Download or read book The Modern Bestiary written by Joanna Bagniewska and published by Smithsonian Institution. This book was released on 2022-09-27 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A quirky collection of Earth’s most compelling animals who give mythical creatures a run for their money The Modern Bestiary: A Curated Collection of Wondrous Wildlife mirrors the medieval tradition of an encyclopedia of incredible beasts, only this charming book with ornamental illustrations features 100 real animals who are stranger than fiction. Organized by the elements Earth, Water, and Air, the book introduces both unfamiliar creatures, like deep-sea harp sponges who catch prey in their barbs and digest them whole, as well as ones that have made headlines, such as cicadas who emerge from the ground in noisy broods every thirteen or seventeen years. Step right up and meet these delightful, unbelievable, and deliciously horrific animals, including: The endearing: same-sex albatross mothers who raise chicks together tarantulas who keep frogs as pets zebra finches who sing to their eggs to warn them of hot weather The ruthless: flukes who manipulate their host into getting eaten by a final host horned lizards who squirt blood through their eyes to distract predators southern grasshopper mice who harness scorpion venom as a painkiller And the just plain weird: antechinuses who mate themselves to death pearlfish who live, fight, and mate in sea cucumber butts immortal jellyfish who reverse their aging process when stressed Funny, entertaining, and illuminating, The Modern Bestiary is a book for anyone who wants to become more familiar with the natural world and all its astounding creatures.
Download or read book The Modern Bestiary written by Joanna Bagniewska and published by Smithsonian Institution. This book was released on 2022-09-27 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A quirky collection of Earth’s most compelling animals who give mythical creatures a run for their money The Modern Bestiary: A Curated Collection of Wondrous Wildlife mirrors the medieval tradition of an encyclopedia of incredible beasts, only this charming book with ornamental illustrations features 100 real animals who are stranger than fiction. Organized by the elements Earth, Water, and Air, the book introduces both unfamiliar creatures, like deep-sea harp sponges who catch prey in their barbs and digest them whole, as well as ones that have made headlines, such as cicadas who emerge from the ground in noisy broods every thirteen or seventeen years. Step right up and meet these delightful, unbelievable, and deliciously horrific animals, including: The endearing: same-sex albatross mothers who raise chicks together tarantulas who keep frogs as pets zebra finches who sing to their eggs to warn them of hot weather The ruthless: flukes who manipulate their host into getting eaten by a final host horned lizards who squirt blood through their eyes to distract predators southern grasshopper mice who harness scorpion venom as a painkiller And the just plain weird: antechinuses who mate themselves to death pearlfish who live, fight, and mate in sea cucumber butts immortal jellyfish who reverse their aging process when stressed Funny, entertaining, and illuminating, The Modern Bestiary is a book for anyone who wants to become more familiar with the natural world and all its astounding creatures.
Download or read book A Modern Bestiary written by Alessandro Gallenzi and published by Hesperus Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 116 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of 16 sonnets about humans who are transformed into beasts (both real and imaginary), and vice versa, A Modern Bestiary is a new interpretation of the old bestiary tradition, which has fascinated generations of readers and writers alike, from the Middle Ages through to the Modern Age. A fierce invective against modern poetasters and bad poetry in general, Ars Poetastrica does not pretend to be a collection of precepts on good writing, but rather an impassioned exhortation towards a new Humanism in poetry. Alessandro Gallenzi lives and works in London, where he runs Hesperus Press, a small independent publisher devoted to the rediscovery of lesser-known works by the greatest European and American authors.
Download or read book The Bestiary written by Ann VanderMeer and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A modern bestiary of made-up fantastical creatures organized from A to Z, along with an ampersand and an invisible letter, featuring some of the best and most respected fantasists from around the world, including Karen Lord, Dexter Palmer, Brian Evenson, China Mieville, Felix Gilman, Catherynne M. Valente, Rikki Ducornet, and Karin Lowachee.
Download or read book Book of Beasts written by Elizabeth Morrison and published by Getty Publications. This book was released on 2019 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A celebration of the visual contributions of the bestiary--one of the most popular types of illuminated books during the Middle Ages--and an exploration of its lasting legacy. Brimming with lively animals both real and fantastic, the bestiary was one of the great illuminated manuscript traditions of the Middle Ages. Encompassing imaginary creatures such as the unicorn, siren, and griffin; exotic beasts including the tiger, elephant, and ape; as well as animals native to Europe like the beaver, dog, and hedgehog, the bestiary is a vibrant testimony to the medieval understanding of animals and their role in the world. So iconic were the stories and images of the bestiary that its beasts essentially escaped from the pages, appearing in a wide variety of manuscripts and other objects, including tapestries, ivories, metalwork, and sculpture. With over 270 color illustrations and contributions by twenty-five leading scholars, this gorgeous volume explores the bestiary and its widespread influence on medieval art and culture as well as on modern and contemporary artists like Pablo Picasso and Damien Hirst. Published to accompany an exhibition on view at the J. Paul Getty Museum at the Getty Center May 14 to August 18, 2019.
Download or read book The Book of Barely Imagined Beings written by Caspar Henderson and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2013-04-10 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From medieval bestiaries to Borges’s Book of Imaginary Beings, we’ve long been enchanted by extraordinary animals, be they terrifying three-headed dogs or asps impervious to a snake charmer’s song. But bestiaries are more than just zany zoology—they are artful attempts to convey broader beliefs about human beings and the natural order. Today, we no longer fear sea monsters or banshees. But from the infamous honey badger to the giant squid, animals continue to captivate us with the things they can do and the things they cannot, what we know about them and what we don’t. With The Book of Barely Imagined Beings, Caspar Henderson offers readers a fascinating, beautifully produced modern-day menagerie. But whereas medieval bestiaries were often based on folklore and myth, the creatures that abound in Henderson’s book—from the axolotl to the zebrafish—are, with one exception, very much with us, albeit sometimes in depleted numbers. The Book of Barely Imagined Beings transports readers to a world of real creatures that seem as if they should be made up—that are somehow more astonishing than anything we might have imagined. The yeti crab, for example, uses its furry claws to farm the bacteria on which it feeds. The waterbear, meanwhile, is among nature’s “extreme survivors,” able to withstand a week unprotected in outer space. These and other strange and surprising species invite readers to reflect on what we value—or fail to value—and what we might change. A powerful combination of wit, cutting-edge natural history, and philosophical meditation, The Book of Barely Imagined Beings is an infectious and inspiring celebration of the sheer ingenuity and variety of life in a time of crisis and change.
Download or read book A Modern Bestiary written by Thomas Dugan and published by Barrytown Limited. This book was released on 1982 with total page 68 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Bestiary written by K-Ming Chang and published by One World. This book was released on 2020-09-29 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITORS’ CHOICE • Three generations of Taiwanese American women are haunted by the myths of their homeland in this spellbinding, visceral debut about one family’s queer desires, violent impulses, and buried secrets. “Gorgeous and gorgeously grotesque . . . Every line of this sensuous, magical-realist marvel is utterly alive.”—O: The Oprah Magazine FINALIST FOR THE LAMBDA LITERARY AWARD • LONGLISTED FOR THE VCU CABELL FIRST NOVELIST AWARD • LONGLISTED FOR THE CENTER FOR FICTION FIRST NOVEL PRIZE • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY O: The Oprah Magazine • NPR • The New York Public Library • Kirkus Reviews One evening, Mother tells Daughter a story about a tiger spirit who lived in a woman’s body. She was called Hu Gu Po, and she hungered to eat children, especially their toes. Soon afterward, Daughter awakes with a tiger tail. And more mysterious events follow: Holes in the backyard spit up letters penned by her grandmother; a visiting aunt arrives with snakes in her belly; a brother tests the possibility of flight. All the while, Daughter is falling for Ben, a neighborhood girl with strange powers of her own. As the two young lovers translate the grandmother’s letters, Daughter begins to understand that each woman in her family embodies a myth—and that she will have to bring her family’s secrets to light in order to change their destiny. With a poetic voice of crackling electricity, K-Ming Chang is an explosive young writer who combines the wit and fabulism of Helen Oyeyemi with the subversive storytelling of Maxine Hong Kingston. Tracing one family’s history from Taiwan to America, from Arkansas to California, Bestiary is a novel of migration, queer lineages, and girlhood. Praise for Bestiary “[A] vivid, fabulist debut . . . the prose is full of imagery. Chang’s wild story of a family’s tenuous grasp on belonging in the U.S. stands out with a deep commitment to exploring discomfort with the body and its transformations.”—Publishers Weekly
Download or read book The Dogs written by Rebecca Brown and published by City Lights Books. This book was released on 2021-10-15 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The nameless narrator of The Dogs: A Modern Bestiary lives in her studio apartment with a pack of Doberman pinchers. The dogs, led by the cruel, charismatic bitch named Miss Dog, alternate between being brutal attack animals and loyal companions, being real and otherworldly. Some chapters draw upon the ecstatic and horrifying visions of Christian mystics; others take place in the landscapes of familiar fairytales; others in the banal settings of the late-night pick-up bars or suburban picnics. The narrator uneasily inhabits these worlds until the dogs force her to take irrevocable action. "A snarling attack on the fairytale form. A good girl's fears of inadequacy materialize as a pack of vicious dogs."—Publishers Weekly "A strange and wonderful first-person voice emerges from the stories of Rebecca Brown, who strips her language of convention to lay bare the ferocious rituals of love and need."—The New York Times "Using unsentimental language that slices, pries and exposes layers of emotion and sexuality as a scalpel does a body, Brown veers into the uncharted territory."—The San Francisco Chronicle "I read everything Rebecca Brown writes, watch for her books and hunt down her short stories. She is simply one of the best contemporary lesbian writers around."—Dorothy Allison "A dry, witty, graceful—if savage—gift."—Mary Gaitskill Rebecca Brown is the author of other fictions, including The Terrible Girls, Annie Oakley’s Girl, and The Gifts of the Body. She is the winner of the 2003 Washington State Book Award, and was awarded a Genius Award and grant from Seattle's weekly magazine, The Stranger. She lives in Seattle.
Download or read book Mao s Bestiary written by Liz P. Y. Chee and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2021-03-29 with total page 188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Controversy over the medicinal uses of wild animals in China has erupted around the ethics and efficacy of animal-based drugs, the devastating effect of animal farming on wildlife conservation, and the propensity of these practices to foster zoonotic diseases. In Mao's Bestiary, Liz P. Y. Chee traces the history of the use of medicinal animals in modern China. While animal parts and tissue have been used in Chinese medicine for centuries, Chee demonstrates that the early Communist state expanded and systematized their production and use to compensate for drug shortages, generate foreign investment in high-end animal medicines, and facilitate an ideological shift toward legitimating folk medicines. Among other topics, Chee investigates the craze for chicken blood therapy during the Cultural Revolution, the origins of deer antler farming under Mao and bear bile farming under Deng, and the crucial influence of the Soviet Union and North Korea on Chinese zootherapies. In the process, Chee shows Chinese medicine to be a realm of change rather than a timeless tradition, a hopeful conclusion given current efforts to reform its use of animals.
Download or read book A Modern Bestiary written by Ana Maria Pacheco and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page 45 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Bestiary written by Bodleian Library and published by Boydell Press. This book was released on 1993 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This Bestiary was created during the 13th century. The 136 illustrations afford insight into medieval interpretations of natural history, travellers' tales and mysticism. They are accompanied by a translation of the original Latin text.
Download or read book The Bestiary or Procession of Orpheus written by Guillaume Apollinaire and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2011-04-01 with total page 97 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First Place, Large Not-for-Profit Publisher, Typographic Text, 2011 Washington Book Publishers Design and Effectiveness Awards Guillaume Apollinaire’s first book of poems has charmed readers with its brief celebrations of animals, birds, fish, insects, and the mythical poet Orpheus since it was first published in 1911. Though Apollinaire would go on to longer and more ambitious work, his Bestiary reveals key elements of his later poetry, among them surprising images, wit, formal mastery, and wry irony. X. J. Kennedy’s fresh translation follows Apollinaire in casting the poems into rhymed stanzas, suggesting music and sudden closures while remaining faithful to their sense. Kennedy provides the English alongside the original French, inviting readers to compare the two and appreciate the fidelity of the former to the latter. He includes a critical and historical essay that relates the Bestiary to its sources in medieval “creature books,” provides a brief biography and summation of the troubled circumstances surrounding the book’s initial publication, and places the poems in the context of Apollinaire’s work as a poet and as a champion of avant garde art. This short introduction to the work of an essentially modern writer includes four curious poems apparently suppressed from the first edition and reprints of the Raoul Dufy woodcuts published in the 1911 edition.
Download or read book The Earwig s Tail written by May R. Berenbaum and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-09-30 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Throughout the Middle Ages, enormously popular bestiaries presented people with descriptions of rare and unusual animals, typically paired with a moral or religious lesson. The real and the imaginary blended seamlessly in these books—at the time, the existence of a rhinoceros was as credible as a unicorn or dragon. Although audiences now scoff at the impossibility of mythological beasts, there remains an extraordinary willingness to suspend skepticism and believe wild stories about nature, particularly about insects and their relatives in the Phylum Arthropoda. In The Earwig’s Tail, entomologist May Berenbaum and illustrator Jay Hosler draw on the powerful cultural symbols of these antiquated books to create a beautiful and witty bestiary of the insect world. Berenbaum’s compendium of tales is an alphabetical tour of modern myths that humorously illuminates aerodynamically unsound bees, ear-boring earwigs, and libido-enhancing Spanish flies. She tracks down the germ of scientific truth that inspires each insect urban legend and shares some wild biological lessons, which, because of the amazing nature of the insect world, can be more fantastic than even the mythic misperceptions.
Download or read book Beasts written by Various Artists and published by Fantagraphics Books. This book was released on 2007-01-01 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Beasts! is a classic mythological menagerie, comprised only of creatures that were thought at one time to actually exist, depicted by about a hundred of the most acclaimed artists and cartoonists coming from the most avant-garde ambits of the art world. The Beasts project has fired the imaginations of luminaries such as Craig Thompson, Souther Salazar, Jeff Soto, Glenn Barr, Dave Cooper, Tim Biskup, Seonna Hong, Jeremy Fish and Jay Ryan, who will present never-before-seen art completely original to this book, superbly laid out in breathtaking, full-color two-page spreads. p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 13.9px Arial; color: #424242}
Download or read book Mr Mehan s Mildly Amusing Mythical Mammals written by Matthew Mehan and published by Tan Books. This book was released on 2018 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Tells the story through captivating poems and breathtaking paintings of the adventure of two friends, the Dally and the Blug. Their jolly journey through an alphabet of mythical mammals unites the bright and bumbling Blug and the dear but downhearted Dally, who come to learn a thing or two about good, evil, courage, humor, sadness, hope ... and how to govern their spirits and truly love their fellow mammals."--Jacket
Download or read book The Urban Bestiary written by Lyanda Lynn Haupt and published by Little, Brown Spark. This book was released on 2013-09-17 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the bestselling author of Crow Planet, a compelling journey into the secret lives of the wild animals at our back door. In The Urban Bestiary, acclaimed nature writer Lyanda Lynn Haupt journeys into the heart of the everyday wild, where coyotes, raccoons, chickens, hawks, and humans live in closer proximity than ever before. Haupt's observations bring compelling new questions to light: Whose "home" is this? Where does the wild end and the city begin? And what difference does it make to us as humans living our everyday lives? In this wholly original blend of science, story, myth, and memoir, Haupt draws us into the secret world of the wild creatures that dwell among us in our urban neighborhoods, whether we are aware of them or not. With beautiful illustrations and practical sidebars on everything from animal tracking to opossum removal, The Urban Bestiary is a lyrical book that awakens wonder, delight, and respect for the urban wild, and our place within it.
