Research in Cryptozoology: Dragon Resources

We have always conjured up creatures never seen in nature, from flying horses and two-headed birds to fire-breathing dragons and enormous killer skunks, as well as fantastic distortions of our own image, from giants to nubile maidens. In these pages you will meet extraordinary beings from Hindu and Navajo religions, Scandinavian tales, Russian folklore, Lithuanian stories, Irish oral history, American tall tales, and Aztec myth. Just some of the monstrous entourage:• Baku, a benevolent Japanese monster with the body of a horse, the head of a lion, and the legs of a tiger, who helps people by devouring their nightmares.• Kurma, the giant tortoise of Hindu myth, whose upper shell forms the heavens and lower part the earth.• Missipissy, the feared fish serpent of North America's Great Lakes region.This illustrated encyclopedia not only identifies and describes individual beasts in their cultural context but also groups them together across cultures and discusses common mythological strands and conceits.

Presents an introduction to dragonology that includes spells for catching dragons, their natural history, and descriptions of legendary dragons and dragonslayers.

Twelve intriguing mini models in the most deluxe field guide yet — an irresistible hands-on resource for devoted dragonologists!

Even skilled dragonologists need special preparation to study in the field. What if an unfamiliar species should approach? Now an impressive guide highlights nineteen different dragon species, many seen here for the first time. Focused on species from the obscure tree-climbing monkey dragon to the better-known wyvern and amphithere, each entry details size, shape, coloration, habitat, the appearance of eggs and young, and (most important) form of attack. To help readers recognize dragons in the wild, mini models of twelve of the species await assembly, each tucked in its own pocket and complete with its own stand.

In China, there are many fantastic stories and legends about the dragon, and this collection contains 35 of the finest classical and modern examples. The Rakshas and the Sea Market and The Princess of the West Lake, both by the well-known Qing Dynasty writer, Pu Songling, tell of the wonders of a dragon palace and of love between dragons and human beings. These intriguing tales reflect the rich imagination and long history of the Chinese people.

"The aim of Gold-Hall and Earth-Dragon is to recreate as fully as possible for modern readers the original force of the poetic language of Beowulf. Alvin Lee makes use of a wide, archetypal literary context for Beowulf to provide illuminating parallels and contrasts with poems and fictions from other times and places. He demonstrates how the poem's symbolic system reveals itself through the metaphorical workings of the Old English words, patterns of imagery, and more general narrative structures, and how the poem might have been experienced and interpreted by the Anglo-Saxons in the light of other Old English poems. The critical tools that Lee uses - combining certain techniques of New Criticism and close reading with postmodern theories of the self-referentiality of language and with Northrop Frye's conceptions of structure and polysemy in literature - make possible a fresh new account of Beowulf as a work that is very much alive in its poetic language, a finely wrought symbolic work of imagining, still resonant with meanings old and new."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved