Under A Greek Spell

A light hearted romance set on the beautiful islands of Mykonos and Syros. As the chorus of Happy Birthday ends, Pamela can hear daughters, Helen and Stephanie, whispering, ‘Make a wish, mum’. As she blows out the candles her wish is made. Are their fates now sealed? Has she put her daughters under a Greek spell so her birthday wishes will be granted, or will it end up as a Greek tragedy? At thirty-three, Helen is a career woman. She’s worked hard and progressed through the ranks of a local travel company. She had aspirations of becoming a director, but now she’s thinking of a career change, although she’s been ‘distracted’ by her dishy colleague, James. They’ve been seeing each other for a few months but he seems unwilling to commit. She’s caught up in an unexpected chain of events when a work-related Caribbean cruise changes into a working holiday in Mykonos. Will she be enchanted by a Greek Spell or will she anger the Greek Gods and pay the ultimate price? At thirty-one Stephanie has recently separated from her husband Richard of five years. As they can’t compromise it looks as though divorce is their only option. The offer to accompany her sister, Helen, on a free holiday to the Caribbean is just the tonic she needs. As their plans change at the last minute Stephanie just wants some rest and relaxation, so Mykonos should tick the box. Will she end up with more than she expected? After all isn’t Mykonos known as the island of love?

The Blackwell Companion to the Bible and Culture provides readers with a concise, readable and scholarly introduction to twenty-first century approaches to the Bible. Consists of 30 articles written by distinguished specialists from around the world Draws on interdisciplinary and international examples to explore how the Bible has impacted on all the major social contexts where it has been influential – ancient, medieval and modern, world-wide Gives examples of how the Bible has influenced literature, art, music, history, religious studies, politics, ecology and sociology Each article is accompanied by a comprehensive bibliography Offers guidance on how to read the Bible and its many interpretations

"The Greek magical papyri" is a collection of magical spells and formulas, hymns, and rituals from Greco-Roman Egypt, dating from the second century B.C. to the fifth century A.D. Containing a fresh translation of the Greek papyri, as well as Coptic and Demotic texts, this new translation has been brought up to date and is now the most comprehensive collection of this literature, and the first ever in English. The Greek Magical Papyri in Transition is an invaluable resource for scholars in a wide variety of fields, from the history of religions to the classical languages and literatures, and it will fascinate those with a general interest in the occult and the history of magic. "One of the major achievements of classical and related scholarship over the last decade."—Ioan P. Culianu, Journal for the Study of Judaism "The enormous value of this new volume lies in the fact that these texts will now be available to a much wider audience of readers, including historians or religion, anthropologists, and psychologists."—John G. Gager, Journal of Religion "[This book] shows care, skill and zest. . . . Any worker in the field will welcome this sterling performance."—Peter Parsons, Times Literary Supplement

Focusing on the aesthetic representation of trauma, George Smith outlines the nexus points between poetics and hermeneutics and shows how a particular kind of thinker, the artist-philosopher, practices interpretation in an entirely different way from traditional hermeneutics. Taking a transhistorical and global view, Smith engages artists, writers, and thinkers from Western and non-Western periods, regions, and cultures. Thus, we see that poetic hermeneutics reconstitutes philosophy and art as hybridizations of art and science, the artist and the philosopher, subject and object. In turn, the artist-philosopher's poetic-hermeneutic reconstitution of philosophy and art is meant to transform human consciousness. This book will be of interest to artists and scholars working in studio practice, art history, aesthetics, philosophy, cultural studies, history of ideas, history of consciousness, psychoanalytic studies, myth studies, literary studies, and creative writing.

This 1935 book studies the powerful influence exercised by Ancient Greek culture on German writers from the eighteenth century onwards.

Experience, Narrative, and Criticism in Ancient Greece pursues a new approach to ancient Greek narrative beyond the taxonomies of structuralist narratologies. Focusing on the phenomenal and experiential dimension of our response to narrative, it triangulates ancient narrative with ancient criticism and cognitive approaches, opening up new vistas within the study of classical literature while ably deploying the ancient material to demonstrate the value of a historical perspective for cognitive studies. Concepts such as immersion and embodiment help to establish a more comprehensive understanding of ancient narrative and ancient reading habits, as manifested in Greek criticism and rhetorical theory. The thirteen chapters presented here tackle a broad range of narrative genres, broadly understood: besides epic, historiography, and the novel, tragedy and early Christian texts are also considered alongside non-literary media, such as dance and sculpture. Authored by international specialists in the language, literature, and culture of ancient Greece, each chapter utilizes a rich set of theoretical and methodological tools drawn from cognitive studies, phenomenology, and linguistics that place them at the vanguard of a strong new current in classical scholarship and literary criticism more generally.

This study of two related Demotic-Greek magical handbooks provides new information about the interaction between native Egyptian priests and the Hellenized elite of Roman-period Egypt through a careful analysis language interference, textual layout, religious imagery and ritual techniques.