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Few surviving Celtic myths bear any resemblance to their originals.In the course of time they have been infused with romance, pseudohistory and Christian theory.Stories of Ireland and Wales have been combined with tales of love, war and slaughterdeeds both noble and ignoble.

In a companion book to the best-selling Stories from Ancient Egypt, Joyce Tyldesley re-tells some of the most interesting and entertaining myths and legends from the Classical world. These stories tell us how the spider spun the first web, how a simple ball of string defeated the fearsome minotaur, and how Romulus founded the mighty city of Rome. The “this book belongs to\" introductions teaches the reader how to write their name using ancient Greek letters, and their age using Roman numerals. Each of the stories includes a question and answer section for enthusiastic young archaeologists. The book is illustrated with imaginative and amusing line-drawings by acclaimed artist and archaeologist Julian Heath. Stories from Ancient Greece and Rome is primarily aimed at children between the ages of 7-11, but it offers an entertaining and informative introduction to the myths of ancient Greece and Rome to readers of all ages. In a companion book to the best-selling Stories from Ancient Egypt, Joyce Tyldesley retells some of the most interesting and entertaining myths and legends from the Classical world. These stories tell us how the spider spun the first web, how a simple ball of string defeated the fearsome minotaur, and how Romulus founded the mighty city of Rome. The “this book belongs to\" introductions teaches the reader how to write their name using ancient Greek letters, and their age using Roman numerals. Each of the stories includes a question and answer section for enthusiastic young archaeologists. The book is illustrated with imaginative and amusing line-drawings by acclaimed artist and archaeologist Julian Heath. Stories from Ancient Greece and Rome is primarily aimed at children between the ages of 7-11, but it offers an entertaining and informative introduction to the myths of ancient Greece and Rome to readers of all ages.

Fairy-tale adaptations are ubiquitous in modern popular culture, but readers and scholars alike may take for granted the many voices and traditions folded into today's tales. In Fairy Tales Transformed?: Twenty-First-Century Adaptations and the Politics of Wonder , accomplished fairy-tale scholar Cristina Bacchilega traces what she terms a fairy-tale web of multivocal influences in modern adaptations, asking how tales have been changed by and for the early twenty-first century . Dealing mainly with literary and cinematic adaptations for adults and young adults, Bacchilega investigates the linked and yet divergent social projects these fairy tales imagine, their participation and competition in multiple genre and media systems, and their relation to a politics of wonder that contests a naturalized hierarchy of Euro-American literary fairy tale over folktale and other wonder genres. Bacchilega begins by assessing changes in contemporary understandings and adaptations of the Euro-American fairy tale since the 1970s, and introduces the fairy-tale web as a network of reading and writing practices with a long history shaped by forces of gender politics, capitalism, and colonialism. In the chapters that follow, Bacchilega considers a range of texts, from high profile films like Disney's Enchanted, Guillermo del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth, and Catherine Breillat's Bluebeard to literary adaptations like Nalo Hopkinson's Skin Folk , Emma Donoghue's Kissing the Witch, and Bill Willingham's popular comics series, Fables . She looks at the fairy-tale web from a number of approaches, including adaptation as activist response in Chapter 1, as remediation within convergence culture in Chapter 2, and a space of genre mixing in Chapter 3. Chapter 4 connects adaptation with issues of translation and stereotyping to discuss mainstream North American adaptations of The Arabian Nights as media text in post-9/11 globalized culture. Bacchilega's epilogue invites scholars to intensify their attention to multimedia fairy-tale traditions and the relationship of folk and fairy tales with other cultures' wonder genres. Scholars of fairy-tale studies will enjoy Bacchilega's significant new study of contemporary adaptations.

Mixed Magic: Global-local dialogues in fairy tales for young readers considers retellings and adaptations from a 'glocal' context; that is, from a framework focused on the reciprocal and cross-cultural exchange between global processes and local practices and their potential transformative effects.

A fantastic collection of legends about the Greek king of Ithaca, Odysseus, also known by his Latin name of Ulysses, written by English essayist Charles Lamb.

I am a spider who is higher in rank than other spiders. With all humility, if all the spiders in this world were put in one hand and I was put in the other I would outweigh them in superiority. I am not one to make false claims and show-off, I am simply stating facts. I do not think that I need to introduce myself to the reader, for I am sure you understand that I am the spider of the cave that the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) hid in. I am the one, who was responsible for the Prophet's deliverance. I am the one, who Allah (God) sent to protect him.My web is very flimsy and light and the slightest breeze can blow it away. However, despite the weakness of my web, I managed to ward off the iron swords of the atheists that went out in pursuit of the Prophet, and moreover, I was able to defeat them! The outcome of the conflict between the spiders' weak silk and the iron of the swords was the defeat of iron. My house is considered a parable of weakness, Verily, the frailest (weakest) of houses is the spider's house. I sat in my house protecting the noble house of Islam and guarding the Prophet of Allah, Muhammad ibn ' Abdullah (peace be upon him).That was not all that happened to me. Something even more wonderful happened; I saw the Prophet. I know that after the Prophet's death, millions will visit his grave to cry and pray.

{And We inspired Musa (Moses) (saying), 'Throw your staff',' and behold! It swallowed up straight away all the falsehoods which they showed.} (Al-A'raf: 117)Why is it that a garden is sometimes green and sometimes yellow?Why is it that the deserts are dry and the mountaintops are covered with snow?Why is it that the color of the sun is like fire when rising and like blood when setting?Why is it that the moon turns from a beautiful full moon to a slim crescent?There are so many 'whys' which I cannot find the answer for. All I know is that I was a plant, then I became an inanimate object and then I turned into an animal. I know that my last transformation, from an object to an animal, was one of Allah's great Miracles. To Musa I was only a staff but to Almighty Allah I was something totally different.The staff of Prophet Musa (Moses), that is me.I am the staff of Musa. I preceded the Prophet while walking ...I would raise high then fall down onto earth all the way along. I have no mind and I know nothing about \"why\" or \"how\".At first the sun used to provide me with greenness and elasticity, but when I died it gave me strength and solidity, how amazing! Death is supposed to be the end of power and strength for all beings, but for me it was the opposite. I was only a branch of a tree and when I died I became stronger. So, you see that death means the ultimate end of power for some beings and a newborn power for others.It is both simple and miraculous at the same time. When a branch of a tree dies, it is turned into a staff and a staff does not gain its solidity unless it is completely dead. That is how power is generated from death, the cessation of being, and this is only a modest sign of Allah's Omnipotence. I believe in Allah just like all the plants and all the inanimate objects do, though each of us glorifies Allah in his own special way. So, it is me the staff of Musa! The most famous staff of all, chosen to be in the hands of Allah's Messenger to Pharaoh.

The Poetics of Eros in Ancient Greeceoffers the first comprehensive inquiry into the deity of sexual love, a power that permeated daily Greek life. Avoiding Foucault's philosophical paradigm of dominance/submission, Claude Calame uses an anthropological and linguistic approach to re-create indigenous categories of erotic love. He maintains that Eros, the joyful companion of Aphrodite, was a divine figure around which poets constructed a physiology of desire that functioned in specific ways within a network of social relations. Calame begins by showing how poetry and iconography gave a rich variety of expression to the concept of Eros, then delivers a history of the deity's roles within social and political institutions, and concludes with a discussion of an Eros-centered metaphysics. Calame's treatment of archaic and classical Greek institutions reveals Eros at work in initiation rites and celebrations, educational practices, the Dionysiac theater of tragedy and comedy, and in real and imagined spatial settings. For men, Eros functioned particularly in the symposium and the gymnasium, places where men and boys interacted and where future citizens were educated. The household was the setting where girls, brides, and adult wives learned their erotic roles--as such it provides the context for understanding female rites of passage and the problematics of sexuality in conjugal relations. Through analyses of both Greek language and practices, Calame offers a fresh, subtle reading of relations between individuals as well as a quick-paced and fascinating overview of Eros in Greek society at large.