The Five and Twenty Tales of the Genie
The Five and Twenty Tales of the Genie

Author: Sivadasa

Publisher: Penguin UK

Published: 2006-08-31

Total Pages: 335

ISBN-13: 0141907924

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Half mythical, heroic and sagacious, the emperor Vikramaditya is widely regarded as India's greatest monarch. This collection of stories tells of the ruler's fabled encounter with a vetala, a genie who inhabits the body of a corpse. The emperor begs the spirit for his help against a mighty necromancer and is told in return twenty-four tales, each of which presents a situation he might face as a king and culminates in a riddle that he must solve. With each answer, Vikramaditya displays his deep wisdom, proving himself to be the ideal monarch and winning, in the twenty-fifth tale, the guidance he needs from the vetala to destroy his powerful enemy. Written down in medieval times but inspired by an oral tradition stretching back centuries, these wise and witty tales rank amongst the great masterpieces of Sanskrit literature.

Narratives of Kingship in Eurasian Empires, 1300-1800
Narratives of Kingship in Eurasian Empires, 1300-1800

Author: Richard van Leeuwen

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2017-08-28

Total Pages: 286

ISBN-13: 9004340548

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In Narratives of Kingship in Eurasian Empires, 1300-1800 Richard van Leeuwen analyses representations and constructions of the idea of kingship in fictional texts of various genres, especially belonging to the intermediate layer between popular and official literature. The analysis shows how ideologies of power are embedded in the literary and cultural imagination of societies, their cultural values and conceptualizations of authority. By referring to examples from various empires (Chinese, Indian, Persian, Arabic, Turkish, European) the parallels between literary traditions are laid bare, revealing remarkable common concerns. The process of interaction and transmission are highlighted to illustrate how literature served as a repository for ideological and cultural values transforming power into authority in various imperial environments.

Prince, Pen, and Sword: Eurasian Perspectives
Prince, Pen, and Sword: Eurasian Perspectives

Author: Maaike van Berkel

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2018-01-22

Total Pages: 668

ISBN-13: 9004315713

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Prince, Pen, and Sword offers a synoptic interpretation of rulers and elites in Eurasia from the fourteenth to the eighteenth century. Four core chapters zoom in on the tensions and connections at court, on the nexus between rulers and religious authority, on the status, function, and self-perceptions of military and administrative elites respectively. Two additional concise chapters provide a focused analysis of the construction of specific dynasties (the Golden Horde and the Habsburgs) and narratives of kingship found in fiction throughout Eurasia. The contributors and editors, authorities in their fields, systematically bring together specialised literature on numerous Eurasian kingdoms and empires. This book is a careful and thought-provoking experiment in the global, comparative and connected history of rulers and elites.

The Routledge Companion to Global Literary Adaptation in the Twenty-First Century
The Routledge Companion to Global Literary Adaptation in the Twenty-First Century

Author: Brandon Chua

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2023-03-10

Total Pages: 475

ISBN-13: 1000832112

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The Routledge Companion to Global Literary Adaptation in the Twenty-First Century offers new perspectives on contemporary literary adaptation as a dynamically global field. Featuring contributions from an international team of established and emerging scholars, this volume considers literary adaptation to be a complex global network of influences, appropriations, and audiences across a diversity of media. It offers site-specific case studies that situate literary adaptation within global market forces while challenging the homogenizing effects of globalization on local literatures and adaptation practices. The collection also provides a multi-disciplinary and transnational discussion around a wide array of topics in literary adaptation in a global context, such as soft power, decolonization, global justice, the posthuman, eco criticism, and forms of activism. This Companion provides scholars, researchers, and students with a survey of key methodologies, current debates, and ideologies emerging from a new and exciting phase in literary adaptation.

Simhasana Dvatrimsika
Simhasana Dvatrimsika

Author: A N D Haskar

Publisher: Penguin UK

Published: 2007-01-07

Total Pages: 207

ISBN-13: 9352141008

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Classic tales of courage and compassion The fabled monarch Vikramaditya is considered a model of kingly virtues, and his reign a golden age. These famous stories narrated by the thirty-two statuettes of nymphs supporting the magic throne of Vikramaditya extol his courage, compassion and extraordinary magnanimity. They are set in a framework recounting the myths of his birth, accession, adventures and death in battle, after which the throne remained concealed till its discovery in a later age. A fascinating mix of marvellous happenings, proverbial wisdom and sage precepts, these popular tales are designed to entertain as well as instruct. Many have passed into folk literature. The original author of the Simhasana Dvatrimsika is unknown. The present text is dated to the thirteenth century AD. It exists in four main recensions, from which extracts have been compiled together for the first time, in this lively and faithful translation of this celebrated classic by a renowned Sanskritist

The Penguin Classics Book
The Penguin Classics Book

Author: Henry Eliot

Publisher: Random House

Published: 2019-02-21

Total Pages: 1904

ISBN-13: 0141990937

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**Shortlisted for Waterstones Book of the Year** The Penguin Classics Book is a reader's companion to the largest library of classic literature in the world. Spanning 4,000 years from the legends of Ancient Mesopotamia to the poetry of the First World War, with Greek tragedies, Icelandic sagas, Japanese epics and much more in between, it encompasses 500 authors and 1,200 books, bringing these to life with lively descriptions, literary connections and beautiful cover designs.

The Novel: An Alternative History
The Novel: An Alternative History

Author: Steven Moore

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2013-09-17

Total Pages: 705

ISBN-13: 1441133364

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Encyclopedic in scope and heroically audacious, The Novel: An Alternative History is the first attempt in over a century to tell the complete story of our most popular literary form. Contrary to conventional wisdom, the novel did not originate in 18th-century England, nor even with Don Quixote, but is coeval with civilization itself. After a pugnacious introduction, in which Moore defends innovative, demanding novelists against their conservative critics, the book relaxes into a world tour of the pre-modern novel, beginning in ancient Egypt and ending in 16th-century China, with many exotic ports-of-call: Greek romances; Roman satires; medieval Sanskrit novels narrated by parrots; Byzantine erotic thrillers; 5000-page Arabian adventure novels; Icelandic sagas; delicate Persian novels in verse; Japanese war stories; even Mayan graphic novels. Throughout, Moore celebrates the innovators in fiction, tracing a continuum between these pre-modern experimentalists and their postmodern progeny. Irreverent, iconoclastic, informative, entertaining-The Novel: An Alternative History is a landmark in literary criticism that will encourage readers to rethink the novel.

Genie and Paul
Genie and Paul

Author: Natasha Soobramanien

Publisher: Myriad Editions (US&CA)

Published: 2012-08-01

Total Pages: 205

ISBN-13: 1908434163

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Genie and Paul is an utterly original love story: the story of a sister's love for a lost brother, and the story of his love for an island that has never really existed. One morning in May 2003, on the cyclone-ravaged island of Rodrigues in the Indian Ocean, the body of a man washes up on the beach. Six weeks previously, the night Tropical Cyclone Kalunde first gathered force, destruction of another kind hit 26-year-old Genie Lallan and her life in London: after a night out with her brother she wakes up in hospital to discover that he's disappeared. Where has Paul gone, and why did he abandon her at the club where she collapsed? Genie's search for him leads her to Rodrigues, sister island to Mauritius—their island of origin, and for Paul, the only place he has ever felt at home. Will Genie track Paul down? And what will she find if she does?

Rethinking India's Oral and Classical Epics
Rethinking India's Oral and Classical Epics

Author: Alf Hiltebeitel

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2009-02-15

Total Pages: 575

ISBN-13: 0226340554

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Throughout India and Southeast Asia, ancient classical epics—the Mahabharata and the Ramayana—continue to exert considerable cultural influence. Rethinking India's Oral and Classical Epics offers an unprecedented exploration into South Asia's regional epic traditions. Using his own fieldwork as a starting point, Alf Hiltebeitel analyzes how the oral tradition of the south Indian cult of the goddess Draupadi and five regional martial oral epics compare with one another and tie in with the Sanskrit epics. Drawing on literary theory and cultural studies, he reveals the shared subtexts of the Draupadi cult Mahabharata and the five oral epics, and shows how the traditional plots are twisted and classical characters reshaped to reflect local history and religion. In doing so, Hiltebeitel sheds new light on the intertwining oral traditions of medieval Rajput military culture, Dalits ("former Untouchables"), and Muslims. Breathtaking in scope, this work is indispensable for those seeking a deeper understanding of South Asia's Hindu and Muslim traditions. This work is the third volume in Hiltebeitel's study of the Draupadi cult. Other volumes include Mythologies: From Gingee to Kuruksetra (Volume One), On Hindu Ritual and the Goddess (Volume Two), and Rethinking the Mahabharata (Volume Four).