Author: James A. Honey
Publisher: DigiCat
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 76
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Book Description
This collection of folktales from South Africa has been put together the author says, not for scholarship but for a love of the sunny country where he was born. Some stories originate from Dutch sources, and some have several versions. Most are tales told by the bushmen.
Author: Anon E. Mouse
Publisher: Abela Publishing Ltd
ISBN: 8822809769
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 142
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Book Description
Herein are 15 stories and tales from the Southern most tip of Africa narrated by Outa Karel (Old Charles). Translated and retold by Sanni Metelerkamp, she commences the narration with a description of “The Place and the People” which is a story in itself and sets the tone and background to the whole book. A common theme throught is the Trickster Jackal, not too dissimilar to the role played by the Coyote in American Indian tales and Anansi, the Trickster Spider in West African tales. You will then find 14 more South African tales. Stories like “Why the Hyena is Lame” – a story of why, when first seen walking, the Hyena gives the impression that it is lame and the role the Jackal played in bringing this about. Also, “Why the Heron has a Crooked Neck” – a story how the crook in the Heron’s neck came about and how the devious Jackal, once again, had a part to play. There are also the Hottentot (Bushman) tales of “The Sun” and “The Stars and the Stars’ Road” which when first documented surprised the original recorders, as who would have thought the Bushmen would have tales of the origin of the stars and planets. Indeed in Bleek and Lloyd’s work Specimens of Bushman Folklore they recount the tale of “The Girl Of The Early Race, Who Made Stars” and also a poem of “Sirius And Canopus”! Metelerkamp states in the foreword that “These tales are the common property of every country child in South Africa” - and so they are and have been since the region was first populated thousands of years ago. We invite you to sit back in a comfy chair of a cold, crisp evening, a steaming hot beverage in hand and enjoy this sliver of South African folklore and culture from an age long past and almost forgotten. 33% of the net profit from the sale of this book will be donated to the Sentabale charity supporting children in Lesotho orphaned by AIDS.
Author: Andre Brink
Publisher: Sourcebooks, Inc.
ISBN: 1402232284
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 116
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Book Description
He is the chieftain leader of the Khoikhoi, a nomadic people derogatorily called "Hottentot"' by European colonists. She is a white woman left behind by Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama's crew when they rounded Africa's southern tip in 1498. Their romance is the core of this powerful novella. According to Portuguese myth, Zeus turned Adamastor into the rocky cape of the South African peninsula. André Brink's parable suggests that white Europeans have punished native Africans in the same way. With this novel, Brink takes us to the heart of the relationships that define South Africa's modern history. "Peter Carey, Garcia Marquez, Solzhenitsyn: André Brink must be considered with that class of writer." —Guardian
Author: Collected by Martha Warren Beckwith
Publisher: Library of Alexandria
ISBN: 1465517057
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 340
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Book Description
Author: Marina Warner
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674065077
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 577
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Book Description
Our foremost theorist of myth, fairytale, and folktale explores the magical realm of the imagination where carpets fly and genies grant prophetic wishes. Stranger Magic examines the profound impact of the Arabian Nights on the West, the progressive exoticization of magic, and the growing acceptance of myth and magic in contemporary experience.
Author: Sarah Iles Johnston
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674185072
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 385
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Book Description
Greek myths have long been admired as beautiful, thrilling stories but dismissed as serious objects of belief. For centuries scholars have held that Greek epics, tragedies, and the other compelling works handed down to us obscure the “real” myths that supposedly inspired them. Instead of joining in this pursuit of hidden meanings, Sarah Iles Johnston argues that the very nature of myths as stories—as gripping tales starring vivid characters—enabled them to do their most important work: to create and sustain belief in the gods and heroes who formed the basis of Greek religion. By drawing on work in narratology, sociology, and folklore studies, and by comparing Greek myths not only to the myths of other cultures but also to fairy tales, ghost stories, fantasy works, modern novels, and television series, The Story of Myth reveals the subtle yet powerful ways in which these ancient Greek tales forged enduring bonds between their characters and their audiences, created coherent story-worlds, and made it possible to believe in extraordinary gods. Johnston captures what makes Greek myths distinctively Greek, but simultaneously brings these myths into a broader conversation about how the stories told by all cultures affect our shared view of the cosmos and the creatures who inhabit it.
Author: Maria Tatar
Publisher: Belknap Press
ISBN: 0674238605
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 257
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Book Description
“With her trademark brio and deep-tissue understanding, Maria Tatar opens the glass casket on this undying story, which retains its power to charm twenty-one times, and counting.” —Gregory Maguire, author of Wicked The story of the rivalry between a beautiful, innocent girl and her cruel and jealous mother has been endlessly repeated and refashioned all over the world. The Brothers Grimm gave this story the name by which we know it best, and in 1937 Walt Disney sweetened their somber version to make the first feature-length, animated fairy tale, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Since then, the Disney film has become our cultural touchstone—the innocent heroine, her evil stepmother, the envy that divides them, and a romantic rescue from domestic drudgery and maternal persecution. But each culture has its own way of telling this story of jealousy and competition. An acclaimed folklorist, Maria Tatar brings to life a global melodrama of mother-daughter rivalries that play out in unforgettable variations across countries and cultures. “Fascinating...A strange, beguiling history of stories about beauty, jealousy, and maternal persecution.” —Wall Street Journal “Is the story of Snow White the cruelest, the deepest, the strangest, the most mythopoeic of them all?...Tatar trains a keen eye on the appeal of the bitter conflict between women at the heart of the tale...a feast of rich thoughts...An exciting and authoritative anthology from the wisest good fairy in the world of the fairy tale.” —Marina Warner “The inimitable Maria Tatar offers us a maze of mothers and daughters and within that glorious tangle an archetype with far more meaning than we imagine when we say ‘Snow White.’” —Honor Moore “Shocking yet familiar, these stories...retain the secret whisper of storytelling. This is a properly magical, erudite book.” —Literary Review
Author: Robert Sutherland Rattray
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Folk-lore, Hausa
Languages : en
Pages : 364
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Book Description
Author: Peter L'Official
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674238079
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 321
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Book Description
A cultural history of the South Bronx that reaches beyond familiar narratives of urban ruin and renaissance, beyond the “inner city” symbol, to reveal the place and people obscured by its myths. For decades, the South Bronx was America’s “inner city.” Synonymous with civic neglect, crime, and metropolitan decay, the Bronx became the preeminent symbol used to proclaim the failings of urban places and the communities of color who lived in them. Images of its ruins—none more infamous than the one broadcast live during the 1977 World Series: a building burning near Yankee Stadium—proclaimed the failures of urbanism. Yet this same South Bronx produced hip hop, arguably the most powerful artistic and cultural innovation of the past fifty years. Two narratives—urban crisis and cultural renaissance—have dominated understandings of the Bronx and other urban environments. Today, as gentrification transforms American cities economically and demographically, the twin narratives structure our thinking about urban life. A Bronx native, Peter L’Official draws on literature and the visual arts to recapture the history, people, and place beyond its myths and legends. Both fact and symbol, the Bronx was not a decades-long funeral pyre, nor was hip hop its lone cultural contribution. L’Official juxtaposes the artist Gordon Matta-Clark’s carvings of abandoned buildings with the city’s trompe l’oeil decals program; examines the centrality of the Bronx’s infamous Charlotte Street to two Hollywood films; offers original readings of novels by Don DeLillo and Tom Wolfe; and charts the emergence of a “global Bronx” as graffiti was brought into galleries and exhibited internationally, promoting a symbolic Bronx abroad. Urban Legends presents a new cultural history of what it meant to live, work, and create in the Bronx.
Author: A. S. Byatt
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674004511
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 212
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Book Description
The interplay between fiction and history forms the core of Byatt's essays as she explores historical storytelling and the translation of historical fact into fiction.
