A collection of more than fifty stories about witches from around the world. There are tales of banshees, crones and beauties in disguise from China, Siberia, the Caribbean, Armenia, Portugal and Australia. The characters featured include Italy's Witch Bea-Witch, Lilith, Kali, and Twitti Glyn Hec. Alluring women, enchantresses, wise old ladies and bewitching women: they are all here and ready to haunt, entice, possess, transform, challenge - and sometimes even to help.
Evil Women. Every culture has them. Religions have banned and branded them. Men find them terrifying and fascinating. Women secretly admire them. An eye cast over the impressive if frightening array of characters reveals baby-thief Lamia, a fertile deity from Greek mythology with a serpent's tail who seduced mortals and bred beautiful monster-children; Morgan le Fay, fairy sister to King Arthur, who according to Celtic legend tried to wrest the throne from him using her black magic powers; Medea who wreaked terrible revenge on Jason when he left her for a younger woman; Lilith, Eve, the Queen of Sheba, Delilah, Jezebel, Kali - all wicked women whose names have been with us for centuries as demons and sirens and troublemakers.
Magic is tough. Family is tougher. Boys are a complete mystery. Follow Lilla as she stumbles her way through each of them in Eleanor Crewes's uniquely illustrated debut middle-grade graphic novel. Thirteen-year-old Lilla feels she is a bit different. She's quiet and shy and sometimes feels uncomfortable in the company of boys. She'd much rather spend time by herself drawing and daydreaming. This summer, while staying with her aunt in rural Italy, Lilla discovers a book of magic which reveals that she is a witch with special powers, the magic of 'Strega'. But unbeknownst to her, an ancient witch, Stregamama, threatens to ruin more than just her summer. Lilla is soon faced with a choice that could change her life forever.
Beware the women who are called witches, or those who claim the name for themselves... Banshees - a howling night-witch and harbinger of death; She-devils - Lilith and her daughters; or Bitches - Hecate, whose chariot is drawn by dogs. Alluring women, enchantresses, seekers of revenge, wise old women and badly-behaved girls. As Shahrukh Husain says, witches are 'womanhood in all its complexity'. Over fifty stories of crones and nixies, shape shifters and beauties are here, including the loving fox witch of Japan; Italy's Witch-Bea-Witch; Scotland's Goodwife of Laggan; Biddy Earl and the terrifying Kali and Baba Yaga who comes in many forms to haunt, entice, possess, transform and challenge. From every corner of the globe, with tom-foolery, fun, strife and victory, these folklore and legends celebrate women who step out of line.
Thirty four spooky stories by classic storytellers of the twentieth century - many from the 1920s and 30s - chill and excite in this classic collection. All of them demonstrate a subtle power to delight and chill at the same time as they explore those ghostly margins of the supernatural which are part of private experience as well as of popular tradition. Authors include Elizabeth Bowen, Angela Carter, Elizabeth Jane Howard, E Nesbit, Fay Weldon, Edith Wharton and Lisa St Aubin de Teran.
Once upon a time fairy tales weren't meant just for children, and neither is Angela Carter's Book of Fairy Tales. This stunning collection contains lyrical tales, bloody tales and hilariously funny and ripely bawdy stories from countries all around the world- from the Arctic to Asia - and no dippy princesses or soppy fairies. Instead, we have pretty maids and old crones; crafty women and bad girls; enchantresses and midwives; rascal aunts and odd sisters. This fabulous celebration of strong minds, low cunning, black arts and dirty tricks could only have been collected by the unique and much-missed Angela Carter. Illustrated throughout with original woodcuts.
Constructing Adolescence in Fantastic Realism examines those fundamental themes which inform our understanding of "the teenager"—themes that emerge in both literary and cultural contexts. Models of adolescence do not arise solely from discourses of psychology, sociology, and education. Rather, these models—frameworks including developmentalism, identity formation, social agency, and subjectivity in cultural space—can also be found represented symbolically in fantastic tropes such as metamorphosis, time-slip, hauntings, doppelgangers, invisibility, magic gifts, and witchcraft. These are the incredible, supernatural, and magical elements that invade the everyday and diurnal world of fantastic realism. In this original study, Alison Waller proposes a new critical term to categorize a popular and established genre in literature for teenagers: young adult fantastic realism. Though fantastic realism plays a crucial part in the short history of young adult literature, up until now this genre has typically been overlooked or subsumed into the wider class of fantasy. Touching on well-known authors including Robert Cormier, Melvin Burgess, Gillian Cross, Margaret Mahy, K.M. Peyton and Robert Westall, as well as previously unexamined writers, Waller explores the themes and ideological perspectives embedded in fantastic realist novels in order to ask whether parallel realities and fantastic identities produce forms of adolescence that are dynamic and subversive. One of the first studies to deal with late twentieth-century fantastic literature for young adults, this book makes a valuable contribution to our understanding of adult attitudes toward adolescent identity.
'Thealogy and Embodiment' both analyses and contributes to spiritural feminism's postmodern construction of the female body as a metaphor and medium of divine generativity. Addressing religious studies and women's studies students and all those interested in contemporary spirituality, Raphael counters reformist feminism's recurrent criticism of goddess feminism as naively essentialist and sub-political. She presents spiritual feminism as a set of religio-political manoeuvres that powerfully resist such patriarchal degradations of female/natural generativity as environmental destruction, weight-reducing diets, and menstrual taboos.
