Folklore is the cultural expression of a people, and it makes up key elements of the stories they tell. Using easily accessible language, this book defines, separates, and gracefully weaves together s
A sumptuously illustrated collection of songs, poetry and prose about fantastical creatures from mythology and folklore includes entries about beings of the imagination ranging from unicorns and drago
This volume introduces students of rabbinic literature to the range of historical and interpretative questions surrounding the rabbinic texts of late antiquity. The editors, themselves well-known interpreters of Rabbinic literature, have gathered an international collection of scholars to support students' initial steps in confronting the enormous and complex rabbinic corpus. Unlike other introductions to Rabbinic writings, the present volume includes approaches shaped by anthropology, gender studies, oral-traditional studies, classics, and folklore studies.
A basic exploration of the appearance, behavior, and habitat of cougars, the second largest cats of the Americas. Also included is a story from folklore explaining why cougars have long, thin bodies.F
A basic exploration of the appearance, behavior, and habitat of sea lions, oceanic mammals related to seals. Also included is a story from folklore explaining why Japanese fishers respected sea lions.
A basic exploration of the appearance, behavior, and habitat of whales, the large ocean animals. Also included is a story from folklore explaining why New Zealanders traditionally rode whales. From hu
A basic exploration of the appearance, behavior, and habitat of woodpeckers, nature's drummers. Also included is a story from folklore explaining how woodpeckers take good care of their young. From hu
The Red Planet has been a subject of fascination for humanity for thousands of years, becoming part of our folklore and popular culture. The most Earthlike of the planets in our solar system, Mars may
Challenging and considerably broadening popular and scholarly definitions of American folk music, Folksongs of Another America recovers the diverse, multilingual traditions of immigrant, Native Americ
Karnes County's history is rich in folklore, tall tales, real-life feuds, and even an outlaw or two. Declared a county in 1854, it was named after Henry Karnes, a heroic peace negotiator and early Tex
"Morphology will in all probability be regarded by future generations as one of the major theoretical breakthroughs in the field of folklore in the twentieth century."Alan Dundes"Propp's work i
It is often thought that the numerous contradictory perspectives in Margaret Cavendish's writings demonstrate her inability to reconcile her feminism with her conservative, royalist politics. In this book Lisa Walters challenges this view and demonstrates that Cavendish's ideas more closely resemble republican thought, and that her methodology is the foundation for subversive political, scientific and gender theories. With an interdisciplinary focus Walters closely examines Cavendish's work and its context, providing the reader with an enriched understanding of women's contribution to early modern scientific theory, political philosophy, culture and folklore. Considering also Cavendish's ideas in relation to Hobbes and Paracelsus, this volume is of great interest to scholars and students of literature, philosophy, history of ideas, political theory, gender studies and history of science.
A powerful middle grade debut that weaves together folklore and history to tell the story of a girl finding her voice and the strength to use it during the final months of the Communist regime in Roma
This innovative history of popular magical mentalities in nineteenth-century England explores the dynamic ways in which the magical imagination helped people to adjust to urban life. Previous studies of modern popular magical practices and supernatural beliefs have largely neglected the urban experience. Karl Bell, however, shows that the magical imagination was a key cultural resource which granted an empowering sense of plebeian agency in the nineteenth-century urban environment. Rather than portraying magical beliefs and practices as a mere enclave of anachronistic 'tradition' and the fantastical as simply an escapist refuge from the real, he reveals magic's adaptive and transformative qualities and the ways in which it helped ordinary people navigate, adapt to and resist aspects of modern urbanization. Drawing on perspectives from cultural anthropology, sociology, folklore and urban studies, this is a major contribution to our understanding of modern popular magic and the lived exp
Russian popular culture and folklore were a central theme in Dostoevsky's work, and folklore imagery permeates his fiction. Dostoevsky and the Russian People is a comprehensive study of the people and folklore in his art. Linda Ivanits investigates the integration of Dostoevsky's religious ideas and his use of folklore in his major fiction. She surveys the shifts in Dostoevsky's thinking about the Russian people throughout his life and offers comprehensive studies of the people and folklore in Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, The Devils, and The Brothers Karamazov. This important study will illuminate this unexplored aspect of his work, and will be of great interest to scholars and students of Russian and of comparative literature.
A Forest of Time, first published in 2002, is the first introduction for undergraduates, graduates and general readers to the notion that American Indian societies had vital interests in interpreting and transmitting their own histories in their own ways, for themselves. Drawing upon his own varied research as well as sampling the latest in scholarship from ethnohistory, anthropology, folklore and Indian studies, Dr Nabokov offers dramatic examples of how native peoples also put rituals and material culture, landscape, prophecies, and even the English language to the urgent service of keeping the past alive and relevant. Throughout these lively chapters, we also witness the American Indian historical imagination deployed as a coping skill and survival strategy. This book surveys the latest integrating ideas while offering a useful bibliography that opens up, and demands that we engage with, alternative chronicles for America's multi-cultural past.
Coyote tales are among the best loved in Native American folklore, and those recorded by anthropologist Frank Hamilton Cushing at the end of the nineteenth century have well survived the test of time.
"Folklore, which delves into the culture of peoples, may be a more important study about real life--private life--than standard, formal history. . . . One of the lessons that we have learned--or are b
