Forest Folklore Mythology And Romance

A comprehensive guide to forest folklore, including European and Asian mythology. First published in 1928, this volume was written by Alexander Porteous and details the lore and mythology behind many European and Asian beliefs and customs. The contents include: - Forests of Eld - Fabulous Forests - Forestry - Groves - Mythical Denizens of the Forests and Woods - Trees - Folklore

Fascinating compendium of facts, folklore, superstitions, myths, and anecdotes about trees and the forest. Forest customs, sacred groves, mythical forest creatures, tree worship, and much more.

Sacred Groves and Tree Nymphs, Yule Logs and Divining Rods, Wild Huntsmen and Wood-Wives . . . Delve into an enchanting exploration of the magic and mystery of forest realms in this scholarly and highly readable work. Fact and fable sit sid Since its original publication in 1928, this lively guide to the folklore of the forest around the world has also appeared under such titles as The Forest in Folklore and Mythology and Forest Folklore, Mythology and Romance. It has become a beloved sou AUTHOR BIO: Scottish author ALEXANDER PORTEOUS was a professor of philosophy whose work appeared in various philosophical journals, which include The Town Council Seals of Scotland; Historical, Legendary and Heraldic (1906) and The History of Crieff from the Earli

Corinne J. Saunders's exploration of the topos of the forest, a familiar and ubiquitous motif in the literature of the middle ages, is a broad study embracing a range of medieval and Elizabethan exts from the twelft to the sixteenth centuries: the roman d'antiquite, Breton lay and courtly romance, the hagiographical tradition of the Vita Merlini and the Queste del Saint Graal, Spenser and Shakespeare. Saunders identifies the forest as a primary romance landscape, as a place of adventure, love, and spiritual vision... offers a pleasurable overview of the narrative function of the forest as a literary landscape. Based on a close comparative and theoretically non-partisan] reading of a broad range of literary texts drawn from the Europeqan canon, Saunders's study explores the continuity and transformation of an important motif in the corpus of medieval literature. MODERN LANGUAGE REVIEWDr CORINNE SAUNDERSteaches in the Department of English at the University of Durham. BLURBEXTRACTED FROM TLS REVIEW] ...An immense tract, not only of medieval literature but of human experience is] engagingly introduced and presented here...Corinne Saunders considers first forests in reality (a reality which keeps breaking through in romance...). She looks also at the classical and biblical models including Virgil, Statius and Nebuchadnezzar...only then does she turn to the non-real and non-Classical, i.e. the medieval and romantic. Here she follows a clear chronological plan from twelfth to fifteenth centuries also covering] the allegorized landscape of Spenser and the lovers' woods of Arden or Athens in Shakespeare. Her text-by-text layout does justice to the variety of possibilities taken up by different authors; the forest as a place where men run mad and turn into animals, a place of voluntary suffering, a focus of significance in the Grail-quests, a lovers' bower; above all and centrally, the place where the knight is tested and defined, even (as with Perceval) created.

Every culture has in its folklore and mythology beings of immense size and strength, as well as other preternatural humanoids great or small who walk among us, serving the divine or fulfilling their own agendas. This book catalogs the lore and legends of more than 1,000 different humanoid species and individual beings, including the Titans, Valkyries, Jotnar, yōkai, biblical giants, elves, ogres, trolls and many more.

Of all the anomalous phenomenon reported, ghost sightings are by far the most common. The words "ghost" and "spirit" are used interchangeably in American English but in other cultures the lingering souls of the departed are not to be confused with ancestral spirits, demonic spirits, numens or poltergeists. This encyclopedia lists hundreds of entities of the spirit realm--from aatxe to zuzeca--from world mythology and folklore.

The Macks divert our gaze from our contemporary red-faced, cloven-hoofed misrepresentation of demons to remind us of the ancient roles demons were originally assigned to play. From the Tommyknockers of North American mountain mines to the South African Mbulu that waits in the river for lone travelers, A Field Guide to Demons classifies these creatures by their domains--water, mountain, forest--rather than in alphabetical or cultural order, dishing out antique and contemporary lore on these most misunderstood of spirits. A Field Guide to Demons melds folklore and mythology; maintains a surprisingly evenhanded view of demons; and reveals their role as the necessary challenger to established order, the antagonist--without which there could be no hero--and the darkness through which goodness shines brightest. --Brian Patterson