Margins, Monsters, Deviants
Author: Rebecca Merkelbach
Publisher:
Published: 2020
Total Pages:
ISBN-13: 9782503585871
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The Oxford Handbook of Monsters in Classical Myth
Author: Debbie Felton
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2024-05-07
Total Pages: 641
ISBN-13: 0192650459
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe Oxford Handbook of Monsters in Classical Myth presents forty chapters about the unique and terrifying creatures from myths of the long-ago Near East and Mediterranean world, featuring authoritative contributions by many of the top international experts on ancient monsters and the monstrous. The first part provides original studies of individual monsters such as the Chimaera, Cerberus, the Hydra, and the Minotaur, and of monster groups such as dragons, centaurs, sirens, and Cyclopes. This section also explores their encounters with the major heroes of classical myth, including Perseus, Jason, Heracles, and Odysseus. The second part examines monsters of ancient folklore and ethnography, encompassing the restless dead, blood-drinking lamiae, exotic hybrid animals, the so-called dog-headed men, and many other unexpected creatures and peoples. The third part covers various interpretations of these creatures from multiple perspectives, including psychoanalysis, colonialism, and disability studies, with monster theory itself evident across the entire volume. The final part discusses reception of these ancient monsters across time and space--from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance to modern times, from Persia to Scandinavia, the Caribbean, and Latin America-and concludes with chapters considering the use and adaptation of ancient monsters in children's literature, science fiction, fantasy, and modern scientific disciplines. This Handbook is the first large-scale, inclusive guide to monsters in antiquity, their places in literature and art across the millennia, and their influence on later literature and thought.
Living on the Edge
Author: Delfi I. Nieto-Isabel
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Published: 2022-09-20
Total Pages: 279
ISBN-13: 1501514881
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis volume addresses the widespread medieval phenomenon of transgression as both a result of and the cause for the exclusion and persecution of those who were considered different. It is widely accepted that the essence of a manuscript cannot be fully grasped without studying its marginalia. Glosses sit on the margins of the text and clarify it, adding a whole new dimension to it and becoming an inextricable part of its content. Similarly, no society can be fully understood without knowledge of what lies on its margins, for the outliers of any given culture provide us with just as much information as its alleged foundational principles. In a time when the Western world ponders building walls up against perceived threats and frightening differences, this multidisciplinary collection of essays based on original and innovative pieces of research shows that it was mostly through tearing down walls that we learned our way forward.
Monsters and Borders in the Early Modern Imagination
Author: Jana Byars
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2018-06-14
Total Pages: 305
ISBN-13: 0429878850
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis edited collection explores the axis where monstrosity and borderlands meet to reflect the tensions, apprehensions, and excitement over the radical changes of the early modern era. The book investigates the monstrous as it acts in liminal spaces in the Renaissance and the era of Enlightenment. Zones of interaction include chronological change – from the early New World encounters through the seventeenth century – and cultural and scientific changes, in the margins between national boundaries, and also cultural and intellectual boundaries.
Unwanted
Author: Andreas Schmidt
Publisher: utzverlag GmbH
Published: 2022-01-19
Total Pages: 318
ISBN-13: 3831649421
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe 9 essays collected in this volume are the result of a workshop for international doctoral and postdoctoral researchers in Old Norse-Icelandic Saga Studies held at the Institute for Nordic Philology (LMU) in Munich in December 2018. The contributors focus on ›unwanted‹, illicit, neglected, and marginalised elements in saga literature and research on it. The chapters cover a wide range of intra-textual phenomena, narrative strategies, and understudied aspects of individual texts and subgenres. The analyses demonstrate the importance of deviance and transgression as literary characteristics of saga narration, as well as the discursive parameters that have been dominant in Saga Studies. The aim of this collection is to highlight the productiveness of developing modified methodological approaches to the sagas and their study, with a starting point in narratological considerations.
The Myths and Realities of the Viking Berserkr
Author: Roderick Dale
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2021-12-24
Total Pages: 160
ISBN-13: 0429647727
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe viking berserkr is an iconic warrior normally associated with violent fits of temper and the notorious berserksgangr or berserker frenzy. This book challenges the orthodox view that these men went ‘berserk’ in the modern English sense of the word. It examines all the evidence for medieval perceptions of berserkir and builds a model of how the medieval audience would have viewed them. Then, it extrapolates a Viking Age model of berserkir from this model, and supports the analysis with anthropological and archaeological evidence, to create a new and more accurate paradigm of the Viking Age berserkr and his place in society. This shows that berserkir were the champions of lords and kings, members of the social elite, and that much of what is believed about them is based on 17th-century and later scholarship and mythologizing: the medieval audience would have had a very different understanding of the Old Norse berserkr from that which people have now. The book sets out a challenge to rethink and reframe our perceptions of the past in a way that is less influenced by our own modern ideas. The Myths and Realities of the Viking berserkr will appeal to researchers and students alike studying the Viking Age, Medieval History and Old Norse Literature.
Monsters in Society
Author: Rebecca Merkelbach
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Published: 2019-11-05
Total Pages: 254
ISBN-13: 1501514229
DOWNLOAD EBOOKDragons, giants, and the monsters of learned discourse are rarely encountered in the Sagas of Icelanders, and therefore, the general teratological focus on physical monstrosity yields only limited results when applied to them. This, however, does not equal an absence of monstrosity – it only means that monstrosity is conceived of differently. This book shifts the view of monstrosity from the physical to the social, accounting for the unique social circumstances presented in the Íslendingasögur and demonstrating how closely interwoven the social and the monstrous are in this genre. Employing literary and cultural theory as well as anthropological and historical approaches, it reads the monsters of the Íslendingasögur in their literary and socio-cultural context, demonstrating that they are not distractions from feud and conflict, but that they are in fact an intrinsic part of the genre’s re-imagining of the past for the needs of the present.
Emotions as Engines of History
Author: Rafał Borysławski
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2021-09-23
Total Pages: 242
ISBN-13: 1000452379
DOWNLOAD EBOOKSeeking to bridge the gap between various approaches to the study of emotions, this volume aims at a multidisciplinary examination of connections between emotions and history and the ways in which these connections have manifested themselves in historiography, cultural, and literary studies. The book offers a selected range of insights into the idea of emotions, affects, and emotionality as driving forces and agents of change in history. The fifteen essays it comprises probe into the emotional motives and dispositions behind both historical phenomena and the ways they were narrated.
Story, World and Character in the Late Íslendingasögur
Author: Rebecca Merkelbach
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
Published: 2024-06-11
Total Pages: 302
ISBN-13: 1843846667
DOWNLOAD EBOOKArgues for new models of reading the complexity and subversiveness of fourteen "post-classical" sagas. The late Sagas of Icelanders, thought to be written in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, have hitherto received little scholarly attention. Previous generations of critics have unfavourably compared them to "classical" Íslendingasögur and fornaldarsögur, leading modern audiences to project their expectations onto narratives that do not adhere to simple taxonomies and preconceived notions of genre. As "rogues" within the canon, they challenge the established notions of what makes an Íslendingasaga. Based on a critical appraisal of conceptualisations of canon and genre in saga literature, this book offers a new reading of the relationship between the individual, paranormal, and social dimensions that form the foundation of these sagas. It draws on a multidisciplinary approach, informed by perspectives as diverse as "possible worlds" theory, gender studies, and social history. The "post-classical" sagas are not only read anew and integrated into both their generic and socio-historical context; they are met on their own terms, allowing their fascinating narratives to speak for themselves.
Mind over Monsters
Author: Sarah Rose Cavanagh
Publisher: Beacon Press
Published: 2023-05-02
Total Pages: 274
ISBN-13: 0807007579
DOWNLOAD EBOOKAn investigation into the mental health crisis affecting young adults today, and an impassioned argument for creating learning environments characterized both by compassion and challenge Alarming statistics in recent years indicate that mental health problems like depression and anxiety have been skyrocketing among youth. To identify solutions, psychologist and professor Sarah Rose Cavanagh interviews a roster of experts across the country who are dedicating their lives to working with young people to help them actualize their goals, and highlights voices of college students from a range of diverse backgrounds. Cavanagh also brings the reader on an invigorating tour of pedagogical, neuroscientific, and psychological research on mental health—one that involves her own personal journey from panic to equilibrium. The result of these combined sources of inquiry indicates that to support youth mental health, we must create what Cavanagh calls compassionate challenge—first, we need to cultivate learning and living environments characterized by compassion, and then, we need to guide our youth into practices that encourage challenge, helping them face their fears in an encouraging, safe, and even playful way. Mind over Monsters is a must-read for teachers, administrators, parents, and young people themselves.
