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| Additional Physical Format: | Online version: Young, Serinity. Women who fly. New York : Oxford University Press, 2018 (DLC) 2017052609 |
|---|---|
| Document Type: | Book |
| All Authors / Contributors: |
Serinity Young |
| ISBN: | 9780195307887 0195307887 |
| OCLC Number: | 982093061 |
| Description: | xiii, 358 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm |
| Contents: | Introduction : Female flight ; Heroines, freedom, and captivity ; Transcendence and immanence ; Shape-shifting -- Earth, sky, women, and immortality : Earth, sky, and birds ; Magical flight, ascension, and assumption ; Dreams, women, and flying ; Humans, divinities, and birds : Apotheosis; Birds; Bird goddesses -- Part I. Supernatural women : Winged goddesses of sexuality, death, and immortality : Isis ; Women, death, sexuality, and immortality ; The ancient Near East ; Ancient Greece : Athena and the monstrous-feminine; Aphrodite; Nike -- The fall of the Valkyries : Brunhilde in the Volsungs saga ; Images and meanings ; Brunhilde in the Nibelungenlied ; Wagner's Brunhilde -- Swan maidens: captivity and sexuality : Urvaśī ; Images and meanings ; Northern European tales : Tchaikovsky's Swan lake ; Asian swan maidens : Feather robes and dance ; Two Middle Eastern tales : Hasan of Basra; Janshah -- Angels and fairies: male flight and contrary females : Angels and demons ; Fairies : Morgan le Fay; Fairy brides; Asian fairies -- Apsarās: enabling male immortality, part 1 : In Hinduism : Relations with heroes; Seducing ascetics; Kings, Devadāsīs, and fertility ; In Buddhism : Seductresses; The Saundarānanda -- Yoginīs and ḍākinīs: enabling male immortality, part 2 : Tantra ; Yoginīs : Yoginī temples; Practices and stories; Sexual yoga; Taming ; Ḍākinīs : Subduing; Tibetan practitioners -- Part II. Human women : Witches and succubi: male sexual fantasies : Medea ; Ancient witches and sexuality : Circe; The witch of Endor ; Succubi and Incubi ; Witches in Christian Europe : The Witches' sabbath; Women and the demonic; Flying -- Women shamans: fluctuations in female spiritual power : The Nišan shaman ; Becoming a shaman ; Magical flight, ritual dress, and spirit animals ; Gender ; Transvestism and sex change ; Sexuality -- Flying mystics, or the exceptional woman, part I : St. Christian the astonishing ; Flight and sanctity : St. Irene of Chrysobalanton; St. Elisabeth of Schönau ; Female and male mystics : Hadewijch of Brabant -- Flying mystics, or the exceptional woman, part II : Islam : Rābi'ah al-'Adawiyya; Other aerial Ṣūfī women ; Daoism : Sun Bu'er; Daoist beliefs and practices ; Buddhism : Human ḍākinīs; Machig Lapdron and Chod practice -- The aviatrix: nationalism, women, and heroism : Wonder Woman ; Amelia Earhart : Death and the heroine ; Hanna Reitsch ; Women, heroism, and militarism -- Conclusion : The exceptional woman ; Women and war. |
| Responsibility: | Serinity Young. |
Abstract:
"From the beautiful apsaras of Hindu myth to the swan maidens of European fairy tales, stories of flying women-some carried by wings, others by clouds, rainbows, floating scarves, and flying horses-reveal the perennial fascination with and ambivalence about female power and sexuality. In Women Who Fly, Serinity Young examines the motif of the flying woman as it appears in a wide variety of cultures and historical periods, in legends, myths, rituals, sacred narratives, and artistic productions. She considers supernatural women like the Valkyries of Norse legend, who transport men to immortality; winged deities like the Greek goddesses Iris and Nike; figures of terror like the Furies, witches, and succubi; airborne Christian mystics; and wayward, dangerous women like Lilith and Morgan le Fay. Looking beyond the supernatural, Young examines the modern mythology surrounding twentieth-century female aviators like Amelia Earhart and Hanna Reitsch. Throughout, Young demonstrates that female power has always been inextricably linked with female sexuality and that the desire to control it is a pervasive theme in these stories. This is vividly depicted, for example, in the twelfth-century Niebelungenlied, in which the proud warrior-queen Brünnhilde loses her great physical strength when she is tricked into surrendering her virginity. Even in the twentieth-century the same idea is reflected in the exploits of the comic book and film character Wonder Woman who, Young suggests, retains her physical strength only because her love for fellow aviator Steve Trevor goes unrequited."--
Reviews
Publisher Synopsis
Women Who Fly is a novel study likely to interest readers from diverse disciplinary backgrounds. Although this sort of broad-brush cross-cultural and trans-historical overview will always have its pitfalls, it broadens the mind with examples from a rich arrayof contexts and opens the reader up to new possibilities. A valuable source of comparisons, the book will hopefully inspire further, more focused and in-depth studies of women who fly. * Ethan Doyle White, Time and Mind * Young's cross-cultural, multi-period, multidisciplinary and comparative approach to the evidence for flying women successfully introduces disciplinary specialists to examples of the concept of airborne women within cultures or time periods that they probably would not usually investigate. It is also suitable for a general readership. The many examples of flying women examined in this book persuasively demonstrate that the trope of the aerial female, in variousmanifestations, is shared across religions and through time. * Caroline Tully, University of Melbourne, Reading Religion * The strength of Women Who Fly is its broad sweep. Young consults sources that span multiple disciplines[The book] is a good background resource for women's stud-ies projects, literary interpretations, and for an overview of historical representations of women who fly. Students and general readers will find it a baseline for deeper dives into religious and cultural symbols of women. * Nancy Lusignan Schultz, Nova Religio * [Young's] method is encyclopaedic, [ ... ], and in Women Who Fly she has marshalled a wonderful gallery of flyers - a kind of panangelium - from cultures far and wide. * Marina Warner, London Review of Books * The book is crammed full of stories about rebellious women who shunned gravity and convention by taking to the skies... The range and variety of material covered is impressive... An engaging and well-illustrated book. * Ann Kennedy Smith, The Times Literary Supplement * This is in many ways a joy of a book - certainly an unusual joy for an academic feminist book. Without ever resorting to the tedious or impenetrable jargon [...] it delivers a hard-hitting historical analysis in plain, but glowing English ... Every chapter of this book is an eye-opener... * Lynn Pickett, Magonia Review of Books * [Serinity Young is] a well-trained scholar with a strong interest in feminist takes on folklore and literature. I find the project itself to be quite fascinating and I would urge you to go ahead with the book. I appreciate the ambitious nature of the project, covering as it does myth, folktale, opera, and popular culture, not to mention actual female aviators. I do think the book sounds like it is well worth publishing and it ought to appeal to feminists andfolklorists alike." * Alan Dundes, Anthropology and Folklore, University of California, Berkeley * The book is the only one I know on this theme, and it is a marvelous idea: flying women. The scholarship is sound, the organization clear and simple, and the writing lively and confident. I can't think of anything to add or change in any major way." * Wendy Doniger, History of Religion, University of Chicago * Read more...
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Related Subjects:(17)
- Goddesses.
- Wiccans.
- Women mystics.
- Women.
- Supernatural.
- HISTORY -- Women.
- RELIGION -- Sexuality & Gender Studies.
- SOCIAL SCIENCE -- Folklore & Mythology.
- Fliegen
- Frau
- Göttin
- Hexe
- Mystikerin
- Mythologie
- Sagengestalt
- Übernatürliches Wesen
- 71.33 women (sociology)
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