Kategoria BISAC: Literary Criticism >> Fairy Tales, Folk Tales, Legends & Mythology

According to the scant historical records available, Uncle Bud Long, his daughter Janey, and her son Frankie lived near Clark's Landing, Kentucky, for about twenty years early in this century. Mr. Clarke has collected the tales of the Longs' strange ways from old-time residents of the community, both those who knew the Longs and those who inherited the stories by word of mouth. Here he skillfully weaves them into a loose narrative and, in addition, analyzes the ways in which the anecdotes have been transmuted in the process of retelling.

This analysis of the stories of Uncle Bud...

In classical mythology Astraea, the goddess of justice, chastity, and truth, was the last of the immortals to leave Earth with the decline of the ages. Her return was to signal the dawn of a new Golden Age. This myth not only survived the Christian Middle Ages but also became a commonplace in the Renaissance when courtly poets praised their patrons and princes by claiming that Astraea guided them. The literary cult of Astraea persisted in the sixteenth century as writers saw in Elizabeth I of England the imperial Astraea who would lead mankind to peace through universal rule.

This...

- Details the everyday magic of the Northern Tradition, including household magic, protection spells, and the significance of the days of the week

- Explores direct natural magic, such as shapeshifting and soul travel, and talismanic or sigil magic, including runes and rituals to unlock the power of crafted objects

- Explains how many of these customs continue to the present day

In the pre-Christian societies of Northern Europe, magic was embedded in the practical skills of...

To explain why trolls still...

The Cinderella story is retold continuously in literature, illustration, music, theatre, ballet, opera, film, and other media, and folklorists have recognized hundreds of distinct forms of Cinderella plots worldwide. The focus of this volume, however, is neither Cinderella as an item of folklore nor its alleged universal meaning. In Cinderella across Cultures, editors Martine Hennard Dutheil de la Roch?re, Gillian Lathey, and Monika Wozniak analyze the Cinderella tale as a fascinating, multilayered, and ever-changing story constantly reinvented in different media and traditions....

Beginning in ancient Egypt and traveling around the globe and through the centuries,...

A richly nuanced cultural history of an enigmatic and controversial folktale

Perhaps the best-known version of the tar baby story was published in 1880 by Joel Chandler Harris in Uncle Remus: His Songs and His Sayings, and popularized in Song of the South, the 1946 Disney movie. Other versions of the story, however, have surfaced in many other places throughout the world, including Nigeria, Brazil, Corsica, Jamaica, India, and the Philippines. The Tar Baby offers a fresh analysis of this deceptively simple story about a fox, a rabbit, and a doll made of...

Njord and Skadi: A Myth Explored delves into the story of the Norse giantess Skadi and her unhappy marriage to the sea-god Njord. As compensation, after the gods killed her father, Skadi is given a choice of husbands from among the gods, but she has to choose by looking at just their feet. She chooses the finest-looking feet, believing them to belong to Baldr, but finds to her dismay that she chose the Vanir god Njord instead. Not surprisingly, the marriage does not work out, and they each return to their respective domains, with Skadi keeping her status as a...

Die interdisziplinar ausgerichtete Studie stutzt sich auf die Untersuchung eines umfangreichen Korpus phantastischer Kinder- und Jugendliteratur der Gegenwart. Ausgewahlt wurden hierbei Romane und Filme, die Strukturelemente und Motive aus der antiken Mythologie aufgreifen und zu bestimmenden Elementen machen. Seit dem Erscheinen von Rick Riordans Percy-Jackson-Reihe im Jahre 2005 haben mythopoetische Texte dieser Art auf dem internationalen Buchmarkt Konjunktur. Die Untersuchung geht der Frage nach, welche mythologischen Strukturen und Motive pragend fur das Textkorpus sind und wie diese...

While a few books have described the outlaw myth, usually in its earlier forms, and occasional academic essays have commented on elements of the Robin Hood story, this is the first in-depth analysis of the whole sequence and the varying elements of the adventures of Robin Hood. First, it explores the medieval tradition from early poems into the long-surviving sung ballads - and also two...

The Oldest Story in the World is a brooding, daring, idiosyncratic exploration of the secret strength of storytelling, in which Phil Cousineau addresses the central theme that runs through all his work, the transportive power of words. Written as a mosaic of meditations, this lyrical book ranges from a twelve-thousand-year-old Aboriginal tale, to a mystical Viking story, a venerable myth from the Seneca, and a modern parable from the world of house painters in San Francisco. Wrapped around the marvels he has...