In 1768, at the age of nineteen, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe began to study hermetic literature. This exploration had a huge impact on the early aesthetic education of Europe’s great man of letters, th
The exploits of tricksters, traditional fairy tales, and how-and-why stories offer many exciting opportunities for learning. Kraus's bibliographic and activity guides help you design dynamic story tim
Transforming Tales argues that the study of transformation is crucial for understanding a wide range of canonical work in medieval French literature. From thelais and Arthurian romances of the twelfth
The occult is many things to many people. For some, it is a path to enlightenment. Others find it a source of personal transformation. And still others consider it a doorway to the devil. There is som
Even before the Civil War, American writers were imagining life after a massive global catastrophe. For many, the blank slate of the American continent was instead a wreckage-strewn wasteland, a new world in ruins. Bringing together epic and lyric poems, fictional tales, travel narratives, and scientific texts, Postapocalyptic Fantasies in Antebellum American Literature reveals that US authors who enthusiastically celebrated the myths of primeval wilderness and virgin land also frequently resorted to speculations about the annihilation of civilizations, past and future. By examining such postapocalyptic fantasies, this study recovers an antebellum rhetoric untethered to claims for historical exceptionalism - a patriotic rhetoric that celebrates America while denying the United States a unique position outside of world history. As the scientific field of natural history produced new theories regarding biological extinction, geological transformation, and environmental collapse, American
