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Author: John Emory Dean
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
Published: 2016-03-17
Total Pages: 246
ISBN-13: 0816532427
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →"The book explores how border subjects have been created and disputed in cultural narratives of the Texas-Mexico border, comparing and analyzing Mexican, Mexican American, and Anglo literary representations of the border"--Provided by publisher.
Author: Joseph Mali
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 2003-05
Total Pages: 369
ISBN-13: 0226502627
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Ever since Herodotus declared in Histories that to preserve the memories of the great achievements of the Greeks and other nations he would count on their own stories, historians have debated whether and how they should deal with myth. Most have sided with Thucydides, who denounced myth as "unscientific" and banished it from historiography. In Mythistory, Joseph Mali revives this oldest controversy in historiography. Contesting the conventional opposition between myth and history, Mali advocates instead for a historiography that reconciles the two and recognizes the crucial role that myth plays in the construction of personal and communal identities. The task of historiography, he argues, is to illuminate, not eliminate, these fictions by showing how they have passed into and shaped historical reality. Drawing on the works of modern theorists and artists of myth such as Nietzsche and Wittgenstein, Joyce and Eliot, Mali redefines modern historiography and relates it to the older notion and tradition of "mythistory." Tracing the origins and transformations of this historiographical tradition from the ancient world to the modern, Mali shows how Livy and Machiavelli sought to recover true history from uncertain myth-and how Vico and Michelet then reversed this pattern of inquiry, seeking instead to recover a deeper and truer myth from uncertain history. In the heart of Mythistory, Mali turns his attention to four thinkers who rediscovered myth in and for modern cultural history: Jacob Burckhardt, Aby Warburg, Ernst Kantorowicz, and Walter Benjamin. His elaboration of the different biographical and historiographical routes by which all four sought to account for the persistence and significance of myth in Western civilization opens up new perspectives for an alternative intellectual history of modernity-one that may better explain the proliferation of mythic imageries of redemption in our secular, all too secular, times.
Author: M. David Litwa
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 2019-08-06
Total Pages: 311
ISBN-13: 0300242638
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →A compelling comparison of the gospels and Greco-Roman mythology which shows that the gospels were not perceived as myths, but as historical records Did the early Christians believe their myths? Like most ancient--and modern--people, early Christians made efforts to present their myths in the most believable ways. In this eye-opening work, M. David Litwa explores how and why what later became the four canonical gospels take on a historical cast that remains vitally important for many Christians today. Offering an in-depth comparison with other Greco-Roman stories that have been shaped to seem like history, Litwa shows how the evangelists responded to the pressures of Greco-Roman literary culture by using well-known historiographical tropes such as the mention of famous rulers and kings, geographical notices, the introduction of eyewitnesses, vivid presentation, alternative reports, and so on. In this way, the evangelists deliberately shaped myths about Jesus into historical discourse to maximize their believability for ancient audiences.
Author: Karen Armstrong
Publisher: Vintage Canada
Published: 2010-10-29
Total Pages: 170
ISBN-13: 0307367290
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →What are myths? How have they evolved? And why do we still so desperately need them? A history of myth is a history of humanity, Karen Armstrong argues in this insightful and eloquent book: our stories and beliefs, our curiosity and attempts to understand the world, link us to our ancestors and each other. This is a brilliant and thought-provoking introduction to myth in the broadest sense–from Palaeolithic times to the “Great Western Transformation” of the last 500 years–and why we dismiss it only at our peril.
Author: Ray Raphael
Publisher: New Press, The
Published: 2014-07-04
Total Pages: 434
ISBN-13: 159558949X
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →First published ten years ago, award-winning historian Ray Raphael’s Founding Myths has since established itself as a landmark of historical myth-busting. With the author’s trademark wit and flair, Founding Myths exposes the errors and inventions in America’s most cherished tales, from Paul Revere’s famous ride to Patrick Henry’s “Liberty or Death” speech. For the seventy thousand readers who have been captivated by Raphael’s eye-opening accounts, history has never been the same. In this revised tenth-anniversary edition, Raphael revisits the original myths and explores their further evolution over the past decade, uncovering new stories and peeling back additional layers of misinformation. This new edition also examines the highly politicized debates over America’s past, as well as how school textbooks and popular histories often reinforce rather than correct historical mistakes. A book that “explores the truth behind the stories of the making of our nation” (National Public Radio), this revised edition of Founding Myths will be a welcome resource for anyone seeking to separate historical fact from fiction.
Author: Sarah Iles Johnston
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Published: 2018-12-03
Total Pages: 385
ISBN-13: 0674185072
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Sarah Iles Johnston argues that the nature of myths as gripping tales starring vivid characters enabled them to do their most important work: sustaining belief in the gods and heroes of Greek religion. She shows how Greek myths—and the stories told by all cultures—affect our shared view of the cosmos and the creatures who inhabit it.
Author: Philip Ball
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 2022-10-17
Total Pages: 437
ISBN-13: 0226823849
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →With The Modern Myths, brilliant science communicator Philip Ball spins a new yarn. From novels and comic books to B-movies, it is an epic exploration of literature, new media and technology, the nature of storytelling, and the making and meaning of our most important tales. Myths are usually seen as stories from the depths of time—fun and fantastical, but no longer believed by anyone. Yet, as Philip Ball shows, we are still writing them—and still living them—today. From Robinson Crusoe and Frankenstein to Batman, many stories written in the past few centuries are commonly, perhaps glibly, called “modern myths.” But Ball argues that we should take that idea seriously. Our stories of Dracula, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and Sherlock Holmes are doing the kind of cultural work that the ancient myths once did. Through the medium of narratives that all of us know in their basic outline and which have no clear moral or resolution, these modern myths explore some of our deepest fears, dreams, and anxieties. We keep returning to these tales, reinventing them endlessly for new uses. But what are they really about, and why do we need them? What myths are still taking shape today? And what makes a story become a modern myth? In The Modern Myths, Ball takes us on a wide-ranging tour of our collective imagination, asking what some of its most popular stories reveal about the nature of being human in the modern age.
Author: Katherine Butler
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
Published: 2019
Total Pages: 344
ISBN-13: 1783273712
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →The complex relationship between myths and music is here investigated.
Author: Adrienne Mayor
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 2020-04-21
Total Pages: 294
ISBN-13: 0691202265
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Traces the story of how ancient cultures envisioned artificial life, automata, self-moving devices and human enhancements, sharing insights into how the mythologies of the past related to and shaped ancient machine innovations.
