Reading Myth


Book Description

This book explores the appropriation and transformation of classical mythology by French culture from the mid-twelfth century to about 1430. Each of the five chapters focuses on a specific moment in this process and asks: What were the purposes of transforming classical myth? Which techniques did poets use to integrate classical subject matter into their own texts? Was a special interpretive tradition created for vernacular texts? In Chapter 1, the author shows how Latin epic texts were reoriented for political purposes in the twelfth-century Anglo-Norman realm, gaining new depth by the addition of Ovidian elements that evoked threats of a disorder different from the struggles of classical epic. Chapter 2 analyzes the complex use of myth in the thirteenth-century Roman de la Rose, which offers new conjunctions and interpretations of myths related to language, artistic expression, and sexuality. Chapter 3 focuses on the interpretive techniques and vocabulary of the fourteenth-century Ovide moralisé, such as "allegory," "fable," and istoire, arguing that the Christianization of the Metamorphoses created a "new Ovid" in the form of a fourteenth-century friar. Chapter 4 reveals that, although Guillaume de Machaut questioned the usefulness of mythic fables, he turned to them to invoke artistic consolation and ward off threats to his poetic voice. It also describes how Jean Froissart produced new myths by combining existing fables with newly invented elements in an attempt to dramatize the poetic creativity of his age. Finally, Chapter 5 demonstrates how Christine de Pizan offered the full range of medieval possibilities for myth: playing with the mythographic tradition, inscribing herself into Ovidian myths, offering historical explanations, rewriting myths from a pro-woman stance, and finally creating mythic universes of her own.




Another Fine Myth


Book Description

A magician's apprentice teams up with the demon Aahz and experiences a variety of adventures with many strange, other-worldy characters.




Myth


Book Description

An indispensable overview of the evolution of myth, from ancient Greek definitions to those of contemporary thinkers.




Naked Reading


Book Description

"Teri draws on her extensive experience as a teacher and consultant to examine ways that educators can help interest kids in books and keep them reading during this crucial period."--BOOK JACKET.




Speed Reading For Beginners


Book Description

Speed reading has been a skill peddled by experts putting it on the spotlight. The claim is that speed readers can read up to 1000- 1700 words in a minute while the average person reads 200 to 400 words. The only way to understand if these claims are true is by looking at the different techniques used in speed reading. And this book can help you with that.




The Bloomsbury Reader in the Study of Myth


Book Description

What is myth? Why do myths exist? What do myths do? Where are myths going? This reader is organized into 4 parts which explore these questions. Drawing on over 10 years of experience teaching myth in religious studies and anthropology departments in the UK, USA and Continental Europe the editors have brought together key works in the theory of myth. Key features include: - a general introduction to the reader that outlines a comparative and interpretative framework - an introduction contextualizing each part and sub-section - an introduction to each reading by the editors - a companion website that provides discussion questions and further reading suggestions, including primary sources. From functionalism to feminism, nationalism to globalization, and psychoanalysis to spatial analysis, this reader covers the classic and contemporary theories and approaches needed to understand what myth is, why myths exist, what they do, and what the future holds for them.




Myth as Symbol


Book Description

The mythological patrimony is an excellent example of the unconscious creative ability that brings reason both to the existence of myth as well as to its symbolic function. Reconsidering the connection between literature and psychoanalysis, this study starts from the Jungian archetypal theory up to the Freudian unconscious and its ability to produce symbols, and provides the tools for a reading of the phenomenon of the literary reworking, in the modern age, of meaningful themes and mythological figures. Therefore, revising and rewriting the myth means thinking again about one’s cultural memory, attempting to re-propose in a new dimension the ever present questions that have not found an answer and which the figures of the myth symbolise across the time. The attention focuses on figures like the elementary spirits of Romantic imagery, in particular on that of the Wasserfrau, up to the analysis of a twentieth-century reinterpretation of the myth of Undine. Moreover the Medea myth is reconsidered starting from the contradiction implicit in this figure – and in that of every Mother Goddess – in order to then explore the most problematic and conflicting aspect of this image of womanhood, the infanticide, which over time becomes the symbol of the denial of the maternal principle.




Teaching K-8 Reading


Book Description

Accessible and engaging, this methods textbook provides a roadmap for improving reading instruction. Leland, Lewison, and Harste explain why certain ineffective or debunked literacy techniques prevail in the classroom, identify the problematic assumptions that underly these popular myths, and offer better alternatives for literacy teaching. Grounded in a mantra that promotes critical thinking and agency—Enjoy! Dig Deeply! Take Action!—this book presents a clear framework, methods, and easy applications for designing and implementing effective literacy instruction. Numerous teaching strategies, classroom examples, teacher vignettes, and recommendations for using children’s and adolescent literature found in this book make it an ideal text for preservice teachers in elementary and middle school reading, and English language arts methods courses as well as a practical resource for professional in-service workshops and teachers. Key features include: Instructional engagements for supporting students as they read picture books, chapter books, and news articles, and interact with social media and participate in the arts and everyday life; Voices from the field that challenge mythical thinking and offer realworld examples of what effective reading and language arts instruction looks like in practice; Owl statements that alert readers to key ideas for use when planning reading and language arts instruction.




Myth, Montage, & Visuality in Late Medieval Manuscript Culture


Book Description

A broad multidisciplinary study that uses the Epistre Othea to examine the visual presentation of knowledge