Written as a Civil War memoir, The Hag Rider explores fifteen-year-old Jack Benson's transition to manhood as he tells his soldier's account of life in the Confederate cavalry, a life convoluted by the spectral manipulations of Vanita, an old witch-woman who is sworn to protect him. Her hidden presence seems to protect Jack throughout the war in amazing ways, across countless miles, through patrols, battle, and capture.
This books explores varying conceptions of the Nightmare hag, mara, in Scandinavian folk belief. What began as observations of some startling narratives preserved in folklore archives where sex, violence and curses are recurring themes gradually led to questions as to how rural people envisaged good and evil, illness and health, and cause and effect. At closer reading, narratives about the mara character involve existential themes, as well as comments on gender and social hierarchy. This monograph analyses how this female creature was conceived of in oral literature and everyday ritual practice in pre-industrial Scandinavia, and what role she played in a larger pattern of belief in witchcraft and magic.
Witchcraft and magical beliefs have captivated historians and artists for millennia, and stimulated an extraordinary amount of research among scholars in a wide range of disciplines. This new collection, from the editor of the highly acclaimed 1992 set, Articles on Witchcraft, Magic, and Demonology, extends the earlier volumes by bringing together the most important articles of the past twenty years and covering the profound changes in scholarly perspective over the past two decades. Featuring thematically organized papers from a broad spectrum of publications, the volumes in this set encompass the key issues and approaches to witchcraft research in fields such as gender studies, anthropology, sociology, literature, history, psychology, and law. This new collection provides students and researchers with an invaluable resource, comprising the most important and influential discussions on this topic. A useful introductory essay written by the editor precedes each volume.
Unruly women are not often represented in a good light. Whether historical, or fictional, disruptive women with their real or imagined excesses have long provided the material for literary and legal narratives. This probing new work analyzes a series of literary, legal, and historical texts to demonstrate the persistence of certain gender stereotypes. In her 1820 adultery trial, Queen Caroline was depicted in a cartoon riding into the House of Lords on a black ram that had the face of her Italian lover. As this book reveals, a number of women, remembered largely for their insubordinate presence, have metaphorically "ridden the black ram" in the last 700 years. Heinzelman's historicized understanding of the relationship between law and literature reveals a disquieting pattern in the legal and literary representations of women and provides a new recognition of the significance of sexuality and gender in the way we narrate our world.
The international bestselling author records his many insights and adventures traversing the world by train in these 3 classic travel memoirs. The Great Railway Bazaar In 1973, Paul Theroux embarked on his now-legendary journey from the United Kingdom through Europe, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia. Asia's fabled trains—the Orient Express, the Khyber Pass Local, the Frontier Mail, the Golden Arrow to Kuala Lumpur, the Mandalay Express, the Trans-Siberian Express—are the stars of a journey that takes Theroux on a loop eastbound from London's Victoria Station to Tokyo Central, then back from Japan on the Trans-Siberian. The Old Patagonia Express Starting with a rush-hour subway ride to South Station in Boston to catch the Lake Shore Limited to Chicago, Paul Theroux takes a grand railway adventure first across the United States and then south through Mexico, Central America, and across the Andes until he winds up on the meandering Old Patagonian Express steam engine. Ghost Train to the Eastern Star Thirty years after the epic journey chronicled in The Great Railway Bazaar, Paul Theroux retraces his 25,000-mile journey to witness and experience a landscape drastically transformed by the intervening decades. The Soviet Union has collapsed and China has risen; India booms while Burma smothers under dictatorship; Vietnam flourishes in the aftermath of the havoc America was unleashing on it the last time Theroux passed through.
On June 22, 1951 the last of the Witchcraft Acts was repealed in the UK. This single action would lead to the rise of what would become the global witchcraft revival movement. Despite another year marking the passing of this historical event, so much of our history still remains lost, misunderstood, or frankly made inaccessible to the magical community at large. There is a craving for better information about the more recent history of witchcraft in the hopes that these gaps in knowledge may be filled, and it’s the author's intention to make Witchcraft Unchained: Exploring the History & Traditions of British Craft the book that will do just that. By addressing the metaphorical chains that have found their way into our community and restoring what has been lost, misunderstood, or made inaccessible, the reader can become empowered with new thoughts which will allow them to connect with their magic on a deeper and more personal level.
This book is concerned with the boundaries of faery. We will investigate to the outermost limits of our understanding - and our definitions - of the faery folk. As we shall see, repeatedly - there are aspects of faery existence that still baffle our attempts to interpret and comprehend them, because they fail to adhere to ideas of a fixed nature and predictable behaviours that are encouraged by strict traditional scientific rationalism. Of course, there are aspects of modern physics which accept mutability and subjectivity, so perhaps faery nature isn’t so strange after all.
Dreams in Early Modern England shows the variety and complexity of the early modern English discourses on dreams, from the role of dreams and dream theory in framing religious, scientific and philosophical debates, to the way that dreams continued to offer important spiritual and supernatural guidance and lastly how ordinary people exercised agency over their lives through interpreting and using dreams. While today we tend to conceptualize dreams and dreaming as largely psychological, this study shows how early modern people understood dreams and dreaming as many different things, most significantly as political, religious, medical, philosophical and supernatural.
A fascinating survey of the entire history of tall tales, folklore, and mythology in the United States from earliest times to the present, including stories and myths from the modern era that have become an essential part of contemporary popular culture. Folklore has been a part of American culture for as long as humans have inhabited North America, and increasingly formed an intrinsic part of American culture as diverse peoples from Europe, Africa, Asia, and Oceania arrived. In modern times, folklore and tall tales experienced a rejuvenation with the emergence of urban legends and the growing popularity of science fiction and conspiracy theories, with mass media such as comic books, television, and films contributing to the retelling of old myths. This multi-volume encyclopedia will teach readers the central myths and legends that have formed American culture since its earliest years of settlement. Its entries provide a fascinating glimpse into the collective American imagination over the past 400 years through the stories that have shaped it. Organized alphabetically, the coverage includes Native American creation myths, "tall tales" like George Washington chopping down his father's cherry tree and the adventures of "King of the Wild Frontier" Davy Crockett, through to today's "urban myths." Each entry explains the myth or legend and its importance and provides detailed information about the people and events involved. Each entry also includes a short bibliography that will direct students or interested general readers toward other sources for further investigation. Special attention is paid to African American folklore, Asian American folklore, and the folklore of other traditions that are often overlooked or marginalized in other studies of the topic.
