Tales from the Trobriand Islands of Papua New Guinea

Tales from the Trobriand Islands of Papua New Guinea

Author: Gunter Senft

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company

Published: 2015-08-05

Total Pages: 319

ISBN-13: 9027268266

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This volume presents 22 tales from the Trobriand Islands told by children (boys between the age of 5 and 9 years) and adults. The monograph is motivated not only by the anthropological linguistic aim to present a broad and quite unique collection of tales with the thematic approach to illustrate which topics and themes constitute the content of the stories, but also by the psycholinguistic and textlinguistic questions of how children acquire linearization and other narrative strategies, how they develop them and how they use them to structure these texts in an adult-like way. The tales are presented in morpheme-interlinear transcriptions with first textlinguistic analyses and cultural background information necessary to fully understand them. A summarizing comparative analysis of the texts from a psycholinguistic, anthropological linguistic and philological point of view discusses the underlying schemata of the stories, the means narrators use to structure them, their structural complexity and their cultural specificity.


Islam and Cultural Change in Papua New Guinea

Islam and Cultural Change in Papua New Guinea

Author: Scott Flower

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2016-08-12

Total Pages: 197

ISBN-13: 1317680847

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Scholars of religion and policy makers may be surprised at the changes occurring on the second largest island of the world that straddles one of the most Christianised and least Christianised areas of the world. This book provides an accurate and deeper understanding of the nature of Islam in Papua New Guinea, and determines the causes and processes of recent growth in the country’s Muslim population. Combining ethnographic, sociological and historical approaches to understanding Islam’s growth in Papua New Guinea, the book uses extensive fieldwork, interviews and archival records to look at the establishment, institutionalization and growth of Islam in a country that is predominantly Christian. It analyses the causes and processes of conversion, and presents a new analytical approach that could be used as a basis for analysing Islamic conversions in other parts of the world. Presenting an interdisciplinary approach to the study of Islamic conversion thorough the examination of the causes and process of Islamic conversion in Papua New Guinea, the book is of interest to students and scholars of Asian Religion, Islamic Studies and Cultural Studies.


Dictionary of Nature Myths

Dictionary of Nature Myths

Author: Tamra Andrews

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2000

Total Pages: 302

ISBN-13: 0195136772

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Comprehensive and cross-referenced, this informative volume is a rich introduction to the world of nature as experienced by ancient peoples around the globe. 51 halftones.


Religions of Melanesia

Religions of Melanesia

Author: Garry Trompf

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2006-09-30

Total Pages: 721

ISBN-13: 1567206662

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Melansia boasts over one-quarter of the world's distinct religions and presents the most complex religious panorama on earth. The region is famous for its unusual new religious movements that have adapted traditional beliefs to modernity in surprising ways. As the first bibliographical survey to comprehensively cover the entire region, Religions of Melanesia is an invaluable research aid for anyone interested in this growing field. Trompf's work is a complete listing of scholarly publications and provides readable and concise descriptions that will clearly guide the researcher toward the most relevant sources. This survey covers 2188 entries organized topically and regionally. Trompf covers such subjects as traditional and modern belief systems and the emergent indigenous Christianity that has taken root. Regional coverage includes Irian Jaya, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, New Caledonia, and Fiji.


Through Folklore to Literature

Through Folklore to Literature

Author: International Board on Books for Young People. Australian National Section

Publisher: Sydney : IBBY Australia Publications

Published: 1979

Total Pages: 248

ISBN-13:

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Lezingen van de Australische IBBY-sectie 1978, waarbij de nadruk ligt op sprookjes, volksverhalen en Australische jeugdliteratuur


Shrouds of the Night

Shrouds of the Night

Author: David L. Block

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2009-01-05

Total Pages: 449

ISBN-13: 0387789758

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The Milky Way has captivated the mind of multitudes ever since the beginning of time. Particularly striking are its apparent dusty gaping voids. With the advent of near-infrared technology, astronomers have discovered an awesome new view of its structure, and of the structure of other galaxies around us. Galaxies are encased within Shrouds of the Night: shrouds or veils of cosmic dust, which have given us a totally incomplete picture of what our majestic Universe actually looks like. In this book, we feature some of the remarkable early photographic work of masters such as Isaac Roberts and Edward Barnard, before presenting to the reader the unmasked (dust penetrated) view of our cosmos, using some of the world’s largest ground and space-based telescopes.


Spirit Structures of Papua New Guinea

Spirit Structures of Papua New Guinea

Author: Michael Hirschbichler

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2024-06-21

Total Pages: 292

ISBN-13: 1040035590

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This book investigates the art and architecture of Papua New Guinean spirit structures with a multi-perspectival approach that combines cultural and social sciences with building, architectural, and spatial research. It offers the first comprehensive study of the spirit houses of New Guinea that exists to date. The book’s aim is twofold: First, it aims to investigate the spirit structures and their associated cultural cosmos in detail. For this purpose, a representative selection of traditional buildings and artworks from different regions of Papua New Guinea is documented and analyzed, and theories for their understanding are formulated. In this course, the author develops a spatial theory of anthropological concepts – such as myths, signs, persons, and rituals. Secondly, this analysis is then situated in the broader context of the Anthropocene/Kaiaimunucene. Transforming the historical spirit structures into models for future-oriented cultural imagination, the consequences for contemporary productions of space and ways of worldmaking in light of existential challenges are traced. The book thus offers more-than-human and more-than-secular concepts for building, art, and worldmaking that are of critical importance in the ongoing Anthropocene/Kaiaimunucene. It will be of interest to researchers and students of architecture, anthropology, cultural studies, environmental humanities, and adjacent disciplines. Part I of the book was translated from German by Melanie Janet Sindelar.


Imdeduya

Imdeduya

Author: Gunter Senft

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company

Published: 2017-07-12

Total Pages: 244

ISBN-13: 9027265895

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This volume presents five variants of the Imdeduya myth: two versions of the actual myth, a short story, a song and John Kasaipwalova’s English poem “Sail the Midnight Sun”. This poem draws heavily on the Trobriand myth which introduces the protagonists Imdeduya and Yolina and reports on Yolina’s intention to marry the girl so famous for her beauty, on his long journey to Imdeduya’s village and on their tragic love story. The texts are compared with each other with a final focus on the clash between orality and scripturality. Contrary to Kasaipwalova’s fixed poetic text, the oral Imdeduya versions reveal the variability characteristic for oral tradition. This variability opens up questions about traditional stability and destabilization of oral literature, especially questions about the changing role of myth – and magic – in the Trobriand Islanders' society which gets more and more integrated into the by now “literal” nation of Papua New Guinea.