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Gold-guarding griffins, Cyclopes, killer lakes, man-eating birds, and "fire devils" from the sky—such wonders have long been dismissed as fictional. Now, thanks to the richly interdisciplinary field of geomythology, researchers are taking a second look. It turns out that these and similar tales, which originated in pre-literate societies, contain surprisingly accurate, pre-scientific intuitions about startling or catastrophic earth-based phenomena such as volcanoes, earthquakes, tsunamis, and the unearthing of bizarre animal bones. Geomythology: How Common Stories Reflect Earth Events provides an accessible, engaging overview of this hybrid discipline. The introductory chapter surveys geom...
This book-length study of Milton as a dramatist fills a longstanding gap in Milton scholarship. Combining author-contextual criticism, historicized reader-response theory, and new historicism, Timothy Burbery begins by answering common objections to the claim that the poet is a dramatist, including the putatively static natures of Comus and Samson Agonistes, Milton's egoism, and his Puritanism. Further, Burbery asserts, recent biographical evidence of Milton's consumption of drama, such as his father's trusteeship of the Blackfriars Theater, suggests that the future poet viewed commercial plays and thus probably alludes to these experiences in his early poetry. Exposure to the public theater...
The school held at Villa Marigola, Lerici, Italy, in July 1997 was very much an educational experiment aimed not just at teaching a new generation of students the latest developments in computer simulation methods and theory, but also at bringing together researchers from the condensed matter computer simulation community, the biophysical chemistry community and the quantum dynamics community to confront the shared problem: the development of methods to treat the dynamics of quantum condensed phase systems.This volume collects the lectures delivered there. Due to the focus of the school, the contributions divide along natural lines into two broad groups: (1) the most sophisticated forms of the art of computer simulation, including biased phase space sampling schemes, methods which address the multiplicity of time scales in condensed phase problems, and static equilibrium methods for treating quantum systems; (2) the contributions on quantum dynamics, including methods for mixing quantum and classical dynamics in condensed phase simulations and methods capable of treating all degrees of freedom quantum-mechanically.
The burnt-red badlands of Montana's Hell Creek are a vast graveyard of the Cretaceous dinosaurs that lived 68 million years ago. Those hills were, much later, also home to the Sioux, the Crows, and the Blackfeet, the first people to encounter the dinosaur fossils exposed by the elements. What did Native Americans make of these stone skeletons, and how did they explain the teeth and claws of gargantuan animals no one had seen alive? Did they speculate about their deaths? Did they collect fossils? Beginning in the East, with its Ice Age monsters, and ending in the West, where dinosaurs lived and died, this richly illustrated and elegantly written book examines the discoveries of enormous bones...
In Postcolonial Ecocriticism, Graham Huggan and Helen Tiffin examine relationships between humans, animals and the environment in postcolonial texts. Divided into two sections that consider the postcolonial first from an environmental and then a zoocritical perspective, the book looks at: narratives of development in postcolonial writing entitlement and belonging in the pastoral genre colonialist 'asset stripping' and the Christian mission the politics of eating and representations of cannibalism animality and spirituality sentimentality and anthropomorphism the place of the human and the animal in a 'posthuman' world. Making use of the work of authors as diverse as J.M. Coetzee, Joseph Conrad, Daniel Defoe, Jamaica Kincaid and V.S. Naipaul, the authors argue that human liberation will never be fully achieved without challenging how human societies have constructed themselves in hierarchical relation to other human and nonhuman communities, and without imagining new ways in which these ecologically connected groupings can be creatively transformed.
The slower geologic processes are represented by myths associated with natural landforms, rocks and minerals, rivers and mountains, and other outstanding features of the landscape. Examples are also given to show some minor ways in which folklore and geology impinge on one another: misconceptions about geologic phenomena, such as earthquakes, which are so prevalent as to constitute a form of modern folklore, and conversely, ideas long considered to be pure folklore which may prove to have some basis in scientific fact. The most dramatic example of geomythology so far discovered is the theory the origin of the lost continent of Atlantis may be found in the Minoan civilization of Crete, which suddenly disappeared from view around 1450 B.C., about the time of a tremendous eruption know to have occurred in the nearby volcano, Santorin. This theory, variously developed by Marinatos and Galanopoulos, is examined in the light of new evidence gathered in Crete by Mrs.
The fascinating story of how the fossils of dinosaurs, mammoths, and other extinct animals influenced some of the most spectacular creatures of classical mythology Griffins, Centaurs, Cyclopes, and Giants—these fabulous creatures of classical mythology continue to live in the modern imagination through the vivid accounts that have come down to us from the ancient Greeks and Romans. But what if these beings were more than merely fictions? What if monstrous creatures once roamed the earth in the very places where their legends first arose? This is the arresting and original thesis that Adrienne Mayor explores in The First Fossil Hunters. Through careful research and meticulous documentation,...
A treasury of astonishing mythic marvels—and the surprising truths behind them Adrienne Mayor is renowned for exploring the borders of history, science, archaeology, anthropology, and popular knowledge to find historical realities and scientific insights—glimmering, long-buried nuggets of truth—embedded in myth, legends, and folklore. Combing through ancient texts and obscure sources, she has spent decades prospecting for intriguing wonders and marvels, historical mysteries, diverting anecdotes, and hidden gems from ancient, medieval, and modern times. Flying Snakes and Griffin Claws is a treasury of fifty of her most amazing and amusing discoveries. The book explores such subjects as ...
This book explores the impact of biblical reading practices on scientific thought in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth centuries. It addresses the idea that the natural philosophers of the era forged their new sciences despite, rather than because of, the pervasive bible-centeredness of early modern thought.