Search results for ""Epic""

TUNE INTO THE WISDOM OF YOUR MIND, BODY AND SOUL.In this hands-on guide to living well, Isabelle Cornish will inspire you to discover your true power within - by listening to your heart, being comfortable with your vulnerabilities and picking yourself up every time you fall down.Informed by Isabelle's personal journey and her passion for health and fitness, and drawing on her experiences as an actor, yoga teacher, personal trainer and health coach, The Why is a complete wellness toolkit for modern life.

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Welcome back to Planet Omar! The fourth book in Zanib Mian's laugh-out-loud series, with amazing cartoon-style illustrations. Perfect for fans of Tom Gates and Wimpy Kid.When Omar's best friend Daniel messes up at school, Omar decides to take the blame to save him from getting in trouble - which makes him feel like a hero! With this taste of heroism, Omar takes the blame for a couple of small things other kids in the class have done - without realising that when something more serious happens, the signs will point to him since he's been so unusually troublesome. The teachers are SURE the culprit must be Omar. Can his friends prove his innocence and show that he wasn't responsible for the chaos?*Zanib Mian is a World Book Day author for 2021 with her Planet Omar title, Operation Kind.*Have you read the first book in the series, Accidental Trouble Magnet? Love Reading 4 Kids called it 'irresistible reading!'

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Adventures of all kinds as the X-Men battle throuh realms and stories with swashbuckling fantasy and futuristic sci-fi! Swords and sorcery, mutant style! Finding themselves in the middle of a barbarian nightmare, can the X-Men, Avengers and Spider-Man restore the world? Things are no less mystical for the X-Men and Alpha Flight when the trickster god Loki offers a gift to the people of Earth - but, big surprise, it comes with a price! And blade in hand, Nightcrawler swashbuckles his way through an other-dimensional solo adventure! Enough fantasy for you? How about sci-fi, courtesy of Lockheed the Space Dragon and the time-tossed future Sentinel known as Nimrod? And for fans of good, old-fashioned super heroics, Power Pack meets Wolverine - and the Juggernaut''s back in town! Collecting: Uncanny X-Men (1981) #189-198, X-Men Annual (1970) #8, X-Men and Alpha Flight (1985) #1-2 and Nightcrawler (1985) #1-4

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Two thousand years ago the Roman poet Virgil related the adventures of a hero called Aeneas. He was a man who escaped from the burning ruins of Troy and, 'driven by Fate', led his people to a new home in a distant land. The story of Aeneas and the founding of Rome has excitement and adventure, magic and romance, humour and sadness. Emily Frenkel's retelling is fresh and direct. Simon Weller's illustrations are fabulous. Enter the ancient world of Aeneas. You will never want to leave.

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The Italian romance epic of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, with its multitude of characters, complex plots, and roots in medieval Carolingian and Arthurian chivalric romances, was a form popular with courtly and urban audiences. In the hands of writers such as Boiardo, Ariosto, and Tasso, works of remarkable sophistication that combined high seriousness and low comedy were created. Their works went on to influence Cervantes, Milton, Ronsard, Shakespeare, and Spenser.In this volume, instructors will find ideas for teaching the Italian Renaissance romance epic along with its adaptations in film, theater, visual art, and music. An extensive resources section locates primary texts online and lists critical studies, anthologies, and reference works.

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Part of a new series created for the modern reader, introducing the heroes, cultures, myths and religions of the world, this is the epic story of Julius Caesar who was born in 100 BCE, eventually becoming one of the most influential leaders in history. After a bloody civil war, where famously he crossed the Rubicon with his army, he defeated Pompey and the Republicans and was appointed as dictator of Rome, preparing the path for the Imperial might of the Roman Empire. He died at the hands of Cassius and Brutus on the Ides of March in 44 BC and centuries later his life was immortalized by Shakespeare. From myth to mystery, the supernatural to horror, fantasy and science fiction FLAME TREE 451 offers tales, myths and epic literature from the beginnings of humankind, through the medieval era to the stories of imagination and dark romance of today.

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This new selection of myths offers a broad insight into the nature and lifestyle of the ancestral lands of the Native American tribes that once stretched from the tip of Alaska, down to the Bay of Mexico. Hundreds of languages, with traditions and folkore, grew independently across the continent, flourishing in deserts, mountains and lush valleys of a vast land. The loss of such ancient traditions is a reminder of the damage humans can wreak through ignorance, desperation and greed, as settlers from Europe swept imperiously across the newly discovered, but long-populated lands of the so-called New World. From ‘The Great Deeds of Michabo’ to ‘The Legend of Hiawatha’, from trickster creator-deities, heroes and supernatural beings to epic voyages and an affinity with animals, there is so much to discover in this comprehensive new book. It’s the latest addition to Flame Tree’s Epic Tales series of deluxe anthologies and brings together a thoughtful selection of myths and tales from across the ancient plains of North America.

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The authoritative new translation of the epic Ramayana, as retold by the sixteenth-century poet Tulsidas and cherished by millions to this day.The Epic of Ram presents a new translation of the Rāmcaritmānas of Tulsidas (1543–1623). Written in Avadhi, a literary dialect of classical Hindi, the poem has become the most beloved retelling of the ancient Ramayana story across northern India. A devotional work revered and recited by millions of Hindus today, it is also a magisterial compendium of philosophy and lore and a literary masterpiece.The third volume details the turbulent events surrounding the scheming of Prince Ram’s stepmother, who thwarts his installation on the throne of Avadh. Ram calmly accepts fourteen years of forest exile and begins his journey through the wilderness accompanied by his wife, Sita, and younger brother Lakshman. As they walk the long road, their beauty and serenity bring joy to villagers and sages dwelling in the forest.This new translation into free verse conveys the passion and momentum of the inspired poet and storyteller. It is accompanied by the most widely accepted edition of the Avadhi text, presented in the Devanagari script.

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When super cheerful Stick and grumpy stuffed bunny Huggie get thrown from a backpack, the adventure is on! Together this odd couple survives encounters with sea-faring pirates, raging rhinos in Africa, sword-wielding royalty in Europe, stick-eating panda bears in Asia, sharks in Australia, hungry penguins in Antarctica, and piranhas in South America - all before finally making it home to North America. A fantastically funny read-aloud about two unlikely friends and their epic journey around the world.

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The development of epic theater before, during, and after Brecht's time, and analysis of epic productions, showing the form's continued relevance. Bertolt Brecht and the director Erwin Piscator developed epic theater in the 1920s because they found Western realism limited to the single perspective of an individual, and thus unable to confront the new realities: technologicalwarfare, revolution, the metropolis, and the mass media, among others. The epic stage juxtaposed the old media of actors and scenery with new media, including film, photography, and electronic sound. Bryant-Bertail provides analyses of theatrical productions in the epic tradition from before, during, and after Brecht's lifetime: Hasek's The Good Soldier Schwejk directed by Piscator; Mother Courage written and directed by Brecht; Lenz's The Tutor directed by Brecht; Ibsen's Peer Gynt in productions directed by Peter Stein and Rustom Bharucha; Büchner's Leon and Lena (& Lenz) directed by JoAnne Akalaitis; and Les Atrides (The House of Atreus) from Aeschylus and Euripides, directed by Ariane Mnouchkine. Bryant-Bertail shows that epic theater's relevance for politically engaged artists lies in its discovery that history, fate, and human nature are spatio-temporal constructs that may be reconstructed on stage. Sarah Bryant-Bertail is associate professor in the School of Drama at the University of Washington.

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Shortlisted for the Stanford Dolman Travel Book of the Year 2020'A thought-provoking treatise interwoven with blistered-feet-on-the-ground accounts of spots both pretty and gritty' National Geographic'Compelling, thought-provoking, and courageous, this epic-poetic journey peels back layers of collective emotional and imaginative inheritance. Jubber gets under the skin of our complicated continent and his timing is dead right' Kapka Kassabova'A genuine epic' Wanderlust'The prose is colourful and vigorous...Jubber's journeying has indeed been epic, in scale and ambition. In this thoughtful travelogue he has woven together colourful ancient and modern threads into a European tapestry that combines the sombre and the sparkling' Spectator'Epic Continent sets out on a physical and mythological journey to uncover what it means to be European' GeographicalThese are the stories that made Europe.Reaching back into the ancient and medieval eras in which these defining works were produced, and investigating their continuing influence today, Epic Continent explores how matters of honour, fundamentalism, fate, nationhood, sex, class and politics have preoccupied the people of Europe across the millennia. In these tales soaked in blood and fire, Nicholas Jubber discovers how the world of gods and emperors, dragons and water maidens, knights and princesses made our own: their deep impact on European identity, and their resonance in our turbulent times.Journeying from Turkey to Iceland, award-winning travel writer Nicholas Jubber takes us on a fascinating adventure through our continent's most enduring epic poems to learn how they were shaped by their times, and how they have since shaped us.

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A new title in the series created for the modern reader, introducing the heroes, cultures, myths and religions of the world. The tale of the legendary Mongol General Genghis Khan is as phenomenal as the man himself. Probably the greatest conqueror in history, he ruled vast swathes of land in the early 1200s, vanquishing people across Asia and Europe, so that by the mid-1200s the Mongol Empire covered over 12 million square miles of land. From myth to mystery, the supernatural to horror, fantasy and science fiction FLAME TREE 451 offers tales, myths and epic literature from the beginnings of humankind, through the medieval era to the stories of imagination and dark romance of today.

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Understanding an epic story’s key belief patterns can reveal community-level values, the nature of familial bonds, and how divine and human concerns jockey for power and influence. These foundational motifs remain understudied as they relate to South Asian folk legends, but are nonetheless crucial in shaping the values exemplified by such stories’ central heroes and heroines. In Hidden Paradigms, anthropologist Brenda E.F. Beck describes The Legend of Ponnivala, an oral epic from rural South India. Recorded in 1965, this story was sung to a group of village enthusiasts by a respected pair of local bards. This grand legend took more than thirty-eight hours to complete over eighteen nights. Bringing this unique example of Tamil culture to the attention of an international audience, Beck compares this virtually unknown South Indian epic to five other culturally significant works – the Ojibwa Nanabush cycle, the Mahabharata, an Icelandic Saga, the Bible, and the Epic of Gilgamesh – establishing this foundational Tamil story as one that engages with the same universal human struggles and themes present throughout the world. Copiously illustrated, Hidden Paradigms provides a fresh example of the power of comparative thinking, offering a humanistic complement to scientific reasoning.

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This large-format, comprehensive book offers the itineraries of a lifetime for explorers and adrenaline junkies alike, from navigating class-five rapids through the Grand Canyon to tubing the glow worm caves of New Zealand to parasailing over the hills of Cartagena. Written by the father of adventure travel, Expedia founder Richard Bangs, and featuring more than 300 vivid photographs, each of the 100 itineraries in this inspirational guide reveals the planet's best destinations for hikers, skiers, divers, rafters, and more. Featuring more than 20 top-ten lists covering everything from the world's best hiking trails to the top wildlife parks, you'll also learn everything you need to know for the ultimate epic journey: what to pack, when to go, and what to do. Blending adventure with cultural experiences--for example, a safari through Madagascar or visiting the ruins of Buddhist temples after sea kayaking the warm waters of Vietnam--this one-of-a-kind collection will lead you to new heights of exploration.

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The first English translation of a strange and unusual Persian epic, this action-packed tale of an evil, monstrous king explores questions of nature and nurture and brings the global middle ages to life. The great Persian epic known as the Kushnameh follows the entangled lives of Kush the Tusked––a monstrous antihero with tusks and ears like an elephant, descended from the evil emperor Zahhak––and Abtin, the exiled grandson of the last true Persian emperor. Abandoned at birth in the forests of China and raised by Abtin, Kush grows into a powerful and devious warrior. Kush and his foes scheme and wage war across a global stage reaching from Spain and Africa to China and Korea. Between epic battles and magnificent feasts are disturbing, sometimes realistic portrayals of abuse and oppression and philosophical speculation about nature and nurture and the origins of civilization. A fantastical adventure story stretching across the known world and a literary classic of unparalleled richness, this important work of medieval Persian literature is a valuable source for understanding the history of racism and constructions of race and the flows of lore and legend from the Central Asian Silk Road and the Sahara to the sea routes of the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean. The Kushnameh is a treasure trove of Islamic and pre-Islamic Persian cultural history and a striking contemporary document of the “global middle ages,” now available to English-speaking readers for the first time.

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The world's oldest work of literature, the Epic of Gilgamesh recounts the adventures of the semimythical Sumerian king of Uruk and his ultimately futile quest for immortality after the death of his friend and companion, Enkidu, a wildman sent by the gods. Gilgamesh was deified by the Sumerians around 2500 BCE, and his tale as we know it today was codified in cuneiform tablets around 1750 BCE and continued to influence ancient cultures—whether in specific incidents like a world-consuming flood or in its quest structure—into Roman times. The epic was, however, largely forgotten, until the cuneiform tablets were rediscovered in 1872 in the British Museum's collection of recently unearthed Mesopotamian artifacts. In the decades that followed its translation into modern languages, the Epic of Gilgamesh has become a point of reference throughout Western culture. In Gilgamesh among Us, Theodore Ziolkowski explores the surprising legacy of the poem and its hero, as well as the epic's continuing influence in modern letters and arts. This influence extends from Carl Gustav Jung and Rainer Maria Rilke's early embrace of the epic's significance—"Gilgamesh is tremendous!" Rilke wrote to his publisher's wife after reading it—to its appropriation since World War II in contexts as disparate as operas and paintings, the poetry of Charles Olson and Louis Zukofsky, novels by John Gardner and Philip Roth, and episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation and Xena: Warrior Princess. Ziolkowski sees fascination with Gilgamesh as a reflection of eternal spiritual values—love, friendship, courage, and the fear and acceptance of death. Noted writers, musicians, and artists from Sweden to Spain, from the United States to Australia, have adapted the story in ways that meet the social and artistic trends of the times. The spirit of this capacious hero has absorbed the losses felt in the immediate postwar period and been infused with the excitement and optimism of movements for gay rights, feminism, and environmental consciousness. Gilgamesh is at once a seismograph of shifts in Western history and culture and a testament to the verities and values of the ancient epic.

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Although the Renaissance epic was one of the principal literary means of representing war in its time, modern readers of the epic may often lack a basic understanding of the history of warfare. The author aims to bring an understanding of both the history of literature and the history of warfare to this study of the epic. Analyzing English, Italian and Iberian epics published between 1483 and 1610, Murrin focuses on particular aspects of warfare (cavalry clashes, old and new style sieges, the tactical use of the gun, naval warfare) and the responses to them by authors from Malory to Milton. Throughout, Murrin traces a parallel development in the art of war and in the epic as it emerged from the romance. Murrin demonstrates that with technology and increasing levels of carnage, the practice of war gradually drifted from traditional epic modes. However, before changes in warfare completely doomed the tradition in which the epic was rooted, this crisis provoked a range of experiment which marks heroic narrative in the late Renaissance and ultimately led to the epic without war.

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'A grand epic' Chloe GongOnly she can face the Storm . . . Vesper Vale is the daughter of revolutionaries. Failed revolutionaries. Since the Queen sentenced her mother to death by a deadly Storm that curses everyone it touches, Vesper and her father have been on the run. So when the queen's soldiers - led by paranoid Prince Dalca - catch up to them, Vesper will do whatever it takes to keep her father from sharing her mother's cruel fate. Even arm herself with her father's book of dangerous experimental magic. Even infiltrate the prince's elite squad of soldier-sorcerers. Even cheat her way into his cold heart. But when Vesper learns that there's more to the story of her mother's death, and that her home is in dire peril, she has little choice: trust the devious prince with her family's secrets, or follow her mother's footsteps into the Storm . . .'Enchanting and wildly clever' Ayana Gray'Wild and thrilling' Adalyn Grace

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THE WORLD'S FAVOURITE AUTHORONE BILLION COPIES SOLDWhat if falling in love means learning who to trust?Bettina Daniels has it all. Pampered, adored and adorable, she has youth, beauty and the most glamorous of lifestyles. Everything her father's love, fame and money can buy.Then, without warning, her father is gone. Bettina is left with a mountain of debts and no one to pick up the pieces. Lost and lonely in a difficult new life, Bettina must learn to take her own chances. But can she resist the promises of strangers . . . however tempting they might be?An epic and romantic tale from one of the best-loved writers of all time. Perfect for fans of Penny Vincenzi, Lucinda Riley and Maeve Binchy.PRAISE FOR DANIELLE STEEL:'Emotional and gripping . . . I was left in no doubt as to the reasons behind Steel's multi-million sales around the world' DAILY MAIL'Danielle Steel is undeniably an expert' NEW YORK TIMES

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THE WORLD'S FAVOURITE AUTHORONE BILLION COPIES SOLDFrom shattered dreams to lasting love . . .Every time Samantha went back to the flat, John's words rang through her head :'I can't live with you any more - I've got to get out.' He's been seeing another woman, and now she was promising him the one thing Sam couldn't give: a child. The man she had shared her life with, her love and her laughter, had lied to her.When the agency gave her four months on a ranch she thought they were crazy. Did they think a holiday would change her? She knew she was wild and untamable, a lone free Palomino - until she met the man who could break any horse on the range and entered a world of endless and enduring love . . .An epic and romantic tale from one of the best-loved writers of all time. Perfect for fans of Penny Vincenzi, Lucinda Riley and Maeve BinchyPRAISE FOR DANIELLE STEEL:'Emotional and gripping . . . I was left in no doubt as to the reasons behind Steel's multi-million sales around the world' DAILY MAIL'Danielle Steel is undeniably an expert' NEW YORK TIMES

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Odysseus has been away from home for many years, and he is finally making his way back to his family on the island of Ithaca.It will be a dangerous journey and on the way he'll face treacherous challenges of all kinds. If you're feeling brave enough, step aboard his ship and help him on his way!

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It's a battle of the famous strongman versus the great protector. The Roman god Hercules is known for his tremendous strength and determination. Norse god Thor is fearless and commands lighting, thunder and storms. If these two heroes were to go head-to-head, who would come out on top? Compare and contrast Thor’s and Hercules’s strengths and weaknesses in this Mythology Matchup.

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