Phantasmagoria

From dragons and wyverns to vampires, werewolves and mischievous gremlins, pixies and fairies, Breverton's Phantasmagoria is a unique compendium of over 250 mythical animals. Prepare to revisit familiar myths, such as vampires, werewolves and the Loch Ness Monster, the Minotaur and Medusa from Greek legend, and Biblical beasts such as Behemoth and Leviathan. Discover new mysterious animals like the giant serpents of Central America, the lethal Mongolian death worm, and the Ennedi tiger in Africa, and investigate the evidence for sightings of Bigfoot and the reclusive Yeti. Packed with quirky line illustrations and a wealth of weird and wonderful information, Breverton's Phantasmagoria surveys the globe to uncover over 250 imaginary creatures passed down from generation to generation.

With over thirty illustrations in color and black and white, Phantasmagoria takes readers on an intellectually exhilarating tour of ideas of spirit and soul in the modern world, illuminating key questions of imagination and cognition. Warner tells the unexpected and often disturbing story about shifts in thought about consciousness and the individual person, from the first public waxworks portraits at the end of the eighteenth century to stories of hauntings, possession, and loss of self in modern times. She probes the perceived distinctions between fantasy and deception, and uncovers a host of spirit forms--angels, ghosts, fairies, revenants, and zombies--that are still actively present in contemporary culture.

Today, Lewis Carroll is best remembered as a writer of juvenile fiction responsible for such timeless works as Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass. However, Carroll was also a poet who wove dark visions and supernatural themes into his substantial body of work. Much of the verse collected in Phantasmagoria and Other Poems has a supernatural or visionary theme. A must-read for fans of Victorian ghost stories.

In a time of mass-mediated modernity, the city becomes, almost by definition, a constitutively ‘mediated’ city. Today, more than ever before, the omnipresence of media in every sphere of culture is creating a new urban ontology, saturating, fracturing, and exacerbating the manifold experience of city life. The authors describe this condition as one of 'hyper-mediation' – a qualitatively new phase in the city’s historical evolution. The concept of phantasmagoria has pride of place in their study; using it as an all-embracing explanatory framework, they explore its meanings as a critical category to understand the culture, and the architecture, of the contemporary city. Andreotti and Lahiji argue that any account of architecture that does not include understanding the role and function of media and its impact on the city in the present ‘tele-technological-capitalist’ society is fundamentally flawed and incomplete. Their approach moves from Walter Benjamin, through the concepts of phantasmagoria and of media – as theorized also by Theodor Adorno, Siegfried Kracauer, and a new generation of contemporary critics – towards a new socio-critical and aesthetic analysis of the mediated space of the contemporary city.

A compilation of poems written by a young man whom has struggled with discrimination for all of his life. His determination to prove everyone wrong has resulted in a heart felt, inspiring and creative book of poems that can give anyone a insight into the mind of someone with autism.

As the sun set on the 20th century, a new age dawned in Japan. This new era, symbolized by the postmodern city of Tokyo, has ushered in not only technological innovation and economic prowess, but changing attitudes and values among Japanese young people. This transformation is not an uncommon or even new phenomenon, but simply the result of modern life. And one of the symptoms of modernity is the prevalence of an "ethics of materialism," the ever-increasing concern for the acquisition of wealth and commodity goods, sometimes at the expense of the concern for human life itself. Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) was a German-Jewish philosopher whose writings examined topics including, but not limited to, art, history, and politics. His life's work, published posthumously as The Arcades Project, is a "literary montage" combining excerpts from written works related to life in 19th-century Paris and Benjamin's own commentaries and reflections. Benjamin's project on Paris of the 19th century foreshadows what is now occurring in 21st-century Tokyo, and Japan in general. Like the Paris of yesteryear, life in modern Tokyo is essentially a "dream image" that warps people's perception of the world in which they live. The public thus finds itself trapped in what Benjamin refers to as the "phantasmagoria," an illusory reality of a relatively flawless society. But this phantasmagoria shrouds the "grotesqueness" of underlying truths such as the failure of advances in science and philosophy to eradicate poverty, discrimination and other social inequities. Drawing from a selection of Benjamin's writings including The Arcades Project, this thesis explores the social consequences as well as the political implications of the rise of commodity capitalism in modern Japan, concluding with a discussion on how political action can re-humanize a citizenry that has been "commodified" by their materialistic desires. Walter Benjamin wrote about a past generation while appealing to his own, and as this discourse on the Tokyo Phantasmagoria will reveal, Benjamin appeals to our generation as well.

One morning, when Rhythm is spending time with Uncle Gourd, he receives a message from Arch Rotunda, asking him to be back to the world of Electon. As he travels back to Arch in a new kind of vehicle, he makes a new friend, Aofie, who introduces him to deeper secrets of this world of electromagnetic waves—ELECTON. As Rhythm gets embroiled in a new conspiracy planned by Dslots and gets trapped in an unknown imaginary world, Cooper, Olivia, and Eva set out to save Roger (and Electon) before it is too late. The second part of the most-loved series of Rhythm Roger is here for you, with darker secrets roaming around in Electon. In this children’s beloved book, let’s say the magical word together and enter the world of Electon: “AVALONIA.”

Alfred Dreyfus saw himself caught in a phantasmagoria, a great complex enigma that needed to be solved, but all the clues seemed to be an hallucination, a will-o’-th’-wisp, or what George Sand called “orblutes”. This book examines how Dreyfus and his wife found a powerful new kind of love through Jewish themes at the same time as they were forced to conceal their true identities. To see how Jewish Dreyfus was, the book explores his background in Alsatian culture, in the cosmopolitan Judaism of Paris, and in the customs of Mediterranean Jewry. A close reading of the Court Martial in Rennes shows Dreyfus as more than the “zinc puppet” he was called; the scenario emerging as a variation of horror fantasies popular in the fin de siècle. The book asks two questions: why did Dreyfus prefer Meissonier’s paintings to the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists we admire so much; and, why, although he appreciated Zola’s efforts on his behalf, did he not refer to his novels?