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The works of J.R.R. Tolkien have not only redefined a genre of literature but also had a far-reaching impact on culture in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Tolkien's name has joined the ranks of authors such as Shakespeare, Milton, Dostoevsky, Donne, and Dickens who make us think differently about the world. In Theology and Tolkien: Practical Theology, an international group of scholars consider what Tolkien's works (and Jackson's film interpretations) can teach us about living out our theology in the world. From essays on Tolkien's insights into community, what we can learn about our spiritual senses from encounters with the Nazgûl, the pastoral wisdom of Treebeard, to the theological value of food—including second breakfasts—we invite you to journey with us through Middle-earth as we engage the applicability of Tolkien's works for theology and our world.

Eine kulturwissenschaftlich fundierte Darstellung des brisanten Themas in Text- und Bilddokumenten von der Frühen Neuzeit bis in die Moderne. Es ist ein im kollektiven Gedächtnis fest verankerter Mythos: das Los des Ahasver, des Ewigen Juden, von dem erzählt wird, dass er dem auf dem Kreuzweg schmachtenden Christus die Rast missgönnt habe und dafür zu ewiger Wanderschaft verdammt worden sei. Die Wurzeln der Überlieferung reichen bis ins Mittelalter zurück, doch erst zu Beginn des 17. Jahrhunderts beginnt der Stoff sein hohes Wirkungspotential zu entfalten. Ahasver wird zu einer plastischen und zugleich mirakulösen Figur, die ihren Siegeszug quer durch Europa antritt. Ein antijudaistischer Ton ist dabei nicht zu verkennen. Und auch wenn im Laufe der Zeit identifikatorische Formen der Aneignung den Mythos durchdringen, bleibt doch die Gefahr judenfeindlicher Aktualisierung präsent, wie nicht zuletzt die NS-Propaganda zeigt. Das Buch verfolgt die ebenso erstaunliche wie ungeheure Karriere dieser Figur von der Frühen Neuzeit bis in die Moderne, wobei das Augenmerk vor allem den brisanten Dokumenten des deutschen Kulturraums gilt. Ob Goethe, Heine, Wagner oder Celan – sie alle sind Stimmen eines Chors, der gerade in seiner Dissonanz bezeugt, dass Mythos und Protagonist das Schicksal teilen, nicht sterben zu können.

With The Modern Myths, brilliant science communicator Philip Ball spins a new yarn. From novels and comic books to B-movies, it is an epic exploration of literature, new media and technology, the nature of storytelling, and the making and meaning of our most important tales. Myths are usually seen as stories from the depths of time—fun and fantastical, but no longer believed by anyone. Yet, as Philip Ball shows, we are still writing them—and still living them—today. From Robinson Crusoe and Frankenstein to Batman, many stories written in the past few centuries are commonly, perhaps glibly, called “modern myths.” But Ball argues that we should take that idea seriously. Our stories of Dracula, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and Sherlock Holmes are doing the kind of cultural work that the ancient myths once did. Through the medium of narratives that all of us know in their basic outline and which have no clear moral or resolution, these modern myths explore some of our deepest fears, dreams, and anxieties. We keep returning to these tales, reinventing them endlessly for new uses. But what are they really about, and why do we need them? What myths are still taking shape today? And what makes a story become a modern myth? In The Modern Myths, Ball takes us on a wide-ranging tour of our collective imagination, asking what some of its most popular stories reveal about the nature of being human in the modern age.

La première partie met en évidence les relations entre le mythe et la société et montre comment les représentations mythiques influencent notre perception du monde, gouvernent nos idéologies et déterminent nos rapports sociaux. La seconde partie traite du réinvestissement de la matière mythique issue de la tradition orale dans la littérature écrite. Cet ouvrage démontre bien que le mythe est une lecture du monde et de l'existence humaine, à la fois quête génésique et éclairage contemporain.

Per tutta la sua breve ma intensissima vita, Leopardi non smise mai di pensare al mito, concependolo non soltanto come un modo di manifestarsi della sapienza antica, appartenente all'infanzia del mondo e innervante il procedere epocale della storia umana (come pensava ad esempio Gian Battista Vico), né solo come una semplice espressione della soggettività volta a esorcizzare il terribile della natura, ma piuttosto come una modalità ontologica di darsi delle cose stesse, potendo sopravvivere solo in un paesaggio in penombra, non abbagliato da alcuna illuminazione diretta. Dopo aver tracciato per linee essenziali il dibattito su mito e mitologia nell'Europa del xviii secolo, l'autore avanza una nuova lettura dell'Infinito, collocando questo capolavoro assoluto della letteratura universale all'interno di un duplice contesto: quello della formazione poetica e filosofica di Leopardi e quello dell'epoca romantica italiana ed europea in cui il poeta visse. Se nella modernità i fenomeni sono diventati oggetto di studio delle scienze della natura, perdendo così la loro vitalità irriducibile al concetto, il sentire persuaso degli antichi non potrà più essere riproposto per evocare l'apparire delle cose nella forma di figure mitologiche non più credibili, come i fauni o le ninfe, Dafne o Procne ecc. Mentre nel corso del xix secolo sta avviandosi al tramonto la grande stagione del sublime riesumata dalla tarda antichità, Leopardi – attingendo alle radici più profonde dell'Umanesimo italiano – pensa la sopravvivenza del mito nella rappresentazione di quella sottile linea impalpabile, ma intensamente viva – «il celeste confine» divenuto poi «l'ultimo orizzonte» – che separa e unisce il visibile e l'invisibile, per evocare l'irrappresentabile proprio dell'arte e del pensiero moderni.

Das Interesse am Mythos ist aus der europäischen Kultur- und Literaturgeschichte nicht wegzudenken. Es hat seinen Niederschlag in einer beinahe unüberschaubaren Vielzahl wissenschaftlicher Mythostheorien sowie in einer vielgestaltigen literarischen und künstlerischen Mythenrezeption gefunden. Dass dieses Interesse dabei nicht zuletzt dem Mythos als Zeugnis des Fremden gilt, ist die zentrale These der Studie. Mit dem neu eingeführten Begriff der mythologischen Alterität soll in diesem Sinne eine – bislang in ihrer Bedeutung sowie in ihrer Produktivität unterschätzte – Konstante im neuzeitlichen Mythosverständnis bzw. eine Gemeinsamkeit verschiedener Mythosauffassungen in den Fokus gerückt werden. So wird zum einen gezeigt, dass zahlreiche Theorien des Mythos (von Giambattista Vico und David Hume bis zu René Girard und Hans Blumenberg) ihre Gegenstände als Zeugnisse des kulturell oder auch des radikal Fremden beschreiben und interpretieren. Zum anderen wird anhand verschiedenartiger Beispiele aus der englischen Literatur vom 19. bis zum frühen 21. Jahrhundert erläutert, inwiefern auch in der literarischen Mythenrezeption das Fremde bzw. Differenzen von Eigenem und Fremdem thematisch und formal virulent werden.

Monstrous Bodies is a cultural and literary history of ambiguous bodies in imperial Japan. It focuses on what the book calls modern monsters—doppelgangers, robots, twins, hybrid creations—bodily metaphors that became ubiquitous in the literary landscape from the Meiji era (1868–1912) up until the outbreak of the Second Sino–Japanese War in 1937. Such monsters have often been understood as representations of the premodern past or of “stigmatized others”—figures subversive to national ideologies. Miri Nakamura contends instead that these monsters were products of modernity, informed by the newly imported scientific discourses on the body, and that they can be read as being complicit in the ideologies of the empire, for they are uncanny bodies that ignite a sense of terror by blurring the binary of “normal” and “abnormal” that modern sciences like eugenics and psychology created. Reading these literary bodies against the historical rise of the Japanese empire and its colonial wars in Asia, Nakamura argues that they must be understood in relation to the most “monstrous” body of all in modern Japan: the carefully constructed image of the empire itself.

In this groundbreaking work of revisionary literary history, Marilyn Butler traces the imagining of alternative versions of the nation in eighteenth-century Britain, both in the works of a series of well-known poets (Akenside, Thomson, Gray, Collins, Chatterton, Macpherson, Blake) and in the differing accounts of the national culture offered by eighteenth-century antiquarians and literary historians. She charts the beginnings in eighteenth-century Britain of what is now called cultural history, exploring how and why it developed, and the issues at stake. Her interest is not simply in a succession of great writers, but in the politics of a wider culture, in which writers, scholars, publishers, editors, booksellers, readers all play their parts. For more than thirty years, Marilyn Butler was a towering presence in eighteenth-century and romantic studies, and this major work is published for the first time.