Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Magic Books'

Thesis (MA--Art and Design) -- Auckland University of Technology, 2003.
On cover : 2004 Also held in print (37 leaves : col. ill. ; 30 cm. + CD-ROM) in Wellesley Theses Collection (T 709.93074 AUS)

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Nevada, Reno, 2008.
"August, 2008." Includes bibliographical references (leaves 86-88). Library also has microfilm. Ann Arbor, Mich. : ProQuest Information and Learning Company, [2009]. 1 microfilm reel ; 35 mm. Online version available on the World Wide Web.

This thesis examines adaptations of Thomas Malory’s 'Morte Darthur' produced for children between 1862 and 1960. It aims to interrogate the complex link between children and the Arthurian legend that has existed since J. T. Knowles’s first adaptation for a juvenile audience in 1862, and which remains strong today. By comparing authors’ alterations to their medieval source, I explore the ‘child’ as a discursive construct, as a mutable and protean category that is equally revelatory of assumptions about adult identity as about childhood itself. Tracing adaptations of the 'Morte' chronologically, I examine the ways in which they participate in wider cultural dialogues relating to national heritage, citizenship, mental health and masculine development through their representations of childhood. Against the backdrop of empire, changes in educational policy, the increasing application of psychology to childcare and two world wars, the diverse ways in which this versatile text is offered as relevant to children illuminates both shifting conceptions of childhood and the complex relationship between adapters and their imagined child readers. This study contributes to enquiries regarding the refashioning of Arthur and the function and manifestation of medievalism, and to studies of children’s literature, by illuminating the ways in which the elusive ‘child’ has been used to focus shifting perceptions regarding the essence and significance of the Arthurian legend over a century.

This thesis is a collection of nine short stories about real people dealing with unreal problems. In one story, a small-town man answers a knock at his door, only to find three wisemen, who have followed a star and proclaimed him as their new messiah. In another, a reporter travels across the snowy length of Canada looking to interview people who have witnessed the Virgin Mary materialize above Toronto. Deranged Egyptologists, vampires with diseased blood, wacky witches, and unhappy mediums all inhabit tales whose landscapes span the distance between Chattanooga, Tennessee and the afterlife.

In my diploma I continue in the topic which I solved in my theoretical part of diploma. I study that "Fantastical moment" in practise. I am interested in its uprise or creation, in its character in memories of other people and in its evoking. The book is documentation of my collecting work and also of my secret interventions in personal places of my kith and kin which are hardly accesible by spectator. The book (or issue) is set in 4 pieces. In ideal case I would like to edit it in about 100 pieces and distribute it in galerie´s shops. In this way it would be possible to lent it in some chosen places in Brno.

This thesis is an intensive, multi-layered analysis of an unpublished, English language, handwritten, mid-20th century manuscript. Originally undated, untitled and unsigned, it has now been positively identified as “Text A”, a Wiccan proto-Book of Shadows compiled by Gerald Brosseau Gardner (1884-1964) in the last half of the 1940’s. Different methodologies were applied to the document: transcription using Leiden conventions, handwriting analysis to identify the author, archival research to uncover photographs of the manuscript in use, historical and bibliographical research to situate the manuscript and its author, and finally, an in-depth and exhaustive source analysis to uncover literary and documentary influences on the text. Subsequently, the manuscript was identified as handwritten by Gerald Gardner, from 1940 to 1949, and contains almost no original material other than a handful of pages for a speech or oral presentation. The rest of the document is comprised of extracts from published sources available to Gardner. These include books on Free Masonry, Templars, British Folklore, Kabbalah, Magic – ancient and ceremonial, and books by Aleister Crowley. The document also includes ritual passages and ceremonies, most of which also appear in Gardner’s published novel, High Magic’s Aid. Two theme-lines, “Magic – ancient and ceremonial” and “the writings of Aleiser Crowley”, comprising almost 40% of the total page count, were chosen for thorough analysis. Based on the information revealed by the various methodologies applied to this document, one can assert that Gardner’s claims to have been initiated into an ancient indigenous tradition, Wicca, and to be making available its long secret rituals are not supported by this document.

碩士
國立臺灣師範大學
翻譯研究所
105
Considerable research has been conducted on the translation of children’s literature, yet research regarding translation of children’s science books is relatively scarce. In Taiwan, children’s science books have experienced a steady increase in publication, a majority of which are translation books and have come in various formats and genres. To fill this gap in translation studies, this thesis is themed as a case study of the introduction and translation of “The Magic School Bus Classics” in Taiwan to cast light on the translation of children’s science book in Taiwan. The study obtained first-hand information by comparing the source text and the translation text of The Magic School Bus Classics as well as interviewing the chief editor and two of the translators of the series. The whole translation process of The Magic School Bus Classics is viewed as a “translational action” driven by a clear purpose and is analyzed with the text analysis model proposed by Christiane Nord. The study first analyzes the extratextual factors in order to predict the possible transfers that would be made in translation. Then the study analyzes the intratextual features of the translation to see how these features correspond with the prediction made according to the analysis of the extratextual factors. Through the analysis, the study aims to reveal how foreign children’s science books are introduced and translated to readers in Taiwan, and what translation strategies and features can be found in translated children’s science books.

碩士
南臺科技大學
應用英語系
105
This study investigates the lexical coverage and word frequency of children book series, Magic Tree House, to understand if they are appropriate reading materials for EFL elementary students to reach adequate reading comprehension. The series of books are divided into two sections: book 1-28, and book 29-55. Book 1-28 are considered the most popular and original, which will be explored in this study by using corpus analysis programs, AntConc and AntWordProfiler. Also, a word level list of BNC/COCA word list and a MOE 1,200 word list will be used in the study. Major findings are summarized as follows: (1) There are 55% of function words and 45% of content words in the Magic Tree House text; (2) The lexical coverage by MOE 1,200 word families list is found to reach 79.53% ; (3) With the use of BNC/ COCA word list, it takes 4,000 words to reach 95% coverage, and 7,000 words to reach 98% coverage; (4) There are 1,220 words which appear in the reading materials more than 12 times. The results of this corpus-based research provide valuable implications for primary and secondary school EFL teachers to choose suitable reading materials for learners.

碩士
南臺科技大學
應用英語系
107
The 12-year curriculum guidelines of basic education of Taiwan are now on the road. The essential principle in English education is to make students learn the key knowledge in different fields via English. The present study is primarily a corpus-based analytical investigation of a well-known scientific children book series “The Magic School Bus.” This series can not only enhance students’ English proficiency but also provide rich natural science knowledge to the readers. Corpus analytical tools including AntConc and AntWordProfiler are used to analyze the corpus of the book series. In addition, R language coupled with RStudio, the most popular Graphical User Interface (GUI) for R, and Chi-square are employed to do the statistical analysis to address the relationship between the word frequency and the word category. Via the preceding corpus analytical tools and statistical language and test, this study is aimed to find out (1) the most frequently used words with at least 12 repetitions in The Magic School Bus; (2) the proportion of the word category and the relation between the frequency levels of the content words and the word category in The Magic School Bus; (3) the lexical coverage of The Magic School Bus by the MOE 1,200-word list; (4) the percentage of the words appears more than 12 times in The Magic School Bus that are covered by the MOE 1,200-word list. The results of the study are stated in the following: (1) 755 words in The Magic School Bus show up for more than 12 times. Among the 755 words, 626 of them are content words; (2) the non-high-frequency nouns in The Magic School Bus are significantly higher than expected; (3) in terms of the lexical coverage, 85.3 % of words in The Magic School Bus are covered by the MOE 1,200-word list; (4) the MOE 1,200-word list covers 79.6 % of the occurring-12-time words. The present study provides some pedagogical implication to the English teachers in Taiwan, especially for those who want to promote learning other school subjects in English. Besides, the corpus-based analyses also suggest that The Magic School Bus is the suitable scientific reading material for the secondary school students in Taiwan when they know most of the words in the MOE 1,200-word list.

This dissertation examines the ways that books can show the place of magic in fifteenth-century English society. Specifically, I am interested in what was important about magic to people and how magic was used by people in the creation of their identities, both as individuals and within the community. As I explore these issues, I aim to demonstrate that magic freely co-mingled with non-magical texts in manuscripts. Furthermore, this mixing of magical and non-magical texts is a vital part of understanding magic’s role in the shaping of people’s identities, both public and private. Chapter one presents the results of a preliminary survey of magic in fifteenth-century English manuscripts. I clarify how I delineate between texts – magical and non-magical and between genres of magic. This chapter also uses a series of case studies to look at some of the issues of ownership that are dealt with in more detail in the later chapters of this thesis. Chapters two, three, and four look at individual manuscripts in depth. In Chapter two, I examine how a lower gentry household used their notebook to establish their place within a strata of the gentry that was increasingly interested in medical and scientific texts in the fifteenth century. Chapter three looks at the private notebook of an anonymous scribe and how its owner combines the ordinary and transgressive qualities of magic to create an identity for himself that is based on a quasi-clerical masculinity and the ludic qualities of magic. Chapter four concerns Robert Taylor’s medical notebook, which he may have used as a part-time medical practitioner, and the insight it gives into the everyday concerns of medieval people. Chapter five is an examination of the book of an early fifteenth-century Cistercian monk named Richard Dove. Dove’s notebook contains a copy of the Ars notoria, the only manuscript containing ritual magic that I study in this dissertation. I argue that Dove, unlike other monastic users of the Ars notoria, does not use the text for its spiritual benefits, but its material benefits as part of his desire to participate in a broader intellectual culture outside the monastery.

O presente relatório tem como objectivo descrever e comentar o processo de tradução integral da obra Circle of Magic: Sandry's Book, de Tamora Pierce. Nele serão abordadas as principais dificuldades tradutórias e as estratégias utilizadas para as ultrapassar, assim como outras questões relevantes no que diz respeito à tradução de literatura fantástica infanto-juvenil. O relatório encontra-se organizado em três capítulos. No primeiro, contextualiza-se a autora biográfica e bibliograficamente. O segundo capítulo divide-se em quatro subcapítulos: o primeiro pretende apresentar uma reflexão teórica sobre tradução e a metodologia usada ao longo da tradução da obra; no segundo, enquadram-se os conceitos de literatura fantástica e literatura infanto-juvenil e sintetizam-se as perspectivas de vários autores quanto à sua definição; no terceiro abordam-se as questões do contexto de chegada, das normas de tradução nele vigentes, questões vitais na tomada de decisões tradutórias, e do público-alvo e, no quarto, o foco incide sobre aspectos especialmente relevantes na tradução de literatura infanto-juvenil, nomeadamente, associados à tradução da criatividade. Neste último ponto do segundo capítulo faz-se uma análise de traduções de obras análogas, com o objectivo de aferir estratégias usadas pelos tradutores para ultrapassar desafios relacionados com a tradução de topónimos, antropónimos e expressões de calão e gíria específicas dos universos das obras. Esta análise permitiu uma tomada de consciência das tendências na tradução de obras de literatura fantástica infanto-juvenil no contexto de chegada, contribuindo assim para auxiliar na resolução de dificuldades tradutórias que surgiram ao longo da tradução da obra em estudo. O terceiro capítulo começa com a análise do romance Circle of Magic: Sandry’s Book e seu público-alvo, prosseguindo-se então para o comentário à tradução. Os desafios que ao longo desta surgiram dividem-se em: a) aspectos semânticos - toponímia, antroponímia e expressões de calão e gíria; b) aspectos pragmáticos – tradução de provérbios e formas de tratamento; e c) tradução de terminologia técnica e científica relativa a artes e ofícios e ao campo da botânica. O relatório pretende, portanto, demonstrar o método de estudo que facilitou a chegada a uma versão final da tradução, articulando os estudos literários com os estudos de tradução e com experiências práticas, sempre com o objectivo de conseguir alcançar um equilíbrio entre a tradução orientada para o contexto de partida e a tradução orientada para o contexto de chegada. Ainda que a principal finalidade deste trabalho seja uma análise da tradução de Circle of Magic: Sandry's Book, a divulgação da obra desta autora torna-se inevitável e pertinente. Assim, este trabalho pretende ainda contribuir, com a tradução de Sandry’s Book, para o repertório de obras de literatura fantástica infanto-juvenil traduzidas para português.
The present report aims to portray and comment on the process of the integral translation of the work Circle of Magic: Sandry’s Book, by Tamora Pierce, illustrating the main translation difficulties and the strategies used to solve them. The report also seeks to discuss important aspects concerning the translation of children’s and young adult fantasy literature. The report is organised in three chapters. The first chapter sets out to make a biographic and bibliographic portrait of Tamora Pierce. The second chapter is divided into four subchapters: the first one aims to present a theoretical reflection on translation as well as the working methodology used in the translation of Sandry’s Book; the second subchapter introduces the concepts of children’s and young adult literature and fantasy literature, synthetizing their various definition perspectives, according to different authors; the third subchapter centres on the importance of the target audience, target culture and its translation norms, crucial factors to be considered in decision-making during the translation process; and the fourth subchapter focuses on particularly relevant aspects concerning the translation of children’s and young adult fantasy literature, i.e., linked to the translation of creativity. This last section includes a brief analysis of translations of similar texts, aiming to access strategies used by translators to overcome difficulties related to the translation of toponyms, anthroponyms and slang and idioms from the universes of those works. This analysis made it possible to become aware of the target-culture tendencies in the translation of children’s and young adult fantasy literature, contributing to the solution of problems during the translation of Sandry’s Book. The third chapter starts by analysing the work to be translated, as well as its target-audience, proceeding with the translation comment. The main translation challenges are divided into: a) semantic aspects – toponymy, anthroponymy and the translation of slang; b) pragmatic aspects – translation of proverbs and idioms and of forms of address; and c) translation of technical and scientific terminology related to arts and crafts and to the field of Botany. The report thus aims to demonstrate the study method that led to the final version of the translation, articulating literary and translation studies with practical experiences, ever towards the goal of reaching the balance between source-oriented translation and target-oriented translation. Although this report mainly aims to analyse the translation of Circle of Magic: Sandry’s Book, promoting this author’s work is pertinent and inevitable. With the translation of Sandry’s Book this work therefore also intends to act as a contribution to the repertoire of children’s and young adult fantasy novels translated into Portuguese.

abstract: Do adolescents read? What do they read? This purpose of this study was to examine the voluntary fiction reading experiences of secondary students. Literature was reviewed concerning the adolescent reader and voluntary fiction reading. The readers were found to be capable of making profound meanings out of text. The readers found characters, plot, learning from their books, and the desire to read more beneficial to their engagement and reading pleasure.
Dissertation/Thesis
Doctoral Dissertation Curriculum and Instruction 2020

The lives of women are largely hidden in the Old Testament. New archaeological investigationsinto the households of Iron Age I have brought forward new evidence that sheds light on theauthority status and roles of women in the pre-monarchic tribal community. Conventional theory perceives that women were always oppressed and marginalised under a malevolentsystem of male rule in the Bible. The evidence indicates differently. Investigations in thedomestic sphere, where the household processes were under women’s control and management, imply that women held authority that was equal to male power in the public domain. It has been revealed that women held significant positions in the public sphere as well.This study, therefore, is an investigation into women’s status and the wide-ranging socioeconomicand religious roles they held within a system of male rule that allowed women theirauthority and autonomy in a unique period of Israelite history.
Biblical and Ancient Studies
M. Th. (Biblical Archaeology)

Praca jest wieloaspektową analizą wszystkich polskich spisków tatrzańskich, uwzględniającą także w wybranych aspektach spiski polsko-słowackie, słowackie i niemieckie – materiał analityczny obejmuje zarówno spiski rękopiśmienne, jak i ich edycje. Zakres pracy obejmował odnalezienie materiałów, zalegających w archiwach Muzeum Tatrzańskiego w Zakopanem oraz Ośrodka Dokumentacji Tatrzańskiej, Oddziału Tatrzańskiego Parku Narodowego; zrobienie ich edycji – czyli przygotowanie materiału do analizy, by następnie spojrzeć na te tajemnicze manuskrypty pod względem: bibliologicznym; ustalenia pokrewieństwa pomiędzy poszczególnymi spiskami, jak i całymi manuskryptami; analizy treści topograficznych zawartych w spiskach; analizy wszystkich rytuałów magicznych, zawartych w spiskach; opisania elementów ontologii Tatr, widzianych oczyma staropolskiego uczonego-alchemika; analizy spisku jako gatunku literatury użytkowej; analizy warstwy legendarnej spisków.
This paper is a multi-aspect analysis of all spiski of the Polish Tatra mountains, including also in some places the manuscripts of Polish-Slovakian, Slovakian and German origin – the material consists of hand-written kind as well as their printed editions. The planned area of work was also finding the papers being in possession of the archives of the Tatra Mountains’ Museum in Zakopane, Ośrodek Dokumentacji Tatrzańskiej oddziału Tatrzańskiego Parku Narodowego (Tatra Mountains’ Documentation Centre, Tatras’ National Park Division) – in other words preparing the data for analysis, so one could look at them from bibliographical view; discovering and setting relations between every spisek and every manuscript; analysing of the topographical data; analysing all magical rituals hidden in spiski; describing Tatra Mountains’ ontology as seen as old-Polish alchemist could see them; analysing them as a popular literature genre; analysing them as legends.