The Oracle and the Curse

The Oracle and the Curse PDF Author: Caleb Smith
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674075862
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 359

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Book Description
Condemned to hang after his raid on Harper’s Ferry, John Brown prophesied that the crimes of a slave-holding land would be purged away only with blood. A study of omens, maledictions, and inspired invocations, The Oracle and the Curse examines how utterances such as Brown’s shaped American literature between the Revolution and the Civil War. In nineteenth-century criminal trials, judges played the role of law’s living oracles, but offenders were also given an opportunity to address the public. When the accused began to turn the tables on their judges, they did so not through rational arguments but by calling down a divine retribution. Widely circulated in newspapers and pamphlets, these curses appeared to channel an otherworldly power, condemning an unjust legal system and summoning readers to the side of righteousness. Exploring the modes of address that communicated the authority of law and the dictates of conscience in antebellum America’s court of public opinion, Caleb Smith offers a new poetics of justice which assesses the nonrational influence that these printed confessions, trial reports, and martyr narratives exerted on their first audiences. Smith shows how writers portrayed struggles for justice as clashes between human law and higher authority, giving voice to a moral protest that transformed American literature.

The Oracle and the Curse

The Oracle and the Curse PDF Author: Caleb Smith
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674075862
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 359

Get Book Here

Book Description
Condemned to hang after his raid on Harper’s Ferry, John Brown prophesied that the crimes of a slave-holding land would be purged away only with blood. A study of omens, maledictions, and inspired invocations, The Oracle and the Curse examines how utterances such as Brown’s shaped American literature between the Revolution and the Civil War. In nineteenth-century criminal trials, judges played the role of law’s living oracles, but offenders were also given an opportunity to address the public. When the accused began to turn the tables on their judges, they did so not through rational arguments but by calling down a divine retribution. Widely circulated in newspapers and pamphlets, these curses appeared to channel an otherworldly power, condemning an unjust legal system and summoning readers to the side of righteousness. Exploring the modes of address that communicated the authority of law and the dictates of conscience in antebellum America’s court of public opinion, Caleb Smith offers a new poetics of justice which assesses the nonrational influence that these printed confessions, trial reports, and martyr narratives exerted on their first audiences. Smith shows how writers portrayed struggles for justice as clashes between human law and higher authority, giving voice to a moral protest that transformed American literature.

The Oracle and the Curse

The Oracle and the Curse PDF Author: Caleb Smith
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674075846
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 282

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Book Description
Caleb Smith explores the confessions, trial reports, maledictions, and martyr narratives that juxtaposed law and conscience in antebellum America’s court of public opinion and shows how writers portrayed struggles for justice as clashes between human law and higher authority, giving voice to a moral protest that transformed American literature.

Oracles, Curses, and Risk Among the Ancient Greeks

Oracles, Curses, and Risk Among the Ancient Greeks PDF Author: Esther Eidinow
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199277788
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 533

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Book Description
A study of the question tablets from the oracle at Dodona and binding-curse tablets from across the ancient Greek world, These tablets reveal the hopes and anxieties of ordinary people, and help us to understand some of the ways in which they managed risk and uncertainty in their daily lives.

The Curse of Deadman's Forest

The Curse of Deadman's Forest PDF Author: Victoria Laurie
Publisher: Delacorte Books for Young Readers
ISBN: 0385735731
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 425

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Book Description
Determined to recruit six supernaturally gifted children to defeat a growing evil force, Ian and Theodosia Wigby embark on a life-threatening journey through a magic portal in search of a healer who will protect Delphi Keep from a dark enemy.

The Oracle

The Oracle PDF Author: Clive Cussler
Publisher: G.P. Putnam's Sons
ISBN: 0525539611
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 418

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Book Description
Husband-and-wife treasure-hunters Sam and Remi Fargo search for an ancient scroll which carries a deadly curse. But their mission becomes more complicated when they run afoul of a band of robbers

Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Book Three: The Titan's Curse

Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Book Three: The Titan's Curse PDF Author: Rick Riordan
Publisher: Disney Electronic Content
ISBN: 1423131975
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 316

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Book Description
When the goddess Artemis goes missing, she is believed to have been kidnapped. And now it's up to Percy and his friends to find out what happened. Who is powerful enough to kidnap a goddess?

The Oracle Glass

The Oracle Glass PDF Author: Judith Merkle Riley
Publisher: Sourcebooks, Inc.
ISBN: 1402270593
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 496

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Book Description
New York Times and USA Today Bestseller! "An outstanding historical novel of 17th–century France ... based on a real–life scandal known as the Affaire des Poisons, this tale is riveting from start to finish."—Library Journal Her ability to see the future may prevent her from living in the present... For a handful of gold, Madame de Morville will read your future in a glass of swirling water. You'll believe her, because you know she's more than 150 years old and a witch, and she has all of Paris in the palm of her hand. But Madame de Morville hides more behind her black robes than you know. Her real age, the mother and uncle who left her for dead, the inner workings of the most secret society of Parisian witches: none of these truths would help her outwit the rich who so desperately want the promise of the future. After all, it's her own future she must control , no matter how much it is painted with uncertainty and clouded by vengeance. More Praise for The Oracle Glass: "Absorbing and arresting."—New York Times "Fascinating and factual."—Los Angeles Times "Chilly, witty, and completely engrossing ... great, good fun."— Kirkus Reviews "Take a full cup of wit, two teaspoons of brimstone, and a dash of poison, and you have Judith Merkle Riley's mordant, compelling tale of an ambitious young woman who disguises herself as an ancient prophetess in order to gain entry into the dangerous, scheming glamour of the Sun King's court. Based on scandalous true events, The Oracle Glass brims with our human foibles, passions, and eccentricities; it's a classic of the genre and unlike any historical novel you have ever read."—C. W. Gortner, author of The Confessions of Catherine de Medici

Oracle's Curse

Oracle's Curse PDF Author: Melissa Macfie
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Brenawyn has made impossible promises. She has agreed to become the Druid high priestess, she has agreed to restore the balance between worlds, she has promised to save Alexander from a century's old curse, and to top it all off, the god Finvarra has just dropped her 600 years in past so that she can fulfill an ancient prophecy. Now she must make impossible choices: between saving her lover or rescuing her best friend, between staying in the past or returning to the present. But most of all, she must choose who she will become.Oracle's Curse, the third book in The Celtic Prophecy series, takes the reader on a journey to a world of dark magic, a world where dangers abound and Brenawyn has no one to trust.

Oracle of Doom (The Library Book 3)

Oracle of Doom (The Library Book 3) PDF Author: D. J. MacHale
Publisher: National Geographic Books
ISBN: 1101932619
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Check out a book and read your future. . . . It's another page-turning adventure from #1 New York Times bestselling author D. J. MacHale! Marcus is an agent of the Library, a place filled with tales that don't have an ending. Puzzles that won't be solved until Marcus and his friends step in to finish them. This time it's their own stories at stake. Theo just visited the Oracle Baz, an old amusement-park machine that spits out fortunes for the cost of a quarter. Fun, right? The only problem is, the oracle's cheap predictions have been coming true . . . and Theo's fortune says that life as he knows it will end on his fourteenth birthday! Plus, Lu's cousin, who also went to the oracle, is missing. Marcus knows where to find help for his friends--the Library. It turns out that the Oracle Baz was a real man who died in a fire long ago. Can a glimpse into the fortune-teller's past change all their futures?

Oracles, Curses, and Risk Among the Ancient Greeks

Oracles, Curses, and Risk Among the Ancient Greeks PDF Author: Esther Eidinow
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191557226
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 534

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Book Description
How did ancient Greek men and women deal with the uncertainty and risk of everyday life? What did they fear most, and how did they manage their anxieties? Esther Eidinow sets side-by-side two collections of material usually studied in isolation: binding curse tablets from across the ancient world, and the collection of published private questions from the oracle at Dodona in north-west Greece. Eidinow uses these texts to explore perceptions of risk and uncertainty in ancient society, challenging previous explanations. In these records we hear voices that are rarely, if ever, heard in literary texts and history books. The questions and curses in these tablets comprise fervent, sometimes ferocious appeals to the gods. The stories they tell offer tantalizing glimpses of everyday life, carrying the reader through the teeming ancient city - both its physical setting and its social dynamics. Among these tablets we find prostitutes and publicans, doctors and soldiers, netmakers and silver-workers, actors and seamstresses. Anxious litigants ask the gods to silence their opponents. Men inquire about the paternity of their children. Women beg the gods to help them keep their men. Business rivals try to corner the market. Slaves plead to escape their masters. This material takes us beyond the headlines of ancient history, offering new insights into institutions, activities, and relationships. Above all, individually and together, these texts help us to understand some of the ways in which ancient Greek men and women understood the world. In turn, the beliefs and activities of an ancient culture may shed light on modern attitudes to risk.