing the dramatic changes that took place at Black Rock during the twentieth century, Dodge deftly weaves a story of how the cultural landscape of this community reflected changes in government policy and how the Zunis themselves, through the policy of Indian self-determination, eventually gave new meanings to this ancient landscape.

The mountains of the Appalachia abound with tales of ghosts and mysterious places. Covering 16 counties, 40 spine-tingling stories will have you traveling the roads and paths of those who have walked before you and listening to their sorrowful tales. Along the way, visit The Hanging Tree in Cabarrus County, Battle Mansion in Buncombe County, Green River Plantation in Rutherford County, and the House on the Hill in Jackson County. Sit around the campfire and hear stories of lore about the legend of the Bald, the warning of the Hunter's Moon, and the disappearance of an entire hunting party. Superstition, folklore, and the paranormal keep the spirits alive in the Appalachian region. Will you be the next one to visit with the ghosts of Cherohala?

Born in 1928 in a tent on the shore of Loch Fyne, Argyll, Duncan Williamson (d. 2007) eventually came to be recognized as one of the foremost storytellers in Scotland and the world. Webspinner: Songs, Stories, and Reflections of Duncan Williamson, Scottish Traveller is based on more than a hundred hours of tape-recorded interviews undertaken with him in the 1980s. Williamson tells of his birth and upbringing in the west of Scotland, his family background as one of Scotland's seminomadic travelling people, his varied work experiences after setting out from home at about age fifteen, and the challenges he later faced while raising a family of his own, living on the road for half the year. The recordings on which the book is based were made by John D. Niles, who was then an associate professor at the University of California, Berkeley. Niles has transcribed selections from his field tapes with scrupulous accuracy, arranging them alongside commentary, photos, and other scholarly aids, making this priceless self-portrait of a brilliant storyteller available to the public. The result is a delight to read. It is also a mine of information concerning a vanished way of life and the place of singing and storytelling in Traveller culture. In chapters that feature many colorful anecdotes and that mirror the spontaneity of oral delivery, readers learn much about how Williamson and other members of his persecuted minority had the resourcefulness to make a living on the outskirts of society, owning very little in the way of material goods but sustained by a rich oral heritage.

Is the "Oedipus complex" universal? This book examines the controversial question in light of its collection of 139 family complex folktales from every world cultural area and every level of social complexity, the largest such collection ever made.