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Anthropologist Schelde contends that the robots, aliens, cyborgs, and other science-fiction movie monsters are the descendants of the dwarfs, giants, and fairies killed off by modern science. The old monsters reflected, he says, the struggle between nature and civilization, but the new monsters reflect the struggle between humanity and the dangers of science. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
In Our Image brilliantly illuminates who we are as humans by demonstrating the surprisingly deep parallels between our motivations to replicate ourselves through computer technology and our emerging understanding of ourselves as relational beings created in God's image. This book is required reading for anyone--Christian or non-Christian--intrigued by the possibility of artificial intelligence.
As the gap between science fiction and science fact has narrowed, films that were intended as pure fantasy at the time of their premier have taken on deeper meaning. This volume explores neuroscience in science fiction films, focusing on neuroscience and psychiatry as running themes in SF and finding correlations between turning points in "neuroscience fiction" and advances in the scientific field. The films covered include The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The Island of Dr. Moreau, Robocop, The Stepford Wives, The Mind Snatchers and iconic franchises like Terminator, Ironman and Planet of the Apes. Examining the parallel histories of psychiatry, neuroscience and cinema, this book shows how science fiction films offer insightful commentary on the scientific and philosophical developments of their times.
In one of those rare books that allows us to see the world not as we've never seen it before, but as we see it daily without knowing, Victoria Nelson illuminates the deep but hidden attraction the supernatural still holds for a secular mainstream culture that forced the transcendental underground and firmly displaced wonder and awe with the forces of reason, materialism, and science. In a backward look at an era now drawing to a close, The Secret Life of Puppets describes a curious reversal in the roles of art and religion: where art and literature once took their content from religion, we came increasingly to seek religion, covertly, through art and entertainment. In a tour of Western cultu...
In the history of modern theatre, Ibsen is one of the dominating figures. The sixteen chapters of this 1994 Companion explore his life and work, providing an invaluable reference work for students. In chronological terms they range from an account of Ibsen's earliest pieces, through the years of rich experimentation, to the mature 'Ibsenist' plays that made him famous towards the end of the nineteenth century. Among the thematic topics are discussions of Ibsen's comedy, realism, lyric poetry and feminism. Substantial chapters account for Ibsen's influence on the international stage and his challenge to theatre and film directors and playwrights today. Essential reference materials include a full chronology, list of works and essays on twentieth-century criticism and further reading.
"A sensitive, intelligent book." —Sander L. Gilman, Professor of Humane Studies, Cornell University How is AIDS treated in the contemporary plays of Larry Kramer and William Hoffman? How important is the Black Death to a reader of Boccaccio's Decameron? How have the historical and current outbreaks of contagious disease affected the creation of literature, and how has this literature in turn shaped our response to disease? Original and moving, To Blight with Plague addresses these and other central questions raised by literary works whose main themes revolve around contagious, epidemic disease and its social and psychological consequences.
All the world over, people tell stories to express their deepest feelings about such things as what makes a "real" man or woman; what true love, courage, or any other virtue is; what the proper relationships are between people. Often groups of people widely separated by space or time will tell the same basic story, but with differences in the details that reveal much about a particular group's worldview. This book looks at differences in the telling of several common Hispanic folktales. James Taggart contrasts how two men—a Spaniard and an Aztec-speaking Mexican—tell such tales as "The Bear's Son." He explores how their stories present different ways of being a man in their respective cu...
"Was Ibsen influenced by Greek culture? Were allusions to the Greeks configured in the Norwegian playwright's works? According to author Norman Rhodes, whether consciously or unconsciously, many of Ibsen's plays are encoded with veiled references to ancient Greek culture. Rhodes also postulates that Ibsen's perception of the importance of the Greeks was most likely mediated to him through German Romanticism and Scandinavian culture." "According to Rhodes, numerous echoes of Greek literature resonate in such early Ibsen plays as Catiline, The Warrior's Barrow, Olaf Liljerkrans, and Love's Comedy. Ibsen's Brand and Peer Gynt are a dialectic pair which in key ways are suggestive of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, A Doll House has important parallels with Sophocles' Antigone, and An Enemy of the People correlates with both Plato's Apology and Sophocles' Oedipus Tyrannos. Moreover, a Euripidean sense of fatal irrationality seems inscribed in Ibsen's final plays: the protagonists John Rosmer, Hedda Gabler, Master Builder Solness, John Gabriel Borkman, and the sculptor Rubek all destroy themselves."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Sometime in the early nineteenth century, most likely in the year 1818, the Reverend Robert Scott, minister of the parish of Glenbuchat in Aberdeenshire, Scotland, compiled a collection of traditional ballads that until now has not been published. Most of the ballad collections produced during the Scottish Romantic Revival were eventually anthologized in Francis James Child's seminal English and Scottish Popular Ballads (five volumes, 1882-96). Yet, the Glenbuchat manuscripts, containing sixty-eight ballads in four folio volumes, were not included in Child's volumes. The complete work only came to light in 1949 when it was donated to the Special Collections of the Aberdeen University Library...
Teaching Visual Literacy in the Primary Classroom shows how everyday literacy sessions can be made more exciting, dynamic and effective by using a wide range of media and visual texts in the primary classroom. In addition to a wealth of practical teaching ideas, the book outlines the vital importance of visual texts and shows how children can enjoy developing essential literacy skills through studying picture books, film, television and comic books. Designed to take into account the renewed Framework for Literacy, each chapter offers a complete guide to teaching this required area of literacy. Aimed at those who want to deliver high quality and stimulating literacy sessions, each chapter con...