Search Results

The legend of Shivaji contains several narratives on his victories, raids, and escapes that always showcase his nobility and virtue. These stories are well known in Maharashtra, and they seem to point out how Shivaji is to be seen as an epitome as he possesses the region's utmost ideals. Shivaji is seen not just a man with profound courage and bravery but also as an administrator, someone who advocates social reform, a patriotic, and even as a mystic. This book attempts to understand the kind of hero Shivaji was in a Maharashtrian setting, and look into how the growth of this legend can be associated with Maharashtrian Hindu identity by examining the narrative of the legend, identifying clues of how Shivaji became an epic hero, and looking at the challenges that such a narrative may encounter.

Rumor and legend are a culture's way of dealing with rapid changes in its worldview, such as has occurred in an America increasingly impacted by contact with the international world. Terrorism, immigration, tourism, and foreign trade are topics that have inspired cycles of rumors in the United States, while organ trafficking has done the same in developing nations. Both types of rumor are fundamentally political, as they allow common people to express issues that otherwise would be too disturbing to face and press for social change. The chapter introduces the importance of plausibility (stories that fit existing beliefs about foreigners) and credibility (stories that are based on some concrete truth and affirmed by respected authorities). It is necessary to confront these rumors directly, rather than dismissing them as trivial or ignorant, for they reveal how people actually see the changing world around them.

This introductory chapter undertakes a comparison between a folktale and a Greek myth. It attempts to define the folktale through two avenues concerning genre and terminology as well as mode of communication. Here, the chapter relates the folktale of “The Abduction of the Beautiful Wife” to the Greek epics such as the Iliad, eventually focusing the discussion on the story of Helen of Troy. To aid in the discussion, the chapter introduces the comparative circle, which begins from the perception of a similarity between the target text and some other text, and proceeds from this second text to a third and so forth, until the scholar constructing the circle decides to return to the explicandum.

The authority afforded to women in early modern Galicia was shaped and perpetuated through local folklore and legends. Over the centuries, Galicians formulated a wide variety of images of powerful women from Reina Loba, who according to legend, permitted the Christianization of the region, to María Pita to whom they attribute the valiant defense of the city of A Coruña against British forces. Popular saints' lives were reformulated to reflect the region's gender norms. Long-standing beliefs in the power of witches in the region reveal significant gender tensions in a culture so reliant on female power. The cultural images of powerful women reiterated in local legends and songs not only provided role models for female behavior, but also perpetuated notions of female authority during periods of demographic and economic change.

This chapter focuses on the late second and early first centuries bc and considers the temple foundations and refoundations that are attested for this period, including the competition of Marius with Catulus and with Sulla. Many of these cluster around the Forum and Capitol. The most important hill in Rome was reshaped in terms of divine qualities, creating and recharging both cognitive and physical spaces. The chapter also explores the flowering of numismatic imagery in the same years, from the 130s bc. This opening up of the coin-field as a resource was itself presided over by moneta, and other divine qualities, represented as female figure, head, or attribute with accompanying legend, began to form a fruitful means of framing and expressing a variety of numismatic messages.

This epilogue argues that Castile was solvent throughout Philip II's reign. A complex web of contractual obligations designed to ensure repayment governed the relationship between the king and his bankers. The same contracts allowed great flexibility for both the Crown and bankers when liquidity was tight. The risk of potential defaults was not a surprise; their likelihood was priced into the loan contracts. As a consequence, virtually every banking family turned a profit over the long term, while the king benefited from their services to run the largest empire that had yet existed. The epilogue then looks at the economic history version of Spain's Black Legend. The economic history version of the Black Legend emerged from a combination of two narratives: a rich historical tradition analyzing the decline of Spain as an economic and military power from the seventeenth century onward, combined with new institutional analysis highlighting the unconstrained power of the monarch.

This final chapter summarizes the results of the source-based investigations conducted through the previous five chapters and presents an outline of the history of the legend of Hermes in Arabic and its reception. The myth of the Arabic Hermes is a synthesis of late antique traditions, with later accretions, that had a fruitful and wide-ranging career in Arabic letters lasting until recent times. The account of Hermes’ identity turns out to have had an importance partially independent of the Hermetica themselves. It is also now possible to correct a present-day misunderstanding of early Arabic literature: there never was an “Islamic Hermeticism.” This is a false modern category. Rather, the accounts of Hermes held an interest for all Arabic scholars with an interest in the ancient, pre-Islamic past and recondite book learning, regardless of their different doctrines.

A church that is rich in symbolic associations conveys a strong sense of sacrality—the presence of the holy within the sacred. Different forms of symbolic association in the classic sacramental tradition are discussed in connection with Santa Maria Novella at Florence. Orientation (planning a church with the altar at the east end), legends of foundation, and ceremonies of consecration are all seen as ways of cultivating symbolic resonance. The “Cathedral of Huts” at Maciene in Mozambique is seen as one example of how churches reflect a process of indigenization in Africa.

This lecture traces W. B. Yeats' preoccupation with the changing forms of death throughout his life, from his fin-de-siécle love-poetry to his poems of death. These poems of death were linked to his interest in Celtic legend, Irish intellectual influences and conjunctions, and magical ritual and psychic research. The lecture considers Yeats' approach to death in his later work, concluding with his creation of a structured canon of work in the light of his own death and the work that he wrote on his deathbed.

The second of two chapters on the Confessio Amantis frame narrative, this chapter analyses political dimensions of courtly love and the relationship between Venus, Cupid, Genius and Amans, or the lover, in Gower's poem. First, it argues that Gower laicizes penitential discourse in his technical but minimally ecclesiastic representation of confession and of Genius as confessor, which crucially embeds confession in an allegorical, great household narrative of lay lordship and petitioning. The chapter is principally dedicated to interpretation of the poem's closing scenes, in which Venus can be seen to act as the lover's good lord, to bestow on him a livery collar, and to overmatch Cupid's unilateral lordship at the climax of the poem's contest between ‘magnificence’ and ‘reciprocalism’. Venus's and Cupid's politics are illuminated by readings of The Romance of the Rose, Chaucer's Parliament of Fowls and Legend of Good Women, and Sir John Clanvowe's Boke of Cupide.

After an analysis of the historical periods dealt with in the book and their connections to various relevant textual and artistic forms of evidence, this chapter presents one of the central arguments. Specifically, I claim that Buddhism's interaction with popular religion played a pivotal role in the new faith's expansion and acceptance. By acting as intermediaries between the public and the often capricious whims of local demigods, the Buddhists established a social role for themselves that helped to ensure their continued public support. As evidence of this shift, I have cited or referenced numerous tales and legends featuring encounters between monks and spirit‐deities. And, while these tales are often too fantastic to be used as literal historical sources, the physical evidence provided in the next chapter reveals that they are one part of a larger historical process by which the Buddhists came to associate their beliefs with these pre‐existent deities.

In 70 c.e., about forty years after Jesus' death, the Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed. In the Jerusalem Talmud, there is a legend about something that took place on the day of the destruction, which is presented in this chapter. Here the Messiah is called Menahem, son of Hezekiah. The figure of Menahem in this story combines various elements known to us from the traditions concerning the Essene Messiah and Jesus of Nazareth. Menahem, the son of Hezekiah, resembles the Essene Messiah not only in his name but also in his destiny. The figure of Menahem, the hero of our book, was the foundation of the Jewish messianic myth, just as he served as the inspiration for the messianism of Jesus of Nazareth.

Schubert’s unfinished last opera Der Graf von Gleichen was drafted only after the libretto had been banned by the censors. Based on a popular thirteenth-century legend about a man who had two wives (a happy end sanctioned by the Pope), the story underwent radical alterations in the early nineteenth century, becoming a tragedy in most stage treatments. The chapter shows how Schubert’s opera runs counter to this tendency, insisting on the more typical eighteenth-century lieto fine, which in this case called for a three-way-marriage tableau. Even under Metternich, the theater remained the most public forum available for airing views on controversial subjects (if only obliquely): this story had become a vehicle for debating the legal and conceptual basis of marriage, especially the role of consent, a debate that found its echo on stages everywhere.