A Green and Pagan Land
A Green and Pagan Land

Author: David Huckvale

Publisher: McFarland

Published: 2018-01-12

Total Pages: 228

ISBN-13: 1476629935

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British literature often refers to pagan and classical themes through richly detailed landscapes that suggest more than a mere backdrop of physical features. The myth-inspired writings of Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Algernon Blackwood, Aleister Crowley, Lord Dunsany and even Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows informed later British films and television dramas such as The Owl Service (1969-70), Blood on Satan's Claw (1971), The Wicker Man (1973), Excalibur (1981) and Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975). The author analyzes the evocative language and esthetics of landscapes in literature, film, television and music, and how "psycho-geography" is used to explore the influence of the past on the present.

Pagans in the Promised Land
Pagans in the Promised Land

Author: Steven T. Newcomb

Publisher: Fulcrum Publishing

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 220

ISBN-13: 9781555916428

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"An analysis of how religious bias shaped U.S. federal Indian law."--

The Poems of Phillis Wheatley
The Poems of Phillis Wheatley

Author: Phillis Wheatley

Publisher: Courier Corporation

Published: 2012-03-15

Total Pages: 98

ISBN-13: 0486115291

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At the age of 19, Phillis Wheatley was the first black American poet to publish a book. Her elegies and odes offer fascinating glimpses of the beginnings of African-American literary traditions. Includes a selection from the Common Core State Standards Initiative.

Being Brought from Africa to America - The Best of Phillis Wheatley
Being Brought from Africa to America - The Best of Phillis Wheatley

Author: Phillis Wheatley

Publisher: Read Books Ltd

Published: 2020-07-31

Total Pages: 111

ISBN-13: 1528791029

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Phillis Wheatley (c. 1753–1784) was an American freed slave and poet who wrote the first book of poetry by an African-American. Sold into a slavery in West Africa at the age of around seven, she was taken to North America where she served the Wheatley family of Boston. Phillis was tutored in reading and writing by Mary, the Wheatleys' 18-year-old daughter, and was reading Latin and Greek classics from the age of twelve. Encouraged by the progressive Wheatleys who recognised her incredible literary talent, she wrote "To the University of Cambridge” when she was 14 and by 20 had found patronage in the form of Selina Hastings, Countess of Huntingdon. Her works garnered acclaim in both England and the colonies and she became the first African American to make a living as a poet. This volume contains a collection of Wheatley's best poetry, including the titular poem “Being Brought from Africa to America”. Contents include: “Phillis Wheatley”, “Phillis Wheatley by Benjamin Brawley”, “To Maecenas”, “On Virtue”, “To the University of Cambridge”, “To the King’s Most Excellent Majesty”, “On Being Brought from Africa to America”, “On the Death of the Rev. Dr. Sewell”, “On the Death of the Rev. Mr. George Whitefield”, etc. Ragged Hand is proudly publishing this brand new collection of classic poetry with a specially-commissioned biography of the author.

Pan
Pan

Author: Paul Robichaud

Publisher: Reaktion Books

Published: 2021-10-13

Total Pages: 345

ISBN-13: 1789144779

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From ancient myth to contemporary art and literature, a beguiling look at the many incarnations of the mischievous—and culturally immortal—god Pan, now in paperback. Pan—he of the cloven hoof and lustful grin, beckoning through the trees. From classical myth to modern literature, film, and music, the god Pan has long fascinated and terrified the western imagination. “Panic” is the name given to the peculiar feeling we experience in his presence. Still, the ways in which Pan has been imagined have varied wildly—fitting for a god whose very name the ancients confused with the Greek word meaning “all.” Part-goat, part-man, Pan bridges the divide between the human and animal worlds. In exquisite prose, Paul Robichaud explores how Pan has been imagined in mythology, art, literature, music, spirituality, and popular culture through the centuries. At times, Pan is a dangerous, destabilizing force; sometimes, a source of fertility and renewal. His portrayals reveal shifting anxieties about our own animal impulses and our relationship to nature. Always the outsider, he has been the god of choice for gay writers, occult practitioners, and New Age mystics. And although ancient sources announced his death, he has lived on through the work of Arthur Machen, Gustav Mahler, Kenneth Grahame, D. H. Lawrence, and countless others. Pan: The Great God’s Modern Return traces his intoxicating dance.

Artificial Intelligence in the Movies
Artificial Intelligence in the Movies

Author: David Huckvale

Publisher: McFarland

Published: 2024-10-25

Total Pages: 217

ISBN-13: 1476653682

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Since the times of ancient Greece, popular culture has entertained stories of artificial humans. Our modern fears about the "otherness" of androids and human replicants have much in common with fears of the Doppelganger, a mythological harbinger of death. Throughout the twentieth century, "AI" technologies have developed at a rapid pace, bringing us face to face with these ancient fears in a modern context. Examining such films as The Day the Earth Stood Still, Forbidden Planet and Blade Runner, among others, this book charts cinema's fascination with artificial intelligence and the technological double, as well as the historical antecedents of the artificial human.

The Piano on Film
The Piano on Film

Author: David Huckvale

Publisher: McFarland

Published: 2022-02-22

Total Pages: 221

ISBN-13: 1476643881

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Since the early days of silent film accompaniment, the piano has played an integral part in the history of cinema. Film's fascination with the piano, both in soundtracks and onscreen as a status symbol and icon of popular romanticism, offers a revealing opportunity to chart the changing perception of the instrument. From Mozart to Elton John, this book surveys the cultural history of the piano through the instrument's cinematic functions. Composer biopics, such as A Song to Remember, romantic melodramas like the Liberace vehicle Sincerely Yours, and horror films such as The Hands of Orlac, along with animated cartoons featuring Bugs Bunny and Tom and Jerry demonstrate just how pervasive the cinematic image of the piano once was during a period when the piano itself began its noticeable decline in everyday life. By examining these depictions of the piano onscreen, readers will begin to understand not only the decline of the piano but also the decline of the idealistic culture to which it gave birth in the nineteenth century.

Terrors of the Flesh
Terrors of the Flesh

Author: David Huckvale

Publisher: McFarland

Published: 2020-07-17

Total Pages: 197

ISBN-13: 1476640785

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The horror and psychological denial of our mortality, along with the corruptibility of our flesh, are persistent themes in drama. Body horror films have intensified these themes in increasingly graphic terms. The aesthetic of body horror has its origins in the ideas of the Marquis de Sade and the existential philosophies of Arthur Schopenhauer and Friedrich Nietzsche, all of whom demonstrated that we have just cause to be anxious about our physical reality and its existence in the world. This book examines the relationship between these writers and the various manifestations of body horror in film. The most characteristic examples of this genre are those directed by David Cronenberg, but body horror as a whole includes many variations on the theme by other figures, whose work is charted here through eight categories: copulation, generation, digestion, mutilation, infection, mutation, disintegration and extinction.

Movie Magick
Movie Magick

Author: David Huckvale

Publisher: McFarland

Published: 2018-10-22

Total Pages: 217

ISBN-13: 1476633754

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"Magick" as defined by Aleister Crowley is "the Science and Art of causing Change to occur in conformity with Will." This book explores expressions of movie magick in classic occult films like Hammer's adaptation of Dennis Wheatley's The Devil Rides Out and modern occult revival movies. These films are inspired by the aesthetics of fin de siecle decadence, the symbolist writings of Villiers de l'Isle Adam, Wagnerian music drama, the Faust legend, the pseudo-science of theosophy, 1960s occult psychedelia, occult conspiracy theories and obscure aspects of animation.