Empire of Magic

Empire of Magic PDF Author: Geraldine Heng
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 9780231125260
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 550

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Book Description
Empire of Magic offers a genesis and genealogy for medieval romance and the King Arthur legend through the history of Europe's encounters with the East in crusades, travel, missionizing, and empire formation. It also produces definitions of "race" and "nation" for the medieval period and posits that the Middle Ages and medieval fantasies of race and religion have recently returned. Drawing on feminist and gender theory, as well as cultural analyses of race, class, and colonialism, this provocative book revises our understanding of the beginnings of the nine hundred-year-old cultural genre we call romance, as well as the King Arthur legend. Geraldine Heng argues that romance arose in the twelfth century as a cultural response to the trauma and horror of taboo acts--in particular the cannibalism committed by crusaders on the bodies of Muslim enemies in Syria during the First Crusade. From such encounters with the East, Heng suggests, sprang the fantastical episodes featuring King Arthur in Geoffrey of Monmouth's chronicle The History of the Kings of England, a work where history and fantasy collide and merge, each into the other, inventing crucial new examples and models for romances to come. After locating the rise of romance and Arthurian legend in the contact zones of East and West, Heng demonstrates the adaptability of romance and its key role in the genesis of an English national identity. Discussing Jews, women, children, and sexuality in works like the romance of Richard Lionheart, stories of the saintly Constance, Arthurian chivralic literature, the legend of Prester John, and travel narratives, Heng shows how fantasy enabled audiences to work through issues of communal identity, race, color, class and alternative sexualities in socially sanctioned and safe modes of cultural discussion in which pleasure, not anxiety, was paramount. Romance also engaged with the threat of modernity in the late medieval period, as economic, social, and technological transformations occurred and awareness grew of a vastly enlarged world beyond Europe, one encompassing India, China, and Africa. Finally, Heng posits, romance locates England and Europe within an empire of magic and knowledge that surveys the world and makes it intelligible--usable--for the future. Empire of Magic is expansive in scope, spanning the eleventh to the fifteenth centuries, and detailed in coverage, examining various types of romance--historical, national, popular, chivalric, family, and travel romances, among others--to see how cultural fantasy responds to changing crises, pressures, and demands in a number of different ways. Boldly controversial, theoretically sophisticated, and historically rooted, Empire of Magic is a dramatic restaging of the role romance played in the culture of a period and world in ways that suggest how cultural fantasy still functions for us today.

Empire of Magic

Empire of Magic PDF Author: Geraldine Heng
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 9780231125260
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 550

Get Book

Book Description
Empire of Magic offers a genesis and genealogy for medieval romance and the King Arthur legend through the history of Europe's encounters with the East in crusades, travel, missionizing, and empire formation. It also produces definitions of "race" and "nation" for the medieval period and posits that the Middle Ages and medieval fantasies of race and religion have recently returned. Drawing on feminist and gender theory, as well as cultural analyses of race, class, and colonialism, this provocative book revises our understanding of the beginnings of the nine hundred-year-old cultural genre we call romance, as well as the King Arthur legend. Geraldine Heng argues that romance arose in the twelfth century as a cultural response to the trauma and horror of taboo acts--in particular the cannibalism committed by crusaders on the bodies of Muslim enemies in Syria during the First Crusade. From such encounters with the East, Heng suggests, sprang the fantastical episodes featuring King Arthur in Geoffrey of Monmouth's chronicle The History of the Kings of England, a work where history and fantasy collide and merge, each into the other, inventing crucial new examples and models for romances to come. After locating the rise of romance and Arthurian legend in the contact zones of East and West, Heng demonstrates the adaptability of romance and its key role in the genesis of an English national identity. Discussing Jews, women, children, and sexuality in works like the romance of Richard Lionheart, stories of the saintly Constance, Arthurian chivralic literature, the legend of Prester John, and travel narratives, Heng shows how fantasy enabled audiences to work through issues of communal identity, race, color, class and alternative sexualities in socially sanctioned and safe modes of cultural discussion in which pleasure, not anxiety, was paramount. Romance also engaged with the threat of modernity in the late medieval period, as economic, social, and technological transformations occurred and awareness grew of a vastly enlarged world beyond Europe, one encompassing India, China, and Africa. Finally, Heng posits, romance locates England and Europe within an empire of magic and knowledge that surveys the world and makes it intelligible--usable--for the future. Empire of Magic is expansive in scope, spanning the eleventh to the fifteenth centuries, and detailed in coverage, examining various types of romance--historical, national, popular, chivalric, family, and travel romances, among others--to see how cultural fantasy responds to changing crises, pressures, and demands in a number of different ways. Boldly controversial, theoretically sophisticated, and historically rooted, Empire of Magic is a dramatic restaging of the role romance played in the culture of a period and world in ways that suggest how cultural fantasy still functions for us today.

Empire of Enchantment

Empire of Enchantment PDF Author: John Zubrzycki
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0190914394
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 408

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Book Description
India's association with magicians goes back thousands of years. Conjurors and illusionists dazzled the courts of Hindu maharajas and Mughal emperors. As British dominion spread over the subcontinent, such wonder-workers became synonymous with India. Western magicians appropriated Indian attire, tricks and stage names; switching their turbans for top hats, Indian jugglers fought back and earned their grudging respect. This book tells the extraordinary story of how Indian magic descended from the realm of the gods to become part of daily ritual and popular entertainment across the globe. Recounting tales of levitating Brahmins, resurrections, prophesying monkeys and "the most famous trick never performed," Empire of Enchantment vividly charts Indian magic's epic journey from street to the stage. This heavily illustrated book tells the extraordinary, untold story of how Indian magic descended from the realm of the gods to become part of daily ritual and popular entertainment across the globe. Drawing on ancient religious texts, early travelers' accounts, colonial records, modern visual sources, and magicians' own testimony, Empire of Enchantment is a vibrant narrative of India's magical traditions, from Vedic times to the present day.

Netheril

Netheril PDF Author: Slade
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780786904372
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description


The British Empire of Magic

The British Empire of Magic PDF Author: Joseph J. Jordan
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 129

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Book Description
Book one of the novella trilogy The British Empire Of Magic. Prince Jacob is faced with an impossible task: The Queen's throne is threatened and her country thrown into chaos. He must choose between his best friend or his destiny to be the next ruler of the British Empire of Magic.

Magic Lantern Empire

Magic Lantern Empire PDF Author: John Phillip Short
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 0801468221
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 249

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Book Description
Magic Lantern Empire examines German colonialism as a mass cultural and political phenomenon unfolding at the center of a nascent, conflicted German modernity. John Phillip Short draws together strands of propaganda and visual culture, science and fantasy to show how colonialism developed as a contested form of knowledge that both reproduced and blurred class difference in Germany, initiating the masses into a modern market worldview. A nuanced account of how ordinary Germans understood and articulated the idea of empire, this book draws on a diverse range of sources: police files, spy reports, pulp novels, popular science writing, daily newspapers, and both official and private archives. In Short’s historical narrative—peopled by fantasists and fabulists, by impresarios and amateur photographers, by ex-soldiers and rank-and-file socialists, by the luckless and bored along the margins of German society—colonialism emerges in metropolitan Germany through a dialectic of science and enchantment within the context of sharp class conflict. He begins with the organized colonial movement, with its expert scientific and associational structures and emphatic exclusion of the "masses." He then turns to the grassroots colonialism that thrived among the lower classes, who experienced empire through dime novels, wax museums, and panoramas. Finally, he examines the ambivalent posture of Germany’s socialists, who mounted a trenchant critique of colonialism, while in their reading rooms workers spun imperial fantasies. It was from these conflicts, Short argues, that there first emerged in the early twentieth century a modern German sense of the global.

The Age of Magic

The Age of Magic PDF Author: Ben Okri
Publisher: Other Press, LLC
ISBN: 1635422698
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
In this enchanting novel from the Booker Prize–winning author, a group of world-weary travelers discover the meaning of life in a mysterious Swiss mountain village. The Age of Magic has begun. Unveil your eyes. Eight weary filmmakers, traveling from Paris to Basel, arrive at a small Swiss hotel on the shores of a luminous lake. Above them, strewn with lights that twinkle in the darkness, looms the towering Rigi mountain. Over the course of three days and two nights, the travelers will find themselves drawn into the mystery of the mountain reflected in the lake. One by one, they will be disturbed, enlightened, and transformed, each in a different way. An intoxicating and dreamlike tale unfolds. Allow yourself to be transformed. Having shown a different way of seeing the world, Ben Okri now offers a different way of reading.

Empire of Exiles

Empire of Exiles PDF Author: Erin M. Evans
Publisher: Jabberwocky Literary Agency, Inc.
ISBN: 1625676719
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 637

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Book Description
"Detailed and mysterious, a place to explore and relish. Empire of Exiles is highly recommended!”—R.A. Salvatore, author or “The Legend of Drizzt” and the DemonWars novels The Imperial Archives holds the treasures of the ten nations that fled the collapse of the world to settle in Semilla behind a wall of salt and iron. When Quill, an apprentice scribe, arrives to request the loan of several artifacts for a client, he’s hoping for a tour and maybe a glimpse of some of the rarer relics the archives’ sorcerous caretakers are rumored to protect. Instead, Quill finds himself a witness to a ghastly murder tangled in present-day politics and the history of the empire—worse, the accused killer is his own shy and scholarly best friend, a very unlikely assassin. Quill’s amateur investigations run afoul of an archivist dodging questions about her buried past, an investigator eyeing Quill’s motives too closely, and threads that lead back to a long-dead usurper—nothing makes sense, and Quill doesn’t know who to trust. But if he can’t find allies, the next victim may be the empire of Semilla itself. This edition includes a brand-new illustrated guide to the peoples of the empire. Praise for Empire of Exiles: "Readers will be drawn in by the memorable cast, vibrantly drawn fantasy cultures, and vivid prose. Epic fantasy fans will be eager to see where the series goes."—Publishers Weekly "An excellent new fantasy series by Evans (The Devil You Know), perfect for fans of Katherine Addison or those who enjoy slow-burning and complex court intrigue."—Library Journal "From the rich world building as these remnants of humanity hide from changelings behind a Salt Wall, to the interesting culture, a unique magic system, and a variety of humanoids, readers will be delighted that nothing is predictable in this intriguing story."—Booklist "Empire of Exiles by Erin M. Evans is a triumph of fantasy, murder mystery, and political thriller that handles grief, PTSD, panic, and anxiety disorder with tact.... I cannot wait to read what Evans has cooking up for the follow-up."—Geekly Inc “Empire of Exiles has it all: characters I love, intertwined compelling mysteries in the past and present, plot twists that keep coming, and a unique and fascinating world and magic system! One of my favorite books of the year!"—Melissa Caruso, author of the Swords and Fire Trilogy

Empire of Sand

Empire of Sand PDF Author: Tasha Suri
Publisher: Orbit
ISBN: 0316449695
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 431

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Book Description
*Named one of TIME's Top 100 Fantasy Books Of All Time A nobleman's daughter with magic in her blood. An empire built on the dreams of enslaved gods. Empire of Sand is Tasha Suri's lush, dazzling, Mughal India-inspired debut fantasy. The Amrithi are outcasts; nomads descended of desert spirits, they are coveted and persecuted throughout the Ambhan Empire for the power in their blood. Mehr is the illegitimate daughter of an imperial governor and an exiled Amrithi mother she can barely remember, but whose face and magic she has inherited. When Mehr's power comes to the attention of the Emperor's most feared mystics, she must use every ounce of will, subtlety, and power she possesses to resist their cruel agenda. And should she fail, the gods themselves may awaken seeking vengeance. . . "An ode to the quiet, fierce strength of women. . .pure wonder." —Samantha Shannon, New York Times bestselling author of The Priory of the Orange Tree "Stunning and enthralling." —S. A. Chakraborty, USA Today bestselling author of The City of Brass "A darkly intricate, devastating, and utterly original story." —R. F. Kuang, award-winning author of the The Poppy War By Tasha Suri: The Books of Ambha duology Empire of Sand Realm of Ash The Burning Kingdoms trilogy The Jasmine Throne

Empire of Wild

Empire of Wild PDF Author: Cherie Dimaline
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 006297596X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
“Deftly written, gripping and informative. Empire of Wild is a rip-roaring read!”—Margaret Atwood, From Instagram “Empire of Wild is doing everything I love in a contemporary novel and more. It is tough, funny, beautiful, honest and propulsive—all the while telling a story that needs to be told by a person who needs to be telling it.”—Tommy Orange, author of There There A bold and brilliant new indigenous voice in contemporary literature makes her American debut with this kinetic, imaginative, and sensuous fable inspired by the traditional Canadian Métis legend of the Rogarou—a werewolf-like creature that haunts the roads and woods of native people’s communities. Joan has been searching for her missing husband, Victor, for nearly a year—ever since that terrible night they’d had their first serious argument hours before he mysteriously vanished. Her Métis family has lived in their tightly knit rural community for generations, but no one keeps the old ways . . . until they have to. That moment has arrived for Joan. One morning, grieving and severely hungover, Joan hears a shocking sound coming from inside a revival tent in a gritty Walmart parking lot. It is the unmistakable voice of Victor. Drawn inside, she sees him. He has the same face, the same eyes, the same hands, though his hair is much shorter and he's wearing a suit. But he doesn't seem to recognize Joan at all. He insists his name is Eugene Wolff, and that he is a reverend whose mission is to spread the word of Jesus and grow His flock. Yet Joan suspects there is something dark and terrifying within this charismatic preacher who professes to be a man of God . . . something old and very dangerous. Joan turns to Ajean, an elderly foul-mouthed card shark who is one of the few among her community steeped in the traditions of her people and knowledgeable about their ancient enemies. With the help of the old Métis and her peculiar Johnny-Cash-loving, twelve-year-old nephew Zeus, Joan must find a way to uncover the truth and remind Reverend Wolff who he really is . . . if he really is. Her life, and those of everyone she loves, depends upon it.

4th and Boston

4th and Boston PDF Author: Douglas Miller
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780997841008
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 316

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Book Description
This is the remarkable story of how the intersection of 4th & Boston in Tulsa, Oklahoma became the heart of the "Magic Empire," an early euphemism for the Oklahoma oil fields that created fabulous fortunes seemingly overnight in the early 20th Century. Behind the unique collection of buildings that populate its four corners are stories of boom and bust, risk and loss, and courage and love. Like the city that surrounds it, 4th & Boston is a place where golden opportunity led towering egos to build wealth and power on foundations of ingenuity, sacrifice, and faith. This one intersection encapsulates the ongoing drama that always has and always will be embodied in the name "Tulsa."