Author: Liz Williams
Publisher: Spectra
ISBN: 0553584995
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 427
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Book Description
A former Soviet rocket scientist, Elena Irinovna now cleans office buildings for a living, until a mysterious artifact brings her face to face with Ilya Muromyets, an eight-hundred-year-old Russian hero and heroin addict, who has been hired to track down the artifact, which offers a possible glimpse into another dimension. Original.
Author: John Minford
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 9780231096775
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 1252
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Book Description
Contains English translations of Chinese writings drawn from throughout a period of four hundred years, including poems, drama, fiction, songs, biographies, and early works of philosophy and history; arranged chronologically and by genre, with introductory quotes and comments.
Author: Kathryn Dyt
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 0824899822
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 292
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Book Description
The Nature of Kingship is an innovative exploration of dynastic power and the environment in nineteenth-century Vietnam. It offers important insights into Vietnamese kingship by delving into the intricate workings of the Nguyễn court and its interactions with the natural world. Weaving together a rich array of sources including official histories, royal poetry, astrological manuals, geography texts, and provincial gazetteers, Kathryn Dyt vividly demonstrates how Nguyễn governance and court hierarchies were intertwined with a powerful, agentive, and emotional “weather-world”—a world inhabited by ecological actors such as rain, wind, land, and skies. While previous narratives have often faulted Nguyễn rulers for being aloof and detached from their surroundings, this new study considers how Nguyễn dynastic rule was in fact highly responsive to its setting and sensitive to the environment. It shows that Nguyễn kings were not static, inert individuals, cut off from the world, but rather were intensely engaged with their environment and its cosmological and spiritual dimensions. Placing kings in the thick of lived experience, in a land perceived to be alive and responsive to human incantations, prayers, and pleas, this account demonstrates how Nguyễn rulers consolidated their authority through displays of superior weather knowledge and modes of affective rule rooted in reciprocal emotional resonance with the weather-world. The king’s exemplary affective responsiveness to the weather was central to his preeminence and it was a means by which the court validated its power within Vietnam’s extensive social field. Exploring kingship from phenomenological perspectives, this wide-reaching study addresses diverse forms of court engagement with the environment, including the observation of astronomical and meteorological phenomena, divination practices, rainmaking rituals, travel through the kingdom, the writing of environmental histories, and imperial poetry.
Author: Alison Bashford
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022682859X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 392
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Book Description
A kaleidoscopic rethinking of how we come to know the earth. This book brings the history of the geosciences and world cosmologies together, exploring many traditions, including Chinese, Pacific, Islamic, South and Southeast Asian conceptions of the earth’s origin and makeup. Together the chapters ask: How have different ideas about the sacred, animate, and earthly changed modern environmental sciences? How have different world traditions understood human and geological origins? How does the inclusion of multiple cosmologies change the meaning of the Anthropocene and the global climate crisis? By carefully examining these questions, New Earth Histories sets an ambitious agenda for how we think about the earth. The chapters consider debates about the age and structure of the earth, how humans and earth systems interact, and how empire has been conceived in multiple traditions. The methods the authors deploy are diverse—from cultural history and visual and material studies to ethnography, geography, and Indigenous studies—and the effect is to highlight how earth knowledge emerged from historically specific situations. New Earth Histories provides both a framework for studying science at a global scale and fascinating examples to educate as well as inspire future work. Essential reading for students and scholars of earth science history, environmental humanities, history of science and religion, and science and empire.
Author: M. D. Muthukumaraswamy
Publisher: NFSC www.indianfolklore.org
ISBN: 8190148141
Category : Folklore
Languages : en
Pages : 328
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Book Description
In the Indian context; papers presented at a symposium held at New Delhi in 2002.
Author: Alisa Huntsman
Publisher: Chronicle Books
ISBN: 1452134014
Category : Cooking
Languages : en
Pages : 224
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Book Description
Find a “richly varied collection” of triple-layer recipes in this cookbook that takes cake to a whole new level(Flo Braker, author of The Simple Art of Perfect Baking). Sky High celebrates the triple-layer cake in all its glorious incarnations with more than 40 decadent and delicious recipes. The wide range of flavors will appeal to anyone with a sweet tooth. The book features such delights as Boston Cream Pie, Mile-High Devil’s Food Cake, and Key West Cake—and there are even three astonishingly beautiful (and totally doable) wedding cakes! From luscious chocolate creations to drizzled caramel confections, take simple layer cakes to new heights with Sky High. “Elevates the classic layer cake . . . And best of all, the recipes are clear and easy to follow.” —Nick Malgieri, James Beard Award–winning author of A Baker’s Tour
Author: Anne Birrell
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 9780801861833
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 350
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Book Description
In Chinese Mythology, Anne Birrell provides English translations of some 300 representative myth narratives selected from over 100 classical texts, many of which have never before been translated into any Western language. Organizing the narratives according to themes and motifs common to world mythology, Birrell addresses issues of source, dating, attribution, textural variants, multiforms, and context. Drawing on exhaustive work in comparative mythology, she surveys the development of Chinese myth studies, summarizes the contribution of Chinese and Japanese scholars to the study of Chinese myth since the 1920s, and examines special aspects of traditional approaches to Chinese myth. The result is an unprecedented guide to the study of Chinese myth for specialists and nonspecialists alike.
Author: Steven Olderr
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786490675
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 237
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Book Description
The use of symbolism is an art, not a science. Different people use symbols in a variety of ways and each symbol can have diverse meanings, even within the same culture. Not surprisingly, determining the meaning of symbols can be difficult. This valuable reference defines the general symbolism of more than 15,000 terms, from ancient to modern, as well as specialized meanings in mythology, religion, art, literature, folklore, flower language, astrology, heraldry, numerology, and cultures the world over. From "0" to "Zu," each entry catalogs all possible connotations, listed by culture when appropriate, creating the most comprehensive symbolism dictionary available.
Author: Lianshan Chen
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 052118679X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 153
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Book Description
An illustrated introduction to the stories of deities, heroes and the origins of the universe that underpin traditional Chinese culture.
Author: Ana Díaz
Publisher: University Press of Colorado
ISBN: 1607329530
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 367
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Book Description
Reshaping the World is a nuanced exploration of the plurality, complexity, and adaptability of Precolumbian and colonial-era Mesoamerican cosmological models and the ways in which anthropologists and historians have used colonial and indigenous texts to understand these models in the past. Since the early twentieth century, it has been popularly accepted that the Precolumbian Mesoamerican cosmological model comprised nine fixed layers of underworld and thirteen fixed layers of heavens. This layered model, which bears a close structural resemblance to a number of Eurasian cosmological models, derived in large part from scholars’ reliance on colonial texts, such as the post–Spanish Conquest Codex Vaticanus A and Florentine Codex. By reanalyzing and recontextualizing both indigenous and colonial texts and imagery in nine case studies examining Maya, Zapotec, Nahua, and Huichol cultures, the contributors discuss and challenge the commonly accepted notion that the cosmos was a static structure of superimposed levels unrelated to and unaffected by historical events and human actions. Instead, Mesoamerican cosmology consisted of a multitude of cosmographic repertoires that operated simultaneously as a result of historical circumstances and regional variations. These spaces were, and are, dynamic elements shaped, defined, and redefined throughout the course of human history. Indigenous cosmographies could be subdivided and organized in complex and diverse arrangements—as components in a dynamic interplay, which cannot be adequately understood if the cosmological discourse is reduced to a superposition of nine and thirteen levels. Unlike previous studies, which focus on the reconstruction of a pan-Mesoamerican cosmological model, Reshaping the World shows how the movement of people, ideas, and objects in New Spain and neighboring regions produced a deep reconfiguration of Prehispanic cosmological and social structures, enriching them with new conceptions of space and time. The volume exposes the reciprocal influences of Mesoamerican and European theologies during the colonial era, offering expansive new ways of understanding Mesoamerican models of the cosmos. Contributors: Sergio Botta, Ana Díaz, Kerry Hull, Katarzyna Mikulska, Johannes Neurath, Jesper Nielsen, Toke Sellner Reunert†, David Tavárez, Alexander Tokovinine, Gabrielle Vail
