Love Spans The Centuries

The Oxford Handbook of Music and Medievalism provides a snapshot of the diverse ways in which medievalism--the retrospective immersion in the images, sounds, narratives, and ideologies of the European Middle Ages--powerfully transforms many of the varied musical traditions of the last two centuries. Thirty-three chapters from an international group of scholars explore topics ranging from the representation of the Middle Ages in nineteenth-century opera to medievalism in contemporary video game music, thereby connecting disparate musical forms across typical musicological boundaries of chronology and geography. While some chapters focus on key medievalist works such as Orff's Carmina Burana or Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings films, others explore medievalism in the oeuvre of a single composer (e.g. Richard Wagner or Arvo P�rt) or musical group (e.g. Led Zeppelin). The topics of the individual chapters include both well-known works such as John Boorman's film Excalibur and also less familiar examples such as Eduard Lalo's Le Roi d'Ys. The authors of the chapters approach their material from a wide array of disciplinary perspectives, including historical musicology, popular music studies, music theory, and film studies, examining the intersections of medievalism with nationalism, romanticism, ideology, nature, feminism, or spiritualism. Taken together, the contents of the Handbook develop new critical insights that venture outside traditional methodological constraints and provide a capstone and point of departure for future scholarship on music and medievalism.

Two lovers from different races in pre-history India meet in a time of danger and fall in love. They share a life of adventure but eventually die. Though separated by death, their spirits live again at various times throughout history, though never together. When they are finally reunited, it is a time of disaster for humankind. Humanity has advanced far enough to destroy itself, and it does. A nuclear accident triggers a global conflict between superpowers that destroys humanity along with almost all life on Earth. The lovers, reincarnated in the twenty-first century are selected to be placed into suspended animation and sent on a journey through space and time. Their task is to return to Earth in a distant future and reestablish life on the planet. They accomplish this with the help of a converted Space Schuttle, a Space Station and microcomputers implanted in their bodies to enhances their physical and mental abilities and prolong their lives. To succeed in their mission, they must find ways to overcome loneliness, hardship, and danger from radiation mutated decedents of humankind who are now the dominate species on Earth.

A Century of Encounters analyzes Arab, American, and European literary depictions of self and other as they interact with each other in Arab North Africa throughout the twentieth century and introduces the trope of the encounter as a lens through which to read contemporary world literature comparatively. A focus on the transnational encounter allows for the in-depth study of constructions of gender, race, and national identities both for the self and the other in order to answer the seemingly simple questions: What makes up different encounters in the twentieth century, and how can we facilitate a productive and positive encounter between these groups? This book illustrates connections between literary texts that have hitherto been overlooked and establishes an intertextual genealogy of transcultural encounters throughout the twentieth century that coalesce around the themes of desire, family, and travel. In its literary analysis, A Century of Encounters aims to facilitate a better understanding of other cultures in general and contribute to constructive cross-cultural interactions between the United States, Europe, and Arab North Africa in particular.