Documents the burial process throughout the centuries and in different cultures.

Thus Spoke Zarathustra is Nietzsche's most problematic text. There appears to be no thematic connection between its four Parts and numerous sections. To make it even worse, the book contains a number of thematic contradictions. The standard approach has been a method of selective reading, that is, most critics select a few brilliant passages for edification and ignore the rest. This approach has turned Nietzsche's text into a collection of disjointed fragments. Going against this prevalent approach, T.K. Seung presents the first unified reading of the whole book. He reads it as the record of Zarathustra's epic journey to find spiritual values in the secular world. The alleged thematic contradictions of the text are shown to indicate the turns and twists that are dictated by the hero's epic battle against his formidable opponent. His heroic struggle is eventually resolved by the power of a pantheistic nature-religion. Thus Nietzsche's ostensibly atheistic work turns out to be a highly religious text. The author uncovers this epic plot by reading Nietzsche's text as a baffling series of riddles and puzzles. Hence his reading is not only edifying but also breathtaking. In this unprecedented enterprise, the author takes a complex interdisciplinary approach, engaging the five disciplines of philosophy, psychology, religious studies, literary analysis, and cultural history.

The young people of the Cameroon Grassfields have been subject to a long history of violence and political marginalization. For centuries the main victims of the slave trade, they became prime targets for forced labor campaigns under a series of colonial rulers. Today’s youth remain at the bottom of the fiercely hierarchical and polarized societies of the Grassfields, and it is their response to centuries of exploitation that Nicolas Argenti takes up in this absorbing and original book. Beginning his study with a political analysis of youth in the Grassfields from the eighteenth century to the present, Argenti pays special attention to the repeated violent revolts staged by young victims of political oppression. He then combines this history with extensive ethnographic fieldwork in the Oku chiefdom, discovering that the specter of past violence lives on in the masked dance performances that have earned intense devotion from today’s youth. Argenti contends that by evoking the imagery of past cataclysmic events, these masquerades allow young Oku men and women to address the inequities they face in their relations with elders and state authorities today.

This carefully crafted ebook: "THE VALOIS TRILOGY: Queen Margot, Chicot de Jester & The Forty-Five Guardsmen" is formatted for your eReader with a functional and detailed table of contents. The Valois Trilogy covers the historical context of French Wars of Religion, during the Valois dynasty. The trilogy contains novels Marguerite de Valois (The Reine Margot), Chicot de Jester (La Dame de Monsoreau) and The Forty-Five Guardsmen. Marguerite de Valois or La Reine Margot is a historical novel set in Paris in August 1572 during the reign of Charles IX. The novel's protagonist is Marguerite de Valois, better known as Margot, daughter of the deceased Henry II and the infamous scheming Catholic power player Catherine de Medici. Chicot de Jester or La Dame de Monsoreau is concerned with fraternal royal strife at the court of Henri III. Tragically caught between the millstones of history are the gallant Count de Bussy and the woman he adores, la Dame de Monsoreau. The action takes place between February and September 1578, six years after the massacre of St. Bartholomew with which La Reine Margot begins. The Forty-Five Guardsmen is the third and final novel of the trilogy of Valois. The action takes place between 1585 and 1586, thirteen years after the massacre of St. Bartholomew. Having succeeded his brother Charles IX, Henry III reigned for ten years without being able to calm the political and religious agitation that delivers the kingdom to factions. Alexandre Dumas, père (1802-1870) was a French writer whose works have been translated into nearly 100 languages and he is one of the most widely read French authors. His most famous works are The Count of Monte Cristo and The Three Musketeers.

Examines the key role played by Nietzsche in the undoing of the Hegelian system of totality.

The Jester and the Sages approaches the life and work of Mark Twain by placing him in conversation with three eminent philosophers of his time—Friedrich Nietzsche, Sigmund Freud, and Karl Marx. Unprecedented in Twain scholarship, this interdisciplinary analysis by Forrest G. Robinson, Gabriel Noah Brahm Jr., and Catherine Carlstroem rescues the American genius from his role as funny-man by exploring how his reflections on religion, politics, philosophy, morality, and social issues overlap the philosophers’ developed thoughts on these subjects. Remarkably, they had much in common. During their lifetimes, Twain, Nietzsche, Freud, and Marx witnessed massive upheavals in Western constructions of religion, morality, history, political economy, and human nature. The foundations of reality had been shaken, and one did not need to be a philosopher—nor did one even need to read philosophy—to weigh in on what this all might mean. Drawing on a wide range of primary and secondary materials, the authors show that Twain was well attuned to debates of the time. Unlike his Continental contemporaries, however, he was not as systematic in developing his views. Brahm and Robinson’s chapter on Nietzsche and Twain reveals their subjects’ common defiance of the moral and religious truisms of their time. Both desired freedom, resented the constraints of Christian civilization, and saw punishing guilt as the disease of modern man. Pervasive moral evasion and bland conformity were the principal end result, they believed. In addition to a continuing focus on guilt, Robinson discovers in his chapter on Freud and Twain that the two men shared a lifelong fascination with the mysteries of the human mind. From the formative influence of childhood and repression, to dreams and the unconscious, the mind could free people or keep them in perpetual chains. The realm of the unconscious was of special interest to both men as it pertained to the creation of art. In the final chapter, Carlstroem and Robinson explain that, despite significant differences in their views of human nature, history, and progress, Twain and Marx were both profoundly disturbed by economic and social injustice in the world. Of particular concern was the gulf that industrial capitalism opened between the privileged elite property owners and the vast class of property-less workers. Moralists impatient with conventional morality, Twain and Marx wanted to free ordinary people from the illusions that enslaved them. Twain did not know the work's of Nietzsche, Freud, and Marx well, yet many of his thoughts cross those of his philosophical contemporaries. By focusing on the deeper aspects of Twain’s intellectual makeup, Robinson, Brahm, and Carlstroem supplement the traditional appreciation of the forces that drove Twain’s creativity and the dynamics of his humor.

James Crissman explores cultural traits related to death and dying in Appalachian sections of Tennessee, Virginia, Kentucky, North Carolina, and West Virginia, showing how they have changed since the 1600s. Relying on archival materials, almost forty photographs, and interviews with more than 400 mountain dwellers, Crissman focuses on the importance of family and "neighborliness" in mountain society. Written for both scholarly and general audiences, the book contains sections on the death watch, body preparation, selection or construction of a coffin or casket, digging the grave by hand, the wake, the funeral, and other topics. Crissman then demonstrates how technology and the encroachment of American society have turned these vital traditions into the disappearing practices of the past.

Enigmatarium is story founded on light and darkness. It begins with Jack, a young man who is the victim of a magic beyond his imagining. This magic has come to be known as the Jester Spell. It is a spell that transforms its victim into a deformed marionette. This is but the first knife to cut away a shroud covering his entire world. As time passes for him and as new characters come into his life, he begins to realize that truth becomes the only pursuit in a world that continually changes, a place where evil becomes good, enemy becomes friend and each new lie creates a seemingly endless prison of twists and turns. Together with some unlikely friends, they all strive to unravel the secrets of the Enigmatarium. But some secrets, they learn, are far more terrifying than anything they could ever fathom. And just when they think they may have figured it out, tragedy finds a way into their hearts. The Enigmatarium is a place where reality and fantasy combine with no clear boundaries, where time spans centuries, where magic and death go hand in hand with life and loss. And just as one world must endure its Onyx ruler, another world is simultaneously being governed by one of Pearl. Take the journey, play the game, trust no one and enter the Enigmatarium. It is waiting to welcome you to your fantasy.

This eBook features the unabridged text of ‘Chicot the Jester’ from the bestselling edition of ‘The Collected Works of Alexandre Dumas’. Having established their name as the leading publisher of classic literature and art, Delphi Classics produce publications that are individually crafted with superior formatting, while introducing many rare texts for the first time in digital print. The Delphi Classics edition of Dumas includes original annotations and illustrations relating to the life and works of the author, as well as individual tables of contents, allowing you to navigate eBooks quickly and easily. eBook features: * The complete unabridged text of ‘Chicot the Jester’ * Beautifully illustrated with images related to Dumas’s works * Individual contents table, allowing easy navigation around the eBook * Excellent formatting of the textPlease visit www.delphiclassics.com to learn more about our wide range of titles