Insect Mythology

Author: Gene Kritsky
Publisher: iUniverse
ISBN: 0595150179
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 158

Book Description
Mythology is a subject that has entertained people for thousands of years. These stories of gods and supernatural beings of the distant past are important in explaining how things came to be and are an integral part of societies. Insect myths are numerous and widespread in mythology, but have received little attention. This is the first book dedicated specifically to showing the important roles insects have played in mythology. This is a comprehensive and readable survey of insect myths from around the world. The book ranges from older, better-known insect myths such as sacred scarabs to new unpublished subjects such as insects as examples of parallel mythology. Numerous black and white figures are found in the book including new figures not previously seen in entomological literature. How insects are related to larger themes of mythology such as symbols and parallel mythology is discussed. Insects in Old World mythology (Egypt, China, etc.) and New World mythology (Native American, Mayan, etc.) are featured. This book brings to light the fascinating role that insects played in mythology and is the most comprehensive and authoritative reference on the subject.

Moths, Myths, and Mosquitoes

Author: Marc E. Epstein
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190215259
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 361

Book Description
Marc E. Epstein provides a complete biography of Harrison Gray Dyar, Jr., one of the most influential biologists of the twentieth century. Epstein chronicles Dyar's impressive scientific accomplishments in the field of entomology, as well as his complicated personal life and many eccentricities.

A Philosophy of the Insect

Author: Jean-Marc Drouin
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231540728
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 177

Book Description
The world of insects is at once beneath our feet and unfathomably alien. Small and innumerable, insects surround and disrupt us even as we scarcely pay them any mind. Insects confront us with the limits of what is imaginable, while at the same time being essential to the everyday functioning of all terrestrial ecosystems. In this book, the philosopher and historian of science Jean-Marc Drouin contends that insects pose a fundamental challenge to philosophy. Exploring the questions of what insects are and what scientific, aesthetic, ethical, and historical relationships they have with humanity, he argues that they force us to reconsider our ideas of the animal and the social. He traces the role that insects have played in language, mythology, literature, entomology, sociobiology, and taxonomy over the centuries. Drouin emphasizes the links between humanistic and scientific approaches—how we have projected human roles onto insects and seen ourselves in insect form. Caught between the animal and plant kingdoms, insects force us to confront and reevaluate our notions of gender, family, society, struggle, the division of labor, social organization, and individual and collective intelligence. A remarkably original and thought-provoking work, A Philosophy of the Insect is an important book for animal studies, environmental ethics, and the history and philosophy of science.

Magical Gains

Author: Nicola E. Sheridan
Publisher: Damnation Books, LLC
ISBN: 9781615723096
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 196

Book Description
Imran is sexy. He is available, but taking anything from him is illegal and could land you in prison or, at the very least, with an extraordinarily large tax bill. Imran is a Genie and Primrose a government employee, and in a world where magic is heavily governed to ensure equality for all, their relationship appears doomed from the start. When Primrose finds herself the unwilling mistress of a hot male Genie, her stifling suburban lifestyle is shattered. Thrust into the steamy Free Zone, filled with lascivious Satyrs and treacherous Sirens, Primrose discovers that three wishes can give her anything she needs, but can they give what she truly wants?

Insect Life

Author: Arabella Burton Buckley
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Insects
Languages : en
Pages : 84

Book Description

Fabre's Book of Insects

Author: Alexander Teixeira De Mattos
Publisher: Legare Street Press
ISBN: 9781015706460
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

Parallel Myths

Author: J.F. Bierlein
Publisher: Ballantine Books
ISBN: 0307754642
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 368

Book Description
“Unusually accessible and useful . . . An eye-opener to readers into the universality and importance of myth in human history and culture.”—William E. Paden, Chair, Department of Religion, University of Vermont For as long as human beings have had language, they have had myths. Mythology is our earliest form of literary expression and the foundation of all history and morality. Now, in Parallel Myths, classical scholar J. F. Bierlein gathers the key myths from all of the world's major traditions and reveals their common themes, images, and meanings. Parallel Myths introduces us to the star players in the world's great myths—not only the twelve Olympians of Greek mythology, but the stern Norse Pantheon, the mysterious gods of India, the Egyptian Ennead, and the powerful deities of Native Americans, the Chinese, and the various cultures of Africa and Oceania. Juxtaposing the most potent stories and symbols from each tradition, Bierlein explores the parallels in such key topics as creation myths, flood myths, tales of love, morality myths, underworld myths, and visions of the Apocalypse. Drawing on the work of Joseph Campbell, Mircea Eliade, Carl Jung, Karl Jaspers, Claude Lévi-Strauss, and others, Bierlein also contemplates what myths mean, how to identify and interpret the parallels in myths, and how mythology has influenced twentieth-century psychology, philosophy, anthropology, and literary studies. “A first-class introduction to mythology . . . Written with great clarity and sensitivity.”—John G. Selby, Associate Professor, Roanoke College

The Earwig’s Tail

Author: May R. Berenbaum
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674053567
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 209

Book Description
Throughout the Middle Ages, enormously popular bestiaries presented people with descriptions of rare and unusual animals, typically paired with a moral or religious lesson. The real and the imaginary blended seamlessly in these books—at the time, the existence of a rhinoceros was as credible as a unicorn or dragon. Although audiences now scoff at the impossibility of mythological beasts, there remains an extraordinary willingness to suspend skepticism and believe wild stories about nature, particularly about insects and their relatives in the Phylum Arthropoda. In The Earwig’s Tail, entomologist May Berenbaum and illustrator Jay Hosler draw on the powerful cultural symbols of these antiquated books to create a beautiful and witty bestiary of the insect world. Berenbaum’s compendium of tales is an alphabetical tour of modern myths that humorously illuminates aerodynamically unsound bees, ear-boring earwigs, and libido-enhancing Spanish flies. She tracks down the germ of scientific truth that inspires each insect urban legend and shares some wild biological lessons, which, because of the amazing nature of the insect world, can be more fantastic than even the mythic misperceptions.

Mythology

Author: Richard Cavendish
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781566193894
Category : Folklore
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description

The Goddess

Author: David Leeming
Publisher: Reaktion Books
ISBN: 1780235380
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 178

Book Description
For as long as we have sought god, we have found the goddess. Ruling over the imaginations of humankind’s earliest agricultural civilizations, she played a critical spiritual role as a keeper of nature’s fertile powers and an assurance of the next sustaining harvest. In The Goddess, David Leeming and Christopher Fee take us all the way back into prehistory, tracing the goddess across vast spans of time to tell the epic story of the transformation of belief and what it says about who we are. Leeming and Fee use the goddess to gaze into the lives and souls of the people who worshipped her. They chart the development of traditional Western gender roles through an understanding of the transformation of concepts of the Goddess from her earliest roots in India and Iran to her more familiar faces in Ireland and Iceland. They examine the subordination of the goddess to the god as human civilizations became mobile and began to look upon masculine deities for assurances of survival in movement and battle. And they show how, despite this history, the goddess has remained alive in our spiritual imaginations, in figures such as the Christian Virgin Mother and, in contemporary times, the new-age resurrection of figures such as Gaia. The Goddess explores this central aspect of ancient spiritual thought as a window into human history and the deepest roots of our beliefs.