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"Ocean Folklore."
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Stars and keys : folktales and creolization in the Indian Ocean
In Stars and Keys: Folktales and Creolization in the Southwest Indian
Ocean, Lee Haring introduces readers to the rich folklore traditions of the islands
of the southwest Indian Ocean. The culture of Madagascar, Mauritius, Seychelles,
Réunion, and the Comoros is a unique blend of traditions that have been brought
from Africa, South Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. The folktales from these
islands reflect the diversity of this culture and provide a rare opportunity to
observe the fluidity of traditions and the process of creolization. Haring presents
the tales in a uniquely innovative style: he interrupts the text as if he were
reading aloud and directly addresses the reader. His words and those of the
storytellers are clearly distinguished, making this folktale collection useful to a
wide range of readers and scholars.
eBook
Moana
Moana Waialiki is a sea voyaging enthusiast, and the only daughter of a chief in a long line of navigators in the ancient South Pacific world of Oceania. When her family needs her help she sets off on a voyage to return the powerful heart of Te Fiti to the mother island. Will the legendary demigod Maui help her complete her quest? Along the way they encounter enormous sea creatures, breathtaking underworlds, and ancient folklore.
Book
The Sea in the Greek Imagination
The sea is omnipresent in Greek life. Visible from nearly everywhere, the sea represents the life and livelihood of many who dwell on the islands and coastal areas of the Mediterranean, and it has been so since long ago-the sea loomed large in the Homeric epics and throughout Greek mythology. The Greeks of antiquity turned to the sea for food and for transport; for war, commerce, and scientific advancement; and for religious purification and other rites. Yet, the sea was simultaneously the center of Greek life and its limit. For, while the sea was a giver of much, it also embodied danger and uncertainty. It was in turns barren and fertile, and pictured as both a roadway and a terrifying void. The image of the sea in Greek myth is as conflicting as it is common, with sea crossings taking on seemingly incompatible meanings in different circumstances.
InThe Sea in the Greek Imagination, Marie-Claire Beaulieu unifies the multifarious representations of the sea and sea crossings in Greek myth and imagery by positing the sea as a cosmological boundary between the mortal world, the underworld, and the realms of the immortal. Through six in-depth case studies, she shows how, more than a simple physical boundary, the sea represented the buffer zone between the imaginary and the real, the transitional space between the worlds of the living, the dead, and the gods. From dolphin riders to Dionysus, maidens to mermen, Beaulieu investigates the role of the sea in Greek myth in a broad-ranging and innovative study.
eBook
Collecting Across Cultures
In the early modern age more people traveled farther than at any earlier time in human history. Many returned home with stories of distant lands and at least some of the objects they collected during their journeys. And those who did not travel eagerly acquired wondrous materials that arrived from faraway places. Objects traveled various routes-personal, imperial, missionary, or trade-and moved not only across space but also across cultures. Histories of the early modern global culture of collecting have focused for the most part on EuropeanWunderkammern, or \"cabinets of curiosities.\" But the passion for acquiring unfamiliar items rippled across many lands. The court in Java marveled at, collected, and displayed myriad goods brought through its halls. African princes traded captured members of other African groups so they could get the newest kinds of cloth produced in Europe. Native Americans sought colored glass beads made in Europe, often trading them to other indigenous groups. Items changed hands and crossed cultural boundaries frequently, often gaining new and valuable meanings in the process. An object that might have seemed mundane in some cultures could become a target of veneration in another. The fourteen essays inCollecting Across Culturesrepresent work by an international group of historians, art historians, and historians of science. Each author explores a specific aspect of the cross-cultural history of collecting and display from the dawn of the sixteenth century to the early decades of the nineteenth century. As the essays attest, an examination of early modern collecting in cross-cultural contexts sheds light on the creative and complicated ways in which objects in collections served to create knowledge-some factual, some fictional-about distant peoples in an increasingly transnational world.
eBook
Cargoes in motion : materiality and connectivity across the Indian Ocean
An innovative collection of essays that foregrounds specific cargoes as a means to understand connectivity and mobility across the Indian Ocean world.
Scholars have long appreciated the centrality of trade and commerce in understanding the connectivity and mobility that underpin human experience in the Indian Ocean region. But studies of merchant and commercial activities have paid little attention to the role that cargoes have played in connecting the disparate parts of this vast oceanic world. Drawing from the work of anthropologists, geographers, and historians, Cargoes in Motion tells the story of how material objects have informed and continue to shape processes of exchange across the Indian Ocean.
By following selected cargoes through both space and time, this book makes an important and innovative contribution to Indian Ocean studies. The multidisciplinary approach deepens our understanding of the nature and dynamics of the Indian Ocean world by showing how transoceanic connectivity has been driven not only by economic, social, cultural, and political factors but also by the materiality of the objects themselves.
Essays by:
Edward A. Alpers
Fahad Ahmad Bishara
Eva-Maria Knoll
Karl-Heinz Kohl
Lisa Jenny Krieg
Pedro Machado
Rupert Neuhöfer
Mareike Pampus
Hannah Pilgrim
Burkhard Schnepel
Hanne Schönig
Tansen Sen
Steven Serels
Julia Verne
Kunbing Xiao
eBook
Materialities of Ritual in the Black Atlantic
Focusing on everyday rituals, the essays in this volume look at spheres of social action and the places throughout the Atlantic world where African–descended communities have expressed their values, ideas, beliefs, and spirituality in material terms. The contributors trace the impact of encounters with the Atlantic world on African cultural formation, how entanglement with commerce, commodification, and enslavement and with colonialism, emancipation, and self-rule manifested itself in the shaping of ritual acts such as those associated with birth, death, healing, and protection. Taken as a whole, the book offers new perspectives on what the materials of rituals can tell us about the intimate processes of cultural transformation and the dynamics of the human condition.
eBook
Merpeople
People have been fascinated by merpeople and merfolk since ancient times. From the sirens of Homer's Odyssey to Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Mermaid and the film Splash, myths, stories, and legends of half-human, half-fish creatures abound. In modern times \"mermaiding\" has gained popularity among cosplayers throughout the world. In Merpeople: A Human History, Vaughn Scribner traces the long history of mermaids and mermen, taking in a wide variety of sources and using 117 striking images. From film to philosophy, church halls to coffee houses, ancient myth to modern science, Scribner shows that mermaids and tritons are—and always have been—everywhere.
eBook