The sea, the sky, the veins of your hands, the earth when photographed from space--blue sometimes seems to overwhelm all the other shades of our world in its all-encompassing presence. The blues of Blue Mythologies include those present in the world's religions, eggs, science, slavery, gender, sex, art, the literary past, and contemporary film. Carol Mavor's engaging and elegiac readings in this beautifully illustrated book take the reader from the blue of a newborn baby's eyes to Giotto's frescoes at Padua, and from the films of Derek Jarman and Krzysztof Ki slowski to the islands of Venice and Aran. In each example Mavor unpicks meaning both above and below the surface of culture. In an echo of Roland Barthes's essays in Mythologies, blue is unleashed as our most familiar and most paradoxical color. At once historical, sociological, literary, and visual, Blue Mythologies gives us a fresh and contemplative look into the traditions, tales, and connotations of those somethings blue.

"This new edition of MYTHOLOGIES is the first complete, authoritative English version of the French classic, Roland Barthes's most emblematic work"--

Audacious and genre-defying, Black and Blue is steeped in melancholy, in the feeling of being blue, or, rather, black and blue, with all the literality of bruised flesh. Roland Barthes and Marcel Proust are inspirations for and subjects of Carol Mavor's exquisite, image-filled rumination on efforts to capture fleeting moments and to comprehend the incomprehensible. At the book's heart are one book and three films—Roland Barthes's Camera Lucida, Chris Marker's La Jetée and Sans soleil, and Marguerite Duras's and Alain Resnais's Hiroshima mon amour—postwar French works that register disturbing truths about loss and regret, and violence and history, through aesthetic refinement. Personal recollections punctuate Mavor's dazzling interpretations of these and many other works of art and criticism. Childhood memories become Proust's "small-scale contrivances," tiny sensations that open onto panoramas. Mavor's mother lost her memory to Alzheimer's, and Black and Blue is framed by the author's memories of her mother and effort to understand what it means to not be recognized by one to whom you were once so known.

Dr. Edwin C. Krupp in his latest book, Beyond the Blue Horizon, examines the myths and legends of the sun, moon, planets, and stars. He addresses questions such as: What is the moon's role in lunacy?; How is a match made in heaven?; and Is Santa Claus a modern shaman? More than 200 black-and-white photos.

Luminous presence: Derek Jarman's life-writing is the first book to analyse the prolific writing of queer icon Derek Jarman. Although he is well known for his avant-garde filmmaking, his garden, and his AIDS activism, he is also the author of over a dozen books, many of which are autobiographical. Much of Jarman's exploration of post-war queer identity and imaginative response to HIV/AIDS can be found in his books, such as the lyrical AIDS diaries Modern Nature and Smiling in Slow Motion. This book fully explores, for the first time, the remarkable range and depth of Jarman’s writing. Spanning his career, Alexandra Parsons argues that Jarman’s self-reflexive response to the HIV/AIDS crisis was critical in changing the cultural terms of queer representation from the 1980s onwards. Luminous presence is of great interest to students, scholars and readers of queer histories in literature, art and film.

A collection of essays on television which focuses on the previewers, the TV magazines, quiz shows, commercial breaks, Top of the Pops, One Man and His Dog, personalities, politicians and continuity announcers.

Taking as its point of departure Roland Barthes' classic series of essays, Mythologies, Rebecca Houze presents an exploration of signs and symbols in the visual landscape of postmodernity. In nine chapters Houze considers a range of contemporary phenomena, from the history of sustainability to the meaning of sports and children's building toys. Among the ubiquitous global trademarks she examines are BP, McDonald's, and Nike. What do these icons say to us today? What political and ideological messages are hidden beneath their surfaces? Taking the idea of myth in its broadest sense, the individual case studies employ a variety of analytic methods derived from linguistics, psychoanalysis, anthropology, sociology, and art history. In their eclecticism of approach they demonstrate the interdisciplinarity of design history and design studies. Just as Barthes' meditations on culture concentrated on his native France, New Mythologies is rooted in the author's experience of living and teaching in the United States. Houze's reflections encompass both contemporary American popular culture and the history of American industry, with reference to such foundational figures as Thomas Jefferson and Walt Disney. The collection provides a point of entry into today's complex postmodern or post-postmodern world, and suggests some ways of thinking about its meanings, and the lessons we might learn from it.

Lending support to the search for the roots of the Altaic language family and pushing forward the field of Altaic mythologies and related topics, this comprehensive study of the early beliefs of China’s Altaic peoples is the first thorough, systematic academic treatment in this, as yet, underdeveloped research field. While discussing nine types of Altaic mythologies, A Comparative Study of Altaic Mythologies in China uses primary sources in several languages to explore Altaic myths’ origins, development over centuries, lineage relationships, and external influences. For this purpose, it compares the mythologies of various ethnic groups within the Altaic language family, Altaic mythologies with those of other cross-language and cross-cultural ethnic groups having direct, indirect or even no cultural exchanges with them in history, as well as Altaic mythologies with folklore, religion and other interdisciplinary domains of Altaic Studies by applying the theories and methods of comparative literature studies, comparative folklore studies and comparative mythology to a vast collection of mythological materials. As wide-ranging as it is deeply researched, this serious exploration of Altaic Studies breaks the boundaries of the previously closed research model, expands theoretical horizons, broadens the research scope, introduces a new mechanism for understanding myths and co-cultures of the Altaic language family, and offers insight toward the reconstruction of Proto-Altaic Mythology.

The first major literary and cultural history of color in America, 1880–1930 Chromographia tells the story of how color became modern and how literature, by engaging with modern color, became modernist. From the vivid pictures in children’s books to the bold hues of abstract painting, from psychological theories of perception to the synthetic dyes that brightened commercial goods, color concerned both the material stuff of modernity and its theoretical and artistic formulations. Chromographia spans these diverse practices to reveal the widespread effects on U.S. literature and culture of the chromatic revolution that unfolded at the turn of the twentieth century. In analyzing color experience through the lens of U.S. writers (including Charlotte Perkins Gilman, L. Frank Baum, Stephen Crane, Charles Chesnutt, Gertrude Stein, Nella Larsen, and William Carlos Williams), Chromographia argues that modern aesthetic techniques are inseparable from the theories and technologies that drove modern color. Nicholas Gaskill shows how literature registered the social worlds within which chromatic technologies emerged, and also experimented with the ideas about perception, language, and the sensory environment that accompanied their proliferation. Chromographia is the only study of modern color in U.S. literature. It presents a new reading of perception in literature and a theory of experience that uses color to move beyond the usual divisions of modern thought.

Stories about Krishna are told all over India, and his particular appeal is vividly captured by this collection. Krishna has always been a favourite with children, who have for centuries enjoyed the exciting and dramatic adventures of this brave and handsome young god. He was born to fight evil and help the good, but behaved too like any other child, being naughty and cheeky, and often getting into trouble. Krishna lived life on a grand scale, battling with demons and monsters of all kinds; yet he also stole butter and teased village girls. Marilyn Heeger's illustrations highlight the rich variety of events in the young god's life, and the stories will help children to understand the differences between good and evil. The rhythm and beauty of these tales will surely delight both young and old.