Other tellings can be found under "all editions," each credited to its respective storyteller.

    The Knight of the Cart is the first telling of the adulterous relationship between Lancelot and Arthur's Queen Guinevere, and in The Knight with the Lion Yvain neglects his bride in his quest for greater glory. Erec and Enide explores a knight's conflict between love and honour, Cligés exalts the possibility of pure love outside marriage, while the haunting The Story of the Grail chronicles the legendary quest. Rich in symbolism, these evocative tales combine closely observed detail with fantastic adventure to create a compelling world that profoundly influenced Malory, and are the basis of the Arthurian legends we know today.Alternate cover for this edition.

    The 70 mysteries are divided into six sections: Myths and legends; Mysteries of the Stone Age; Ancient civilizations; Tombs and lost treasures; Ancient and undeciphered scripts; The fall of civilizations. They include the quest for the Ark of the Covenant, the Turin Shroud, the origin of humans and language, the Mother Goddess cult, the Iceman, the nationality of ancient Egyptians and the Olmecs, Rome's lost legions, Easter Island, Christ's tomb, the origins of the alphabet, runes, the fall of the Minoans and asteroid impacts. The sheer quantity of mysteries discussed means that some questions are inevitably left unanswered but the volume succeeds in its aim to inform the general reader whilst encouraging further research.

    This timely and vibrant book provides frameworks for thinking critically about the roles of digital media in personal relationships. Rather than providing exuberant accounts or cautionary tales, it offers a data-grounded primer on how to make sense of these important changes in relational life.The book identifies the core relational issues these media disturb and shows how the ways we talk about them echo historical discussions about earlier communication technologies. Chapters explore how we use mediated language and nonverbal behavior to develop and maintain communities, social networks, new relationships, and to maintain relationships in our everyday lives. It combines research findings with lively examples to address questions such as whether mediated interaction can be warm and personal, whether people are honest about themselves online, whether relationships that start online can work, and whether using these media damages the other relationships in our lives. Throughout, the book argues for approaching these questions with firm understandings of the qualities of media as well as the social and personal contexts in which they are developed and used.Personal Connections in the Digital Age will be required reading for all students and scholars of media, communication studies, and sociology, as well as all those who want a firmer understanding of digital media and everyday life.

    In this tapestry of poetic and religious scholarship, Graves explores the stories behind the earliest of European deities—the White Goddess of Birth, Love, and Death—who was worshipped under countless titles. He also uncovers the obscure and mysterious power of "pure poetry" and its peculiar and mythic language.

    But how do these images compare with the evidence revealed by the excavator's trowel? Recent archaeological research has transformed our understanding of the period. Reflecting this new generation of scholarship, Professor Barry Raftery presents the most convincing and up-to-date account yet published of Ireland in the millennium before the coming of Christianity.The transition from Bronze Age to Iron Age in Ireland brought many changes, not least the proliferation of imposing hillforts. Did these have a purely defensive role, or were they built for ceremonial or commercial purposes? When did the Celtic character of early Ireland emerge? New findings indicate that the construction of the country's great royal centers, such as Tara and Emain Macha, coincides with the first appearance in Ireland of the material culture of the European Celts - so-called La Tene artifacts. The author argues that these were the portable trappings of a rising aristocratic elite, which expressed its power by building highly visible monuments.Professor Raftery also discusses the significant advances that took place in travel and transport, including the creation of the largest roadway in prehistoric Europe; the elusive lives of the common people; the idiosyncratic genius of the local metalsmiths; and the complex religious beliefs exemplified by standing stones, and offerings in rivers and lakes. He presents fascinating new material about Ireland's contacts with the Roman world, and in a final chapter he reviewsthe whole question of whether La Tene culture spread to Ireland through invasion or peaceful diffusion. Pagan Celtic Ireland is the definitive statement of what we currently know about the country's shadowy, Celtic origins. Generously illustrated throughout, it will be read avidly

    The husband, a practical man, dismisses the superstitious maid's tale of an ancient curse about the local church's marble statues who come to life each year on All Saint's Eve to wreak revenge. But then, on the fateful night, he discovers that the stone slabs on which the knights rest are empty. Is his young bride in peril?A gripping tale of suspense and terror which show a very different side of this famous children's book author, best-known for her Edwardian fantasies.

    This is a lively overview of the major ideas and concepts in archaeological theory.

    It should have been a utopia yet its literature is dominated by brutality and killing. The reasons for this, argues Jesse Byock, lie in the underlying structures and cultural codes of the islands' social order. 'Viking Age Iceland' is an engaging, multi-disciplinary work bringing together findings in anthropology and ethnography interwoven with historical fact and masterful insights into the popular Icelandic sagas, this is a brilliant reconstruction of the inner workings of a unique and intriguing society.

    Steeped in folklore and fantasy, it is a rich and diverse account of the part that fairies and fairy stories have played in culture and society.The pretty pastel world of gauzy-winged things who grant wishes and make dreams come true--as brought to you by Disney's fairies flitting across a woodland glade, or Tinkerbell's magic wand--is predated by a darker, denser world of gorgons, goblins, and gellos; the ancient antecedents of Shakespeare's mischievous Puck or J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan. For, as Diane Purkiss explains in this engrossing history, ancient fairies were born of fear: fear of the dark, of death, and of other great rites of passage, birth and sex. To understand the importance of these early fairies to pre-industrial peoples, we need to recover that sense of dread.This book begins with the earliest manifestations of fairies in ancient civilizations of the Mediterranean. The child-killing demons and nymphs of these cultures are the joint ancestors of the medieval fairies of northern Europe, when fairy figures provided a bridge between the secular and the sacred. Fairies abducted babies and virgins, spirited away young men who were seduced by fairy queens and remained suspended in liminal states.Tamed by Shakespeare's view of the spirit world, Victorian fairies fluttered across the theater stage and the pages of children's books to reappear a century later as detergent trade marks and alien abductors. In learning about these often strange and mysterious creatures, we learn something about ourselves--our fears and our desires.

    Capturing its brilliantly compact poetry and finely wrought, purposeful prose, Alter renews the Old Testament as a source of literary power and spiritual inspiration. From the family frictions of Genesis and King David’s flawed humanity to the serene wisdom of Psalms and Job’s incendiary questioning of God’s ways, these magnificent works of world literature resonate with a startling immediacy. Featuring Alter’s generous commentary, which quietly alerts readers to the literary and historical dimensions of the text, this is the definitive edition of the Hebrew Bible.

    He examines its relation to religion, science, philosophy, art, literature and politics before introducing us to the different types of magic, the kinds of people who practiced magic, and the reasoning behind their beliefs. This book places magic at the crossroads of medieval culture, shedding light on many other aspects of life in the Middle Ages.

    Using the popular literature of the seventeenth, eighteenth, and early nineteenth centuries-including captivity narratives, the Daniel Boone tales, and the writings of Hawthorne, Thoreau, and Melville-Slotkin traces the full development of this myth.

    The author believes that understanding the structure and function of myths in these traditional societies serves to clarify a stage in the history of human thought: "myths reveal that the World, man, and life have a supernatural origin and history, and that this history is significant, precious, and exemplary."

    She explores the importance of women's religious practices along with related themes of family and of social change. Weaving several of her own voices--analytic, descriptive, and personal--with the voices of her subjects in alternate chapters of traditional ethnography and ethnographic fiction, Brown presents herself as a character in Mama Lola's world and allows the reader to evaluate her interactions there. Startlingly original, Brown's work endures as an important experiment in ethnography as a social art form rooted in human relationships. A new preface, epilogue, bibliography, and a collection of family photographs tell the story of the effect of the book's publication on Mama Lola's life.