Folklore and the Fantastic in Nineteenth-Century British Fiction

Folklore and the Fantastic in Nineteenth-Century British Fiction PDF Author: Jason Marc Harris
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317134656
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description
Jason Marc Harris's ambitious book argues that the tensions between folk metaphysics and Enlightenment values produce the literary fantastic. Demonstrating that a negotiation with folklore was central to the canon of British literature, he explicates the complicated rhetoric associated with folkloric fiction. His analysis includes a wide range of writers, including James Barrie, William Carleton, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Sheridan Le Fanu, Neil Gunn, George MacDonald, William Sharp, Robert Louis Stevenson, and James Hogg. These authors, Harris suggests, used folklore to articulate profound cultural ambivalence towards issues of class, domesticity, education, gender, imperialism, nationalism, race, politics, religion, and metaphysics. Harris's analysis of the function of folk metaphysics in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century narratives reveals the ideological agendas of the appropriation of folklore and the artistic potential of superstition in both folkloric and literary contexts of the supernatural.

Folklore and the Fantastic in Nineteenth-Century British Fiction

Folklore and the Fantastic in Nineteenth-Century British Fiction PDF Author: Jason Marc Harris
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317134656
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description
Jason Marc Harris's ambitious book argues that the tensions between folk metaphysics and Enlightenment values produce the literary fantastic. Demonstrating that a negotiation with folklore was central to the canon of British literature, he explicates the complicated rhetoric associated with folkloric fiction. His analysis includes a wide range of writers, including James Barrie, William Carleton, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Sheridan Le Fanu, Neil Gunn, George MacDonald, William Sharp, Robert Louis Stevenson, and James Hogg. These authors, Harris suggests, used folklore to articulate profound cultural ambivalence towards issues of class, domesticity, education, gender, imperialism, nationalism, race, politics, religion, and metaphysics. Harris's analysis of the function of folk metaphysics in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century narratives reveals the ideological agendas of the appropriation of folklore and the artistic potential of superstition in both folkloric and literary contexts of the supernatural.

A Dictionary of English Folklore

A Dictionary of English Folklore PDF Author: Jacqueline Simpson
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0191578525
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 1046

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Book Description
This dictionary is part of the Oxford Reference Collection: using sustainable print-on-demand technology to make the acclaimed backlist of the Oxford Reference programme perennially available in hardback format. An engrossing guide to English folklore and traditions, with over 1,250 entries. Folklore is connected to virtually every aspect of life, part of the country, age group, and occupation. From the bizarre to the seemingly mundane, it is as much a feature of the modern technological age as of the ancient world. BL Oral and Performance genres-Cheese rolling, Morris dancing, Well-dressingEL BL Superstitions-Charms, Rainbows, WishbonesEL BL Characters-Cinderella, Father Christmas, Robin Hood, Dick WhittingtonEL BL Supernatural Beliefs-Devil's hoofprints, Fairy rings, Frog showersEL BL Calendar Customs-April Fool's Day, Helston Furry Day, Valentine's DayEL

Folklore in British Literature

Folklore in British Literature PDF Author: Sarah R. Wakefield
Publisher: Peter Lang
ISBN: 9780820463407
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 198

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Book Description
Folklore provides a metaphor for insecurity in British women's writing published between 1750 and 1880. When characters feel uneasy about separations between races, classes, or sexes, they speak of mermaids and «Cinderella» to make threatening women unreal and thus harmless. Because supernatural creatures change constantly, a name or story from folklore merely reinforces fears about empire, labor, and desire. To illustrate these fascinating rhetorical strategies, this book explores works by Sarah Fielding, Ann Radcliffe, Sydney Owenson, Charlotte Brontë, George Eliot, Anne Thackeray, and Jean Ingelow, pushing our understanding of allusions to folktales, fairy tales, and myths beyond «happily ever after.»

Classical Mythology in English Literature

Classical Mythology in English Literature PDF Author: Geoffrey Miles
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134754639
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 474

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Book Description
Classical Mythology in English Literature brings together a range of English versions of three classical myths. It allows students to explore the ways in which they have been reinterpreted and reinvented by writers throughout history. Beginning with a concise introduction to the principle Greco-Roman gods and heroes, the anthology then focuses on three stories: * Orpheus, the great musician and his quest to free his wife Eurydice from death * Venus and Adonis, the love goddess and the beautiful youth she loved * Pygmalion, the master sculptor who fell in love with his creation. Each section begins with the classical sources and ends with contemporary versions, showing how each myth has been used/abused or appropriated since its origins

Mythology of the British Isles

Mythology of the British Isles PDF Author: Geoffrey Ashe
Publisher: Methuen Publishing
ISBN: 9780413771995
Category : Legends
Languages : en
Pages : 333

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Book Description
Recounting stories and legends from the dark centuries of British prehistory to the 9th century AD, Ashe shows how they interrelate and take on fresh significance from historical and archaeological research.

The Land of the Green Man

The Land of the Green Man PDF Author: Carolyne Larrington
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 0857729349
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
Beyond its housing estates and identikit high streets there is another Britain. This is the Britain of mist-drenched forests and unpredictable sea-frets: of wraith-like fog banks, druidic mistletoe and peculiar creatures that lurk, half-unseen, in the undergrowth, tantalising and teasing just at the periphery of human vision. How have the remarkably persistent folkloric traditions of the British Isles formed and been formed by the psyches of those who inhabit them? In this sparkling new history, Carolyne Larrington explores the diverse ways in which a myriad of fantastical beings has moulded the nation's cultural history. Fairies, elves and goblins here tread purposefully, sometimes malignly, over an eerie landscape that also conceals brownies, selkies, trows, knockers, boggarts, land-wights, Jack o'Lanterns, Barguests, the sinister Nuckleavee and Black Shuck: terrifying hell-hound of the Norfolk coast with eyes of burning coal. Ranging from Shetland to Jersey and from Ireland to East Anglia, while evoking the Wild Hunt, the ghostly bells of Lyonesse and the dread fenlands haunted by Grendel, this is a book that will captivate all those who long for the wild places: the mountains and chasms where giants lie in wait

The Penguin Book of Modern British Short Stories

The Penguin Book of Modern British Short Stories PDF Author: Malcolm Bradbury
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0141965150
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 544

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Book Description
This anthology is in many was a ‘best of the best’, containing gems from thirty-four of Britain's outstanding contemporary writers. It is a book to dip into, to read from cover to cover, to lend to friends and read again. It includes stories of love and crime, stories touched with comedy and the supernatural, stories set in London, Los Angeles, Bucharest and Tokyo. Above all, as you will discover, it satisfies Samuel Butler's anarchic pleasure principle: 'I should like to like Schumann's music better than I do; I daresay I could make myself like it better if I tried; but I do not like having to try to make myself like things; I like things that make me like them at once and no trying at all ...'

Celtic Heritage

Celtic Heritage PDF Author: Alwyn D. Rees
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780500110089
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 427

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Book Description


Tolkien's Art

Tolkien's Art PDF Author: Jane Chance
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
ISBN: 0813170869
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 278

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Book Description
" J.R.R. Tolkien's zeal for medieval literary, religious, and cultural ideas deeply influenced his entire life and provided the seeds for his own fiction. In Tolkien's Art, Chance discusses not only such classics as The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion, but focuses on his minor works as well, outlining in detail the sources and influences–from pagan epic to Christian legend-that formed the foundation of Tolkien's masterpieces, his "mythology for England."

Folklore and Literature of the British Isles

Folklore and Literature of the British Isles PDF Author: Florence E. Baer
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : English literature
Languages : en
Pages : 730

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Book Description