Download or read book Myths for the Modern Age written by Win Scott Eckert and published by Monkeybrain. This book was released on 2005 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In his classic biographies of fictional characters (Tarzan Alive and Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life), Hugo- and Nebula-award winning author Philip Jose Farmer introduced the Wold Newton family, a collection of heroes and villains whose family-tree includes Sherlock Holmes, Fu Manchu, Philip Marlowe, and James Bond. In books, stories, and essays he expanded the concept even further, adding more branches to the Wold Newton family-tree. MYTHS FOR THE MODERN AGE: PHILIP JOSE FARMER'S WOLD NEWTON UNIVERSE collects for the first time those rarely-seen essays. Expanding the family even farther are contributions from Farmer's successors-scholars, writers, and pop-culture historians-who bring even more fictional characters into the fold.
Download or read book The Modern Myths written by Philip Ball and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2022-10-17 with total page 437 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book A Short History of Myth Myths series written by Karen Armstrong and published by Vintage Canada. This book was released on 2010-10-29 with total page 170 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book The Myth of the Strong Leader written by Archie Brown and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2014-04-08 with total page 482 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From one of the world's preeminent political historians, a magisterial study of political leadership around the world from the advent of parliamentary democracy to the age of Obama. All too frequently, leadership is reduced to a simple dichotomy: the strong versus the weak. Yet, there are myriad ways to exercise effective political leadership -- as well as different ways to fail. We blame our leaders for economic downfalls and praise them for vital social reforms, but rarely do we question what makes some leaders successful while others falter. In this magisterial and wide-ranging survey of political leadership over the past hundred years, renowned Oxford politics professor Archie Brown challenges the widespread belief that strong leaders -- meaning those who dominate their colleagues and the policy-making process -- are the most successful and admirable. In reality, only a minority of political leaders will truly make a lasting difference. Though we tend to dismiss more collegial styles of leadership as weak, it is often the most cooperative leaders who have the greatest impact. Drawing on extensive research and decades of political analysis and experience, Brown illuminates the achievements, failures and foibles of a broad array of twentieth century politicians. Whether speaking of redefining leaders like Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson, and Margaret Thatcher, who expanded the limits of what was politically possible during their time in power, or the even rarer transformational leaders who played a decisive role in bringing about systemic change -- Charles de Gaulle, Mikhail Gorbachev and Nelson Mandela, among them -- Brown challenges our commonly held beliefs about political efficacy and strength. Overturning many of our assumptions about the twentieth century's most important figures, Brown's conclusions are both original and enlightening. The Myth of the Strong Leader compels us to reassess the leaders who have shaped our world - and to reconsider how we should choose and evaluate those who will lead us into the future.
Download or read book Historia and Fabula written by Peter G. Bietenholz and published by BRILL. This book was released on 1994 with total page 472 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examining a variety of texts ranging from the Ancient Near East to the nineteenth century, this book deals with the inevitable presence of both fact and fiction in historical thought and investigates when, where and to what degree they were distinguished.
Download or read book The Modern Construction of Myth written by Andrew Von Hendy and published by . This book was released on 2002-01-30 with total page 1108 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ". . . one of the richest, clearest, and acutest surveys to date of the course of theorizing about myth from the eighteenth century on. I know of no more useful volume on the topic. Despite the postmodern connotations of the title, Von Hendy is writing not to expose the concept of myth but simply to show the array of ways in which it has been used from time to time and from place to place. A superb work." —Robert A. Segal, University of Lancaster, author of Theorizing about Myth Andrew Von Hendy offers an integrated critical account of the career of myth in modernity. He takes as its starting point some crucial moments in the 18th-century reinvention of the concept and then follows the major branches of theorizing as they appear in the work of theologians, philosophers, literary artists, political thinkers, folklorists, anthropologists, psychologists, and others. Von Hendy pursues each of these four fundamental strains of theory through the 20th century: the rise of neo-romantic theories in depth psychology, modernist literature, and later in religious phenomenology, philosophy, and literary criticism; the establishment of folkloristic theory in ethnological fieldwork and in classical studies; the growth of ideological theories from Sorel to Barthes and Derrida; and the recent ascent of constitutive theories of myth as necessary fiction. Finally, Von Hendy examines the work of five theorists who attempt to come to terms with the lessons of the ideological critique, yet regard myth as a constructive phenomenon.
Download or read book Prehistoric Myths in Modern Political Philosophy written by Karl Widerquist and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2016-12-05 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How modern philosophers use and perpetuate myths about prehistoryThe state of nature, the origin of property, the origin of government, the primordial nature of inequality and war why do political philosophers talk so much about the Stone Age? And are they talking about a Stone Age that really happened, or is it just a convenient thought experiment to illustrate their points?Karl Widerquist and Grant S. McCall take a philosophical look at the origin of civilisation, examining political theories to show how claims about prehistory are used. Drawing on the best available evidence from archaeology and anthropology, they show that much of what we think we know about human origins comes from philosophers imagination, not scientific investigation.Key FeaturesShows how modern political theories employ ambiguous factual claims about prehistoryBrings archaeological and anthropological evidence to bear on those claimsTells the story of human origins in a way that reveals many commonly held misconceptions
Download or read book Myth and Reality written by Mircea Eliade and published by . This book was released on 2020-12-23 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book TechGnosis written by Erik Davis and published by North Atlantic Books. This book was released on 2015-03-17 with total page 457 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: TechGnosis is a cult classic of media studies that straddles the line between academic discourse and popular culture; it appeals to both those secular and spiritual, to fans of cyberpunk and hacker literature and culture as much as new-thought adherents and spiritual seekers How does our fascination with technology intersect with the religious imagination? In TechGnosis—a cult classic now updated and reissued with a new afterword—Erik Davis argues that while the realms of the digital and the spiritual may seem worlds apart, esoteric and religious impulses have in fact always permeated (and sometimes inspired) technological communication. Davis uncovers startling connections between such seemingly disparate topics as electricity and alchemy; online roleplaying games and religious and occult practices; virtual reality and gnostic mythology; programming languages and Kabbalah. The final chapters address the apocalyptic dreams that haunt technology, providing vital historical context as well as new ways to think about a future defined by the mutant intermingling of mind and machine, nightmare and fantasy.
Download or read book Myths of Modern Individualism written by Ian Watt and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1996 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this volume, Ian Watt examines the myths of Faust, Don Quixote, Don Juan and Robinson Crusoe, as the distinctive products of modern society. He traces the way the original versions of Faust, Don Quixote and Don Juan - all written within a forty-year period during the Counter Reformation - presented unflattering portrayals of the three figures, while the Romantic period two centuries later recreated them as admirable and even heroic. The twentieth century retained their prestige as mythical figures, but with a new note of criticism. Robinson Crusoe came much later than the other three, but his fate can be seen as representative of the new religious, economic and social attitudes which succeeded the Counter-Reformation. The four figures help to reveal problems of individualism in the modern period: solitude, narcissism, and the claims of the self versus the claims of society. They all pursue their own view of what they should be, raising strong questions about their heroes' character and the societies whose ideals they reflect.
Download or read book 6 Modern Myths About Christianity Western Civilization written by Philip J. Sampson and published by InterVarsity Press. This book was released on 2001-01-11 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book Philip J. Sampson dispels six myths about Christianity and Western civilization and results in unsettling conven-tional wisdom and providing an enlightening look at truth.
Download or read book Convenient Myths written by Iain Provan and published by . This book was released on 2019-09-15 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The contemporary world has been shaped by two important and potent myths. Karl Jaspers' construct of the "axial age" envisions the common past (800-200 BC), the time when Western society was born and world religions spontaneously and independently appeared out of a seemingly shared value set. Conversely, the myth of the "dark green golden age," as narrated by David Suzuki and others, asserts that the axial age and the otherworldliness that accompanied the emergence of organized religion ripped society from a previously deep communion with nature. Both myths contend that to maintain balance we must return to the idealized past. In Convenient Myths, Iain Provan illuminates the influence of these two deeply entrenched and questionable myths, warns of their potential dangers, and forebodingly maps the implications of a world founded on such myths.
Download or read book Living Myths written by J. F. Bierlein and published by Wellspring/Ballantine. This book was released on 1999 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reveals how key myths of the world present timeless truths that enrich our understanding of the world and the role humans play today.
Download or read book Myth From the Ice Age to Mickey Mouse written by Robert W. Brockway and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 1993-11-18 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Brockway exposes Western mythic thought from Paleolithic times to the present. Myth and mythic thinking did not cease with the rise of science and philosophy during the Enlightenment, but continue to flourish in modern times. The author shows how mythic themes continue to occur in both high culture and popular arts.
Download or read book Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them written by Al Franken and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2004-08-05 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Al Franken, one of America's savviest satirists has been studying the rhetoric of the Right. He has listened to their cries of 'slander', 'bias' and even 'treason'. He has examined the Bush administration's policies of squandering our surplus, ravaging the environment, and alienating the rest of the world. He's even watched Fox News. A lot. And in this fair and balanced report, Al bravely exposes them all for what they are: liars. Lying, lying, liars.
Download or read book Lifestyles of Gods and Monsters written by Emily Roberson and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR). This book was released on 2019-10-22 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Greek mythology meets the Kardashians in Emily Roberson's Lifestyles of Gods and Monsters, a fresh, fast-paced debut young adult novel about celebrity culture, family dynamics, and finding love amidst it all. Sixteen-year-old Ariadne’s whole life is curated and shared with the world. Her royal family’s entertainment empire is beloved by the tabloids, all over social media, and the hottest thing on television. The biggest moneymaker? The Labyrinth Contest, a TV extravaganza in which Ariadne leads fourteen teens into a maze to kill a monster. To win means endless glory; to lose means death. In ten seasons, no one has ever won. When the gorgeous, mysterious Theseus arrives at the competition and asks Ariadne to help him to victory, she doesn’t expect to fall for him. He might be acting interested in her just to boost ratings. Their chemistry is undeniable, though, and she can help him survive. If he wins, the contest would end for good. But if she helps him, she doesn’t just endanger her family’s empire—the monster would have to die. And for Ariadne, his life might be the only one worth saving. Ariadne’s every move is watched by the public and predestined by the gods, so how can she find a way to forge her own destiny and save the people she loves?
Download or read book Greek Mythology for Teens written by Zachary Hamby and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-09-09 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Greek Mythology for Teens takes classical mythology to a new level by relating ancient stories to the culture, history, art, and literature of today. The book uses the innovative approach of reader's theater to teach mythology to teens, asking them to act out the stories and become engaged in a common learning experience. By looking at topics instrumental to both mythology and modern culture, teens are encouraged to question topics such as heroism, foolishness, love, and more. Each chapter builds on a particular theme found in the central myth and includes activities, discussion questions, and exercises that connect the myth to the modern world and everyday life. Visually-appealing sidebars also give background on Greek and Roman mythology and culture. Greek Mythology for Teens takes the classic myths taught in school and turns them into an engaging, interesting, and modern way of looking at old material. Grades 7-12
