A great deal of stimulating and valuable discussion (as well as some indignation and hot air) has been stimulated by Edward Said, whose provocative study of Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient appeared twenty years ago. This present book will, we believe, be recognized as a worthy addition to the many attempts that have since been made to sift the intrinsic and ingrained attitudes of West to East. The fifteen articles in Oriental Prospects: Western Literature and the Lure of the East cover literature from the Renaissance through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to the modern period, some in pragmatic accounts of responses to and uses of experiences of the Orient and its cultural attitudes and artefacts, others contending more theoretically with issues that Edward Said has raised. Despite all the misunderstanding, prejudice and propaganda in the scholarly and literary depiction of the Orient still today as in the past, what emerges from this wide-range of articles is that no species of literary text or academic study can appear without risking the accusation of escapist exoticism or cultural and economic exploitation; and thus regrettably masking the essential and vital significance of the political and the real and imaginative trading between East and West.

Crafting Infinity is a multi-disciplinary collection of essays that investigates how aspects of traditional Irish culture have been revised, retooled, and repackaged in the interest of maintaining the integrity of Irish myth tales, artistic values, spiritual foundations, and historic icons. From perspectives on early Irish Christianity to national mythology, traditional Irish music, Irish history represented in film, literary inventiveness, and evidence of the Irish diaspora, this study examines how artists, writers, theorists, and emigrants from Ireland re-interpreted, and reshaped Irish traditions, often invoking Ireland’s relationship with other nations before it acquired independence. Because with each retelling of legend, reworking of musical styles, and recreating of historic events, there has been inventiveness and alterations, inconsistencies affirm that the continuators of Irish tradition both preserve and alter their source materials and reshape iconic figures. The end product of these endeavors is tantamount to infinity, for just as Standish O’Grady, William Butler Yeats, James Joyce, Elizabeth Bowen, Jennifer Johnston, and Edna O’Brien craft fiction or rewrite folklore, with Irish characters and themes, while borrowing from other cultural wellsprings (such as Orientalism or French design), so exporters of Irish art forms and dispositions towards musical style, nationalism, and spirituality necessarily reconfigure the original, as no tradition can remain pure indefinitely. Each facet of Irish culture takes on the quality of a Celtic knot, artistically infinite in its circular design, and indestructible in its universal presence and recognition. In Crafting Infinity, each contributor dismantles a quality of Irish history, culture, or the arts, revealing how a multiplicity of interpretations can be applied to Irish traditions.

Traditional medicine plays a crucial role in maintaining health, diagnosing diseases, and providing treatment. The World Health Organization's Global Report on Traditional and Complementary Medicine 2019 highlights the increasing recognition of traditional and complementary medicine in national health systems worldwide. With its widespread availability and growing demand, traditional medicine contributes to the goal of universal healthcare by offering accessible, safe, and effective services.In this book, the authors seek to review and summarize the history, current state, and future potential of mainstream traditional medicine worldwide, as well as promote the integration of traditional and conventional medicine, serving as a valuable reference for policymakers, academic institutions, and stakeholders. This book encompasses nine chapters, covering Ayurveda, chiropractic, European Traditional Herbal Medicine, Greco-Arab and Islamic Herbal Medicine, Homeopathy, Japanese Kampo, Korean Medicine, Traditional Chinese Medicine, and Thai Medicine.

This book analyzes particular patterns of nationalist self-configuration and nationalist uses of memory, counter-memory, and historical amnesia in Ireland from roughly around the time of the emergence of a broad-based non-sectarian Irish nationalist platform in the late eighteenth century (the Society of United Irishmen) until Ireland’s partition and the founding of the Irish Free State in 1922. In approaching Irish nationalism through the particular historical lens of “Iran,” this book underscores the fact that Irish nationalism during this period (and even earlier) always utilized a historical paradigm that grounded Anglo-Irish encounters and Irish nationalism in the broader world history, a process that I term “worlding of Ireland.” In effect, Irish nationalism was always politically and culturally cosmopolitan in outlook in some formulations, even in the case of many nationalists who resorted to insular and narrowly defined exclusionary ethnic and/or religious formulations of the Irish “nation.” Irish nationalists, as nationalists in many other parts of the world, recurrently imagined their own history either in contrast to or as reflected in, the histories of peoples and lands elsewhere, even while claiming the historical uniqueness of the Irish experience. Present in a wide range of Irish nationalist political, cultural, and historical utterances were assertions of past and/or present affinities with other peoples and lands.

Indian Renaissance: British Romantic Art and the Prospect of India is the first comprehensive examination of British artists whose first-hand impressions and prospects of the Indian subcontinent became a stimulus for the Romantic Movement in England; it is also a survey of the transformation of the images brought home by these artists into the cultural imperatives of imperial, Victorian Britain. The book proposes a second - Indian - Renaissance for British (and European) art and culture and an undeniable connection between English Romanticism and British Imperialism. Artists treated in-depth include James Forbes, James Wales, Tilly Kettle, William Hodges, Johann Zoffany, Francesco Renaldi, Thomas and William Daniell, Robert Home, Thomas Hickey, Arthur William Devis, R. H. Colebrooke, Alexander Allan, Henry Salt, James Baillie Fraser, Charles Gold, James Moffat, Charles D'Oyly, William Blake, J. M. W. Turner and George Chinnery.