Subject Area: Mythology
Pointer, Fritz2012 0-7734-4087-9 328 pagesProfessor Pointer is the first person to offer an English translation of the Epic of Kambili, an African heroic myth. The book is careful to point out that this text deserves to be read by myth scholars and shows that the literary tradition of epic myth-telling extends to Africa through its oral folklore. The author argues that the story should be treated as an epic myth that was pieced together by different authors over several centuries, which may or may not have been the result of observing real events. It may have been an imaginative narrative representing cultural norms with verbal symbolism, thereby putting it in a different tradition to the European epics, while also showing similar conventions of genre.
Price: $219.95 Morrow, John A.2010 0-7734-3660-X 364 pagesThis study explores the Amerindian elements in the works of Ernesto Cardenal, the
revolutionary poet-priest from Nicaragua. The work examines the three main currents which flow through Cardenal’s poetry: the socio-political current, the religious current, and the indigenous current.
Price: $239.95 Wintersteen, Benjamin2010 0-7734-3688-X 180 pagesThis book examines the religious, mythological and performance elements of the traditional Afro-Caribbean street festival. Using the theories of performance, political economy and symbolic analysis, this work elucidates how elements of African, European and South American cultures interact to produce a unique understanding of the colonial and post-colonial experience.
Price: $159.95 Mellor, Scott A.2008 0-7734-4856-X 348 pagesThis work investigates the syntax of ten poems from the
Poetic Edda, a medieval Icelandic text, offering data that reveals some of the composition processes and the remnants of the oral tradition from which poetry came. This work demonstrates that the Icelandic poet not only employed verbatim and variable formulae when composing, but also that the structure of the half-lines are formulaic and that their semantic function aids a poet in composition.
Price: $219.95 Alyal, Amina2010 0-7734-3798-3 292 pagesThis volume develops recent critical work on myth, as well as alluding to seminal if superseded works in the field. The collection explores ways in which this dynamic mythmaking process has taken place — and continues to take place — in contemporary art and thought.
Price: $199.95 McCully, Robert S.1991 0-88946-498-7 102 pagesTakes up where Heinrich Zimmer left off in The King and the Corpse, in which Zimmer takes the position that the ancient symbolic tales and scripts cannot be pinned to a particular theory, as they are in Bettelheim's Freudian approach or in Marie von Franz's Jungian analysis. Examines six well-known fairy tales, listening for the many-faceted intimations common to all enduring art forms. Considers fairy tales as retold dreams, nets that catch hidden psychological realities embedded in the folk-soul, common to any age or time.
Price: $119.95 Eriksson, Edward2014 0-7734-4257-X 204 pagesWritten as a companion piece to complement Professor Eriksson’s prior groundbreaking analysis,
The Appearance of the Mythic Hero in the Twelve Seasons of Nature, this text, focusing on the heroine’s experience, does more than just provide the other half to the hero’s journey. Instead,
The Heroine In Literature and Filam as Expressive of the Twelve Natural Seasons further develops Eriksson’s original insight in a thought-provoking analysis that comprehensively details the correspondences between the dramas of human relationships and the seasons of life that shape the feminine quest for fulfillment within a larger cosmological paradigm.
The heroine in literature and film is an expression of seasonal occurrence. Her behavior exhibits, symbolically, the response of the earth to the sun at a given time of the year, beginning at the March equinox and proceeding through twelve seasons. She assumes, then, twelve distinct characterizations. Her conflicts, successes, and failures reflect the natural conditions of Early Spring, Mid-Spring, Late Spring, and so on, in an aesthetic development that converts traditional mythic dynamics, based in agriculture, into story lines in ancient and modern configurations. Her character in a given season suggests the dynamism of that season as reinterpreted into the drama of human relationships.
Price: $179.95 Rich, Janet Bubar2014 0-7734-0070-2 116 pagesThis book honors Hestia, the goddess of the hearth. It fills the gaping void in exclusive scholarship on Hestia and explores her as a pop culture icon in a quest to grasp her relevance for people today. Thinking about Hestia as an archetype of focus and centeredness may offer soulful refuge from the
e-chatter overload that people face in their daily lives. It may help fulfill contemporary yearnings for authenticity and wholeness within human hearts and souls by offering us a path homeward, back to connections with people’s inner selves.
Price: $69.95 Vemsani, Lavanya2006 0-7734-5723-2 244 pagesThis book studies the evolution of Balarma in Vaiavism through comparative analysis of Balarma stories from selected Hindu puras: the
Harivama (HV), the
Viu pura (Vi.pu), the
Brahma pura (Br.pu), and the
Bhgavata pura (Bh.pu). Through careful analysis of Balarma stories from these texts, the author argues that Balarma was a multifaceted deity of considerable importance in early Vaiavism. The modifications introduced in the earliest stories reveal a process whereby Balarma’s popularity and status declined, and he became a minor deity as Ka grew in importance. In this process, Balarma’s personality is modified from his association with food, abundance, fertility and protection to that of an ordinary warrior.
The author demonstrates that the early supremacy and personality of Balarma is reflected in the depiction of this deity in select Jain texts: the
Vasudevahid (VH), the Harivamapurna (HVP), the
Cauppannamahpurisacariyam (CMC) and the
Trialpuruacaritra (TSP). A comparison of Hindu and Jain pura stories of Balarma also reveal that the Jain Balarma stories are derived from independent sources other than the Hindu puras.
A study of the Balarma stories also contributes to current scholarship on the textual history of the Hindu puras. The stories are analyzed, divided into a series of plots and compared across the different texts. The author shows that changes to these basic plots indicate the evolution of the story and suggests that the more different a story is from the basic story, the later it must be while the less different the story, the closer to contemporary it must be. A comparison of the stories indicates that the HV was the source of the Vi.pu, which served as the source for the Br.pu and Bh.pu. A comparison of the latter two texts reveals that the Bh.pu is the last of the texts, while the Br.pu shows a combination of early and late stories. This pattern is consistent with what scholars working on the puras have described.
Price: $179.95 Prioreschi, Plinio1990 0-88946-142-2 504 pagesThis book examines death from a biological and historical point of view, and its impact on human thinking. The problems of unexplained death, the criteria of death, and its meaning in the light of the Second Law of Thermodynamics are discussed. The answers given by philosophy and the sociological aspects of the phenomena related to the care of the terminally ill, to mercy killing, to suicide and to the death penalty, are also investigated. The thesis supported is that the fear of death is the motivation behind our need to accomplish anything (be it having children or getting the Nobel Prize) that will allow us to survive death. The primary cause of most of our actions in fact, are traced to our desire to achieve some form of immortality. The fear of death is considered to be life’s main energy source. In sum, the book finds that fear of death is the motive behind the human need to accomplish anything at all and discusses care of the terminally ill, mercy killing, suicide, and the death penalty.
Price: $299.95 Loewen, Gregory V.2007 0-7734-5508-6 252 pagesWhy do people, in our modern age of rationality, science, and materialism, commence the formation and celebration of the irrational, the unscientific, and the immaterial? What anxieties drive us to escape the cold light of the empirical? What desires are left unfulfilled by the premises and promises of technocracy and market capital? What beliefs are unbelievable, and what do we wish to avoid remembering at the cost of forgetting the history of ourselves? This book explores these questions with a combination of analyses of structures which impose themselves upon our thinking and create for us templates of prejudice and spaces of judgment, and a variety of qualitative case studies taken from many of the somewhat occlusive and tricky fjords of human experience.
Price: $199.95 Chapman, Tobias1989 0-88946-340-9 120 pagesProposes that the most serious modern objection made to mystical beliefs - not that they are false, but that they are meaningless - is far too simplistic; and provides arguments for certain distinctively mystical doctrines from the point of view of contemporary analytical philosophy.
Price: $119.95 Steadman, John1998 0-7734-2829-1Sections include Mythologies; Satires and Lighter Verses; Meditations, East and West.
Price: $39.95 Gagnon, Mireille2008 0-7734-5112-9 176 pagesThis study is a first in depth look at a contemporary witchcraft, known as Wicca, in the francophone province of Quebec in Canada. Taking an ethnographic approach and placing itself within the context of two different languages and world, views this study evaluates the Wiccan experience in Quebec, arguing that this particular group claims a religious rather than spiritual relation with the world.
Price: $159.95 Matos-Nin, Ingrid E.2010 0-7734-3718-5 172 pagesThis work examines some of the sources that María de Zayas uses to present some of her concepts about the devil, evil, men, honor and love in relationship to the supernatural. Contrary to some modern critics, the Spanish people of the Seventeenth century were very much aware of the significance, customs, and relevance of these supernatural beliefs in their lives.
Price: $159.95 Lichtman, Susan A.1991 0-7734-9699-8 108 pagesTraces the development of the female archetype as a heroic journey toward self-actualization for the individual woman. While identifying woman as hero of her own unique archetypal journey, this book explains how the journey can only be accomplished through the unification of the three major phases of a woman's life (virgin, mother, crone) into a full vision of feminine development through the signs, symbols, and images of woman as portrayed in mythology, literature, and popular culture. General readers as well as scholars in women's studies, literature, psychology, or history will find this book helpful in broadening their own range of interpretations about the image and impact of woman in society.
Price: $119.95 Hegy, Pierre1991 0-7734-9680-7 236 pagesKnowledge, business, politics, defense, etc, would be impossible on a national scale without the inner horizon of common values. This horizon helps us to locate ourselves within the limits of what is knowable, feasible, and permissible; it allows us to set goals and priorities, and to find hope and direction. Values are rooted in myth, defined here as that which is said, as in Homer, but also as the inner rationality of our everyday discourse.
Price: $179.95 Eriksson, Edward2012 0-7734-4082-8 172 pagesThe hero in literature and film is an expression of seasonal occurrence. His behavior exhibits, symbolically, the relationship of the sun to the earth in twelve phases. It begins at the March equinox and proceeds through the natural year. He assumes, then, twelve distinct characterizations. His conflicts and successes reflect the natural conditions of Early Spring, Mid-Spring, Late Spring, and so on. It creates an aesthetic development that primarily converts traditional mythic dynamics (based in agriculture) into story lines. His character in a given season suggests the dynamism of that season in a modern cultural context. As all works of literature and film either indicate or suggest a seasonal moment, all heroes as will be shown by reference to over a hundred novels, plays, short stories, and films, are characterized by the force of aesthetic sublimation in sympathy with their seasonal set.
Price: $159.95 dos Santos, Dominique Vieira Coelho2013 0-7734-4552-8 316 pagesSeveral books dedicated to the life and career of Saint Patrick seem not to take narrative problems into consideration or at least not to focus on them. The main subject in this particular field is the real or historical Patrick, in contrast to the fictional. The authors of these works try to overcome the gap between referent and representation, transcending then in order to find a hidden meaning in the past. Part of the so-called Patrician problem is related to this need of being forced to choose between real and representation. Patrick’s history is analyzed differently in this research; we are more interested in understanding the representations than to transcend them.
Price: $219.95 Bakker, J.1991 0-7734-9713-7 283 pagesThe chapters in part one re-examine the impact of the mythic west on a selection of 19th century texts in the light of the latest literary-critical approaches to Western writing. Works include Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales, Melville, Whitman, Twain, et al. The selection has been guided by the fact that all these works deal explicitly with the frontier West. Part two contains chapters on the modern Western. First, the literary Western from Owen Wister's The Virginian through E.L. Doctorow's Welcome to Hard Times. The second chapter discusses the popular or formula Western, concentrating on what links it to the literary Western: violence and the love story. Addresses such writers as Zane Grey and Max Brand. The third chapter is devoted entirely to Larry McMurtry's novels Lonesome Dove and Anything for Billy, examining in what sense and to what extent he succeeds in revitalizing the conventions and stereotypes on which the traditional popular Western is based.
Price: $199.95 Fike, Matthew2003 0-7734-6670-3 176 pagesUsing a range of interpretive strategies to reevaluate episodes that portray or relate to hell, this monograph argues that Redcrosse, Guyon and Britomart are on parallel journeys that support a heightened sense of Books I-III as a thematic unit.
Price: $159.95 Grossman, Elwira2002 0-7734-7054-9 348 pagesPrice: $219.95 El-Meligi, Eman2012 0-7734-3047-4 360 pagesThis book compares the literary styles of two authors from vastly different cultural and national heritages. Tawfiq Al-Hakim is an Egyptian and V.S. Naipaul is from Trinidad. The cultures are different but their literary techniques bear an affinity to one another. The author showcases how cultural differences are depicted in these novels, while also revealing a shared set of literary conventions utilized by these talented authors. Both draw on mythology and Jungian archetypes which are fertile ground for critical analysis that juxtapose them.
Price: $239.95 Bukay, David2017 1-4955-0611-8 136 pagesThe research found in this book proves, ethnic cleansing has also many other aspects, like expropriating others' history, scientific knowledge, values, even identity; mass slavery of groups and nationals from the seventh century on; coercing Muslim primitive barbarian values on the Free World by terrorism, intimidation, sophisticated propaganda, sabotaging its infrastructure, and mass-immigration; and removing physical and cultural evidence of the targeted groups by demolishing and desecrating their monuments, cemeteries, and places of worship.
Price: $79.95 Smith, Gregg A.2007 0-7734-5353-9 196 pagesExamines the nature and function of the dead in medieval Norse and Celtic literature. It is demonstrated that agents of the living dead in these literatures have a functional and formulaic role, largely manifested as a process of wish-fulfillment. While the authors of these stories provide resonances of past beliefs regarding the dead, they also appear to have adapted these ideas for their own purposes in order to involve the dead as role-players in their stories. This book contains 11 color photographs.
Price: $159.95 Munir, Muhammad2018 1-4955-0649-5 584 pagesThe concept of
jihad has been the subject of vigorous academic writings since 9/11. Literature on
jihad in most cases suggests that the phenomenon has been misunderstood and distorted. The self-declared
jihadi organizations, or non-State Islamic actors, have abused the doctrine of
jihad. Consequently, a common man's perception of Islam is to judge it to a large extent through his view of actions of the non-State Islamic actors such as
al-Qa'ida, Daish, Boko Haram, or local
jihadists organizations such as the Taliban rather than by the principles of Islamic law.
Price: $319.95 Brockington, Mary2008 0-7734-4999-X 320 pagesA re-examination “the Separating Sword” that demonstrates the complexity
of intertextual influences across linguistic and cultural boundaries.
Price: $219.95 Bellows, Henry Adams1991 0-88946-783-8 470 pagesA reprint of the classic 1923 Bellows translation. A superb text and an essential source for Scandinavian mythology.
Price: $279.95 Ingwersen, Niels2008 0-7734-4983-3 264 pagesDemonstrates that Scandinavian folklore has a range comparable to Shakespearean drama.
Price: $199.95 Anderson, Earl R.2010 0-7734-3755-X 608 pagesThis monograph is the first book-length comprehensive textual analysis of the
Beowulf saga as an Indo-European epic. It provides a detailed reading of the epic in conjunction with ancient legal and cultural practices that allow for a new understanding of this classic work. This theoretical resource offers insights valuable to the fields of comparative mythology, medieval literature and Anglo-Saxon studies.
Price: $339.95 Bernhardt-House, Phillip A.2010 0-7734-3714-2 520 pagesThis book is a typological study of canids and canid imagery in Medieval Celtic cultures. It explores texts ranging from early Irish legal tracts and heroic narrative to exempla from Welsh, Breton, and later Scottish sources.
Price: $299.95 Kohen, Elli2003 0-7734-6778-5 444 pagesThis unique book is structured by country, from prehistoric to present times. An effort has been made to revive the soul and ambience of different environments as it evolved over the centuries. The style is intentionally folksy, to reproduce the special sense of humor, puns or poetry of different countries.
Price: $259.95