Download or read book Storytellers Saints and Scoundrels written by Kirin Narayan and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2011-11-29 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Swamiji, a Hindu holy man, is the central character of Storytellers, Saints, and Scoundrels. He reclines in a deck chair in his modern apartment in western India, telling subtle and entertaining folk narratives to his assorted gatherings. Among the listeners is Kirin Narayan, who knew Swamiji when she was a child in India and who has returned from America as an anthropologist. In her book Narayan builds on Swamiji's tales and his audiences' interpretations to ask why religious teachings the world over are so often couched in stories. For centuries, religious teachers from many traditions have used stories to instruct their followers. When Swamiji tells a story, the local barber rocks in helpless laughter, and a sari-wearing French nurse looks on enrapt. Farmers make decisions based on the tales, and American psychotherapists take notes that link the storytelling to their own practices. Narayan herself is a key character in this ethnography. As both a local woman and a foreign academic, she is somewhere between participant and observer, reacting to the nuances of fieldwork with a sensitivity that only such a position can bring. Each story s reproduced in its evocative performance setting. Narayan supplements eight folk narratives with discussions of audience participation and response as well as relevant Hindu themes. All these stories focus on the complex figure of the Hindu ascetic and so sharpen our understanding of renunciation and gurus in South Asia. While Storytellers, Saints, and Scoundrels raises provocative theoretical issues, it is also a moving human document. Swamiji, with his droll characterizations, inventive mind, and generous spirit, is a memorable character. The book contributes to a growing interdisciplinary literature on narrative. It will be particularly valuable to students and scholars of anthropology, folklore, performance studies, religions, and South Asian studies.
Download or read book Saints Scoundrels and Storytellers written by Kirin Narayan and published by . This book was released on 1987 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Storytellers saints and scoundrels written by Kirin Narayan and published by Motilal Banarsidass Publ.. This book was released on 1992 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At home, amid rituals, and in the company of Gurus, Hindu teachings are largely conveyed through stories. Storytellers, Saints, and Scoundrels focuses on the folk narratives related with zest and humor by one old Swamiji to the varie groups that gather during the darshan hours. Kirin Narayan brings the tools of anthropology, folklore and literary criticism to bear on these tales and asks: them such a compelling vehicle for religious teachings? The stories reproduced here reveal the varied faces of the ascetic in the Hindu imagination: potentially a wise saint, he may well be a scoundrel intent on duping disciples.
Download or read book Saints vs Scoundrels written by Dr. Benjamin Wiker and published by EWTN Publishing, Inc.. This book was released on 2017-12-21 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Saints vs. Scoundrels Dr. Benjamin Wiker invites you to interact not just with the ideas that have shaped history, but with the people who created and spread those ideas. In this collection of lively and imaginative conversations between the great truth-tellers and the great error-peddlers of history, you will come to appreciate the personalities behind the “Great Conversation” that has shaped western civilization. Jean-Jacques Rousseau vs. St. Augustine. Machiavelli vs. St. Francis. Ayn Rand vs. Flannery O’Connor. These people may have never met in real life, but the ideas they represent and the movements they started have interacted throughout history and shaped our present. And so how fascinating would it be if they had ever shared a living room? This is the question Dr. Wiker answers with deep research and dynamic storytelling. Enjoy this unique opportunity to join the conversation!
Download or read book Good Guys and Bad Guys written by Joseph Nocera and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2008 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Award-winning business columnist Joe Nocera explores how good guys and bad guys are defined in business, and concludes that things are often not what they seem.
Download or read book The Devilish Duke written by Maddison Michaels and published by Entangled: Amara. This book was released on 2018-02-26 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The notorious “Devil Duke” of Huntington needs a woman—and not just any woman. His fortune depends on him wooing one of the most eccentric bluestockings of the ton within the month, or else he can kiss his hard-earned wealth goodbye. Which is a challenge for any gentleman, let alone one who believes that love is a wasted emotion and marriage (at best) an inconvenience. So it’s hardly a surprise that Lady Sophie Wolcott seems unmoved by his charms and attention... Sophie’s beloved orphanage is in imminent danger, and she will do anything to save it. Even if it means marrying a ruthless rake who takes what he wants in business and in pleasure. But while the Devil Duke is everything Sophie’s always feared, she can’t quite resist just how much she yearns for the scoundrel’s very touch... But the duke has enemies. And as a malevolent shadow from the duke’s past emerges, Sophie’s life—and heart—may depend on the devil she knows. Each book in the Saints & Scoundrels series is STANDALONE: * The Devilish Duke * The Elusive Earl * The Sinful Scot
Download or read book Guests at God s Wedding written by Tracy Pintchman and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 2005-08-25 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fascinating look at women’s rituals honoring the god Krishna.
Download or read book Land of the Saints written by Robert P. DesJardins and published by iUniverse. This book was released on 2011-12-06 with total page 410 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jeff Wells, a successful attorney in Los Angeles, is also a western pleasure horseman who seeks out the solitude and serenity of the American Southwest when he wants to get away from it all. But his current trip to Arizona is for business. His friend, Big Jim Higgins, is in trouble and needs Jeffs help. Big Jim has been charged with the murder of three rustlers, and hes being held without bail. Soon, Jeff finds himself drawn into the strange, mysterious, and surprisingly dangerous world of Mormon spirituality. Big Jim lives in a world where friends and foes alike search for the most sacred of Mormon artifacts, the Golden Plates. Jeff is introduced to the realm of seer stones, blood oaths, and the magical Golden Plates, reputed to be written in ancient hieroglyphics by the Angel Moroni and his predecessors, who lived in North America hundreds of years ago. The search for and the mystery surrounding the Golden Plates leads Jeff not only into a land of unbridled greed and hypocrisy but also into the realm of Native American mysticism. Jeff is drawn to the mystical Four Corners region, where Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah meet. Jeff encounters Lutakaw, a Hopi holy man who helps Jeff unearth the Golden Plates. The consequences of his discovery change the shape of this religion in a dramatic fashion.
Download or read book The Elusive Earl written by Maddison Michaels and published by Entangled: Amara. This book was released on 2018-08-27 with total page 470 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Brianna Penderley has a knack for getting into precarious situations, especially when it comes to her love for archaeology. In the heart of Naples, her terrible Italian has her accidentally becoming engaged to two men at the same time. Of course, Daniel Wolcott—the Earl of Thornton and the only man ever able to vex her—shows up to rescue her. Daniel has spent the majority of his life exercising rigid control over his emotions, determined never to become the rake his father was. But when he goes to aid his mentor’s danger-prone niece once again, he finds himself struggling to control his attraction to a woman who is his complete opposite. When their situation goes from bad to worse, Daniel and Brianna find themselves swept up into a perilous adventure, and they must work together to set things right. Now, if they can just avoid killing each other in the process. Each book in the Saints & Scoundrels series is STANDALONE: * The Devilish Duke * The Elusive Earl * The Sinful Scot
Download or read book Love Stars And All That written by Kirin Narayan and published by Pocket Books. This book was released on 1995 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By the author of Storytellers, Saints, and Scoundrels, Love, Stars, and All That is Kirin Narayan's unforgettable novel. For Gita, a shy Indian graduate student at Berkeley, life is a complex whirl of new friends, culture shock, creative survival on a graduate stipend, and, of course, romance. Gita's beloved Aunty has consulted her astronumerologist and, according to the stars, Gita is soon destined to meet her jori--or, as they say in America, Mr. Right.
Download or read book Alive in the Writing written by Kirin Narayan and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2012-03 with total page 170 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Anton Chekhov is revered as a boldly innovative playwright and short story writer - but he wrote more than just plays and stories. In this book, the author introduces readers to some other sides of Chekhov.
Download or read book Creativity Anthropology written by Smadar Lavie and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2018-03-15 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Creativity and play erupt in the most solemn of everyday worlds as individuals reshape traditional forms in the light of changing historical circumstances. In this lively volume, fourteen distinguished anthropologists explore the life of creativity in social life across the globe and within the study of ethnography itself. Contributors include Barbara A. Babcock, Edward M. Bruner, James W. Fernandez, Don Handelman, Smadar Lavie, José E. Limon, Barbara Myerhoff, Kirin Narayan, Renato Rosaldo, Richard Schechner, Edward L. Schieffelin, Marjorie Shostak, Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, and Edith Turner.
Download or read book Godly Heretics written by Marc DiPaolo and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2013-03-21 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When computers freeze, they are "rebooted" and soon working properly again. Similarly, legendary thinkers throughout history have argued that Christianity should start fresh by recapturing the humanitarian spirit of Jesus' original message. These include such disparate individuals as Thomas Jefferson, Oscar Wilde, Charles Dickens, Walt Whitman, Friedrich Nietzsche, Leo Tolstoy, George Bernard Shaw, and the religious leaders of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Surprisingly enough, even classic television shows and films meant to be entertaining--Lost, Battlestar Galactica, It's a Wonderful Life, Groundhog Day, Decalogue, and A Charlie Brown Christmas--are attempts to apply the basic principles of Christianity to modern times. This book offers new essays by scholars of literature, film, history, theology and philosophy examining how various thinkers and storytellers over time have conceived of a reinvented Christianity. In confronting this controversial idea, this book examines how unorthodox interpretations of the Bible can be some of the most valid, how visions of Jesus as a revolutionary may be the most historically sound, and how compassionate Christians such as Origen have wrestled with the eternal questions of the existence of evil, the gift of free will and the promise of universal salvation.
Download or read book A Time for Tea written by Piya Chatterjee and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2001-11-29 with total page 435 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this creative, ethnographic, and historical critique of labor practices on an Indian plantation, Piya Chatterjee provides a sophisticated examination of the production, consumption, and circulation of tea. A Time for Tea reveals how the female tea-pluckers seen in advertisements—picturesque women in mist-shrouded fields—came to symbolize the heart of colonialism in India. Chatterjee exposes how this image has distracted from terrible working conditions, low wages, and coercive labor practices enforced by the patronage system. Allowing personal, scholarly, and artistic voices to speak in turn and in tandem, Chatterjee discusses the fetishization of women who labor under colonial, postcolonial, and now neofeudal conditions. In telling the overarching story of commodity and empire, A Time for Tea demonstrates that at the heart of these narratives of travel, conquest, and settlement are compelling stories of women workers. While exploring the global and political dimensions of local practices of gendered labor, Chatterjee also reflects on the privileges and paradoxes of her own “decolonization” as a Third World feminist anthropologist. The book concludes with an extended reflection on the cultures of hierarchy, power, and difference in the plantation’s villages. It explores the overlapping processes by which gender, caste, and ethnicity constitute the interlocked patronage system of villages and their fields of labor. The tropes of coercion, consent, and resistance are threaded through the discussion. A Time for Tea will appeal to anthropologists and historians, South Asianists, and those interested in colonialism, postcolonialism, labor studies, and comparative or international feminism. Designated a John Hope Franklin Center book by the John Hope Franklin Seminar Group on Race, Religion, and Globalization.
Download or read book Everyday Creativity written by Kirin Narayan and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2016-11-22 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Kirin Narayan’s imagination was captured the very first time that, as a girl visiting the Himalayas, she heard Kangra women join their voices together in song. Returning as an anthropologist, she became fascinated by how they spoke of singing as a form of enrichment, bringing feelings of accomplishment, companionship, happiness, and even good health—all benefits of the “everyday creativity” she explores in this book. Part ethnography, part musical discovery, part poetry, part memoir, and part unforgettable portraits of creative individuals, this unique work brings this remote region in North India alive in sight and sound while celebrating the incredible powers of music in our lives. With rare and captivating eloquence, Narayan portrays Kangra songs about difficulties on the lives of goddesses and female saints as a path to well-being. Like the intricate geometries of mandalu patterns drawn in courtyards or the subtle balance of flavors in a meal, well-crafted songs offer a variety of deeply meaningful benefits: as a way of making something of value, as a means of establishing a community of shared pleasure and skill, as a path through hardships and limitations, and as an arena of renewed possibility. Everyday Creativity makes big the small world of Kangra song and opens up new ways of thinking about what creativity is to us and why we are so compelled to engage it.
Download or read book Exploring Mysticism written by Frits Staal and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2023-09-01 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Until less than a century ago, the two prevailing views of dreams as well as of souls were that they are inconsequential (the scientific view) or of divine origin (the religious view). In either case it was assumed that they cannot be objects of rational inquiry. Similar views still prevail regarding mystical experiences and mysticism in general. Modern Western opinion, whether friendly or hostile, holds that the mystical falls squarely within the domain of the irrational. Mr. Staal argues that mysticism can be studied rationally, and that without such study no theory of mind is complete. He exposes the grounds for the belief that mysticism cannot be studied, and shows them to be prejudices issuing from a particular historical development. While his contention has unflattering implications for the contemporary study of the humanities in general, it reveals in particular that existing academic approaches to the study of mysticism, even those that appear sound, are in fact inadequate. This conclusion applies to a variety of dogmatic inquiries and, as becomes clear in these pages, to philological, historical, phenomenological, sociological, physiological, and psychological ones as well. The illustrations in Exploring Mysticism are drawn mainly from Indian forms of mysticism such as Yoga, supplemented with Buddhist, Taoist, Muslim and Christian examples.
Download or read book Story Theology written by Terrence W. Tilley and published by Liturgical Press. This book was released on 1990 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author reminds us that our Christian stories are at the heart of the faith. Without these stories, formulated doctrines and theological systems would be bereft of meaning and substance. With the breadth of bright Vision, he explains what story theology is al about; and he tells us why it is gripping the minds and hearts of so many.