Kategoria BISAC: Social Science >> Folklore & Mythology

The 1992 Quincentennial of the encounter between the New World and the Old resulted in a veritable culture war- an extreme polarization of hardened ideological positions on different ideas of America. Monsters, Tricksters, and Sacred Cows brings a fresh perspective to the confusing question of American identity. It clears the minefields laid by the generals commanding the opposing camps, while demonstrating that both sides have been primarily interested in protecting and defending an idea of -Americanness- that cannot resist scrutiny. Some of the leading international scholars in...

The 1992 Quincentennial of the encounter between the New World and the Old resulted in a veritable culture war- an extreme polarization of hardened ideological positions on different ideas of America. Monsters, Tricksters, and Sacred Cows brings a fresh perspective to the confusing question of American identity. It clears the minefields laid by the generals commanding the opposing camps, while demonstrating that both sides have been primarily interested in protecting and defending an idea of -Americanness- that cannot resist scrutiny. Some of the leading international scholars in...

In the wake of the elegant master theories of Joseph Campbell, Mircea Eliade, Georges Dumezil, and Claude Levi-Strauss, how are mythology and the comparative study of religion to be understood? In Myth and Method, a leading team of scholars assesses the current state of the study of myth and explores the possibilities for charting a methodological middle course between the comparative and the contextual issues raised in the last ten years. In confronting these tension, they provide an outline of the most troubling questions in the field and offer a variety of responses to them.

In the wake of the elegant master theories of Joseph Campbell, Mircea Eliade, Georges Dumezil, and Claude Levi-Strauss, how are mythology and the comparative study of religion to be understood? In Myth and Method, a leading team of scholars assesses the current state of the study of myth and explores the possibilities for charting a methodological middle course between the comparative and the contextual issues raised in the last ten years. In confronting these tension, they provide an outline of the most troubling questions in the field and offer a variety of responses to them.

In the second half of the nineteenth century, Jewish nationalism developed in Europe. One vital form of this nationalism that took root at the beginning of the twentieth century in Eastern Europe was the Yiddishist movement, which held that the Yiddish language and culture should be at the center of any Jewish nationalist efforts. As with most European concepts of folklore, the romantic-nationalist ideas of J. G. Herder on the volk were crucial in the formulation of the study and collection of Yiddish folklore.
Herder's volk, however, denoted the peasantry, whereas Polish Jewry were an...

Raphael Patai' s (1910-1996) lifelong fascination with Arab folktales began on a Ramadan night in 1933, at a cafe in Jerusalem where, for the first time, he heard a famous qassas, a storyteller, tirelessly relate story after story from his vast repertoire of Arab folktales. In Arab Folktales from Palestine and Israel, a collection of twenty-eight tales gathered in Palestine and Israel

and one of Patai's last books, Patai explores this rich cultural tradition. He studies tales from three separate times: those recorded by a German scholar in 1910-11, those read over Jerusalem Radio in the...

Since their expulsion from Spain in 1492, Sephardic Jews have managed to maintain their Jewish faith and Spanish group identity and have developed a uniquely Judeo-Spanish culture wherever they settled. Among the important cultural ties within these Sephardic groups are Judeo-Spanish folktales, stories that have been passed down from generation to generation, either in the distinct language of the group, Judeo-Spanish (Ladino), or in other languages, such as Hebrew. In The Heart Is a Mirror, Tamar Alexander-Frizer examines the folk narratives of Sephardic Jews to view them both in relation...

In the 1970s, feminists focused critical attention on fairy tales and broke the spell that had enchanted readers for centuries. By exposing the role of fairy tales in the cultural struggle over gender, feminism transformed fairy-tale studies and sparked a debate that would change the way society thinks about fairy tales and the words "happily ever after." Now, after three decades of provocative criticism and controversy, this book reevaluates the feminist critique of fairy tales.

The eleven essays within Fairy Tales and Feminism challenge and rethink conventional...

How male medical authorities and female literary authors struggled to describe the inner workings of the unseen-and competed to shape public understanding of it-is the focus of this engaging work by Holly Tucker. In illuminating the gender politics underlying dramatic changes in reproductive theory and practice, Tucker shows just how tenuous the boundaries of scientific "fact" and marvelous fictions were in early-modern France.

On the literary front, Tucker argues, women used the fairy tale to rethink the biology of childbirth and the sociopolitical uses to which it had been put. She...

The goals and challenges that face the people of Israel are vividly illustrated by the country's many folk stories. Here Haya Bar-Itzhak presents these tales-gathered from the early settlers of the kibbutz, from immigrants who arrived in Israel after independence, and from ethnic groups-to create a panoramic view of a fascinatingly complex society.

Creating stories set in the past, even the recent past, is a way for societies to express their problems, adversities, yearnings, and hopes. Bar-Itzhak finds this true among inhabitants of the kibbutz, who find their society at a...

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 a five-hundred-year historical journey. 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...

In the final years of the Soviet Union and into the 1990s, Soviet Jews immigrated to Israel at an unprecedented rate, bringing about profound changes in Israeli society and the way immigrants understood their own identity. In this volume ex-Soviets in Israel reflect on their immigration experiences, allowing readers to explore this transitional cultural group directly through immigrants' thoughts, memories, and feelings, rather than physical artifacts like magazines, films, or books.

Drawing on their fieldwork as well as on analyses of the Russian-language Israeli media and Internet...

The Arabian Nights commands a place in world literature unrivaled by any other fictional work of "Oriental" provenance. Bringing together Indian, Iranian, and Arabic tradition, this collection of tales became popular in the Western world during the eighteenth century and has since exerted a profound influence on theater, opera, music, painting, architecture, and literature. The Arabian Nights Reader offers an authoritative guide to the research inspired by this rich and intricate work. Through a selection of sixteen influential and currently relevant essays, culled from decades of...

In this important book, Elaine Breslaw claims to have rediscovered Tituba, the elusive, mysterious, and often mythologized Indian woman accused of witchcraft in Salem in 1692 and immortalized in Arthur Miller's The Crucible.

Reconstructing the life of the slave woman at the center of the notorious Salem witch trials, the book follows Tituba from her likely origins in South America to Barbados, forcefully dispelling the commonly-held belief that Tituba was African. The uniquely multicultural nature of life on a seventeenth-century Barbadan sugar plantation--defined by a...

In this important book, Elaine Breslaw claims to have rediscovered Tituba, the elusive, mysterious, and often mythologized Indian woman accused of witchcraft in Salem in 1692 and immortalized in Arthur Miller's The Crucible.

Reconstructing the life of the slave woman at the center of the notorious Salem witch trials, the book follows Tituba from her likely origins in South America to Barbados, forcefully dispelling the commonly-held belief that Tituba was African. The uniquely multicultural nature of life on a seventeenth-century Barbadan sugar plantation--defined by a...

In her compendious study, of the folktale of the runaway wife] Leavy argues that the contradictory claims of nature and culture are embodied in the legendary figure of the swan maiden, a woman torn between the human and bestial worlds.
--The New York Times Book Review

This is a study of the meaning of gender as framed by the swan maiden tale, a story found in the folklore of virtually every culture. The swan maiden is a supernatural woman forced to marry, keep house, and bear children for a mortal man who holds the key to her imprisonment. When she manages to regain...

Narayana s best-seller gives its reader much more than Friendly Advice. In one handy collection closely related to the world-famous Pancatantra or Five Discourses on Worldly Wisdom numerous animal fables are interwoven with human stories, all designed to instruct wayward princes. Tales of canny procuresses compete with those of cunning crows and tigers. An intrusive ass is simply thrashed by his master, but the meddlesome monkey ends up with his testicles crushed. One prince manages to enjoy himself with a merchant s wife with her husband s consent, while another is kicked out of paradise...

Ever hear the one about the man who wakes up after a chance sexual encounter to discover he's been involuntarily relieved of one of his kidneys? Or the tiny gift-wrapped box from a recently departed lover that reveals a horrible secret? Everyone knows contemporary legends, those barely believable, often lurid, cautionary tales, always told as though they happened to the friend of a friend. Sometimes we pass them on to others unsure of their truthfulness, usually we dismiss them as mere myth. But these far-fetched legends tell us quite a bit about our deepest fears and fantasies.

In...