Supernatural in Literature

Legends and myths seem lacking a solid historicity, but they often, if not always, reflect the imagination, culture and ideas of the peoples who created them. As the recent study demonstrates, aside from the political rivalry, military confrontation and religious difference that were arose between the Byzantines and the Arabs; they shared a similar popular belief in the supernaturalism of the divine powers.

A splash of something huge resounds through the sea-fog. In the stillness of a dark room, some unspeakable evil is making its approach.

This new selection offers the most chilling and unsettling of Hodgson's short fiction, from encounters with abominations at sea to fireside tales of otherworldly forces from his inventive `occult detective' character Carnacki, the ghost finder.

A master of conjuring atmosphere, when the horror inevitably arrives it is delivered with breathtaking pace and the author's unique evocation of overwhelming panic.

I propose a paper on the treatment of the supernatural and ancient Egypt in comic-strips and animated television series.  I will make particular reference to three works: Hergé's Tintin books, "Silver Age" American comic books, and the ThunderCats television series.  Importantly, these three works cover Belgium, America and Japan, demonstrating variations in the treatment of the supernatural and ancient Egypt in three continents.

Specifically, the paper will set out: (1) a close analysis of the hallucination sequence in Hergé's Tintin and the Cigars of the Pharaoh (1934, reissued 1955); (2) analysis of the Sphinx in "Silver Age" American comic-books, including "The Riddle of 'The Superman Sphinx'", Action Comics 1:240 (May 1958); and (3) an analysis of the pseudo-ancient-Egyptian origins of the character Mumm-Ra in ThunderCats (1985).  In each case, the main protagonist (Tintin, Superman (or another superhero) and Lion-O) performs the role of "archaeologist" in discovering “hidden” ancient Egyptian sites and artefacts.

My paper will demonstrate parallels in the treatment of the "supernatural" in ancient Egypt across all three works (and across three continents and throughout the twentieth century), particularly: the combination of ancient and extraterrestrial technologies; supernatural forces; and complex, undeciphered cultural phenomena (such as language and religion).

There has always been a strong connection between Irish culture and the land. Ireland's emerald pastures stand as a locus for Irish legends and tales of the supernatural. Such legends were revitalized following the Irish cultural revival of the late 19 th century and early 20 th century with records of stories and beliefs from the peasantry, such as those collected in Standish James O'Grady's histories of ancient Ireland 1 . Following Ireland's modernization in the latter half of the 20 th century, these ghost stories became a form of entertainment, the old landmarks transformed into tourist attractions. In The Weir, such a shift is apparent through the tales told by the regulars of a rural Irish pub as they attempt to welcome newcomer Valerie into their group.

For a long time critically neglected or disparaged, Edith Nesbit's Gothic fiction is beginning to receive the scholarly attention it deserves. This essay extends analysis beyond the much anthologized “Man-Size in Marble” (1893) to argue that a feminist orientation is in evidence more widely in her works of supernatural short fiction. A preoccupation with gender is discernible in several stories that offer distinct gender critiques, and in further tales through imagery of the dead female body and the female revenant, as well as through the recurrent character motifs of the female Cassandra and the male Frankenstein. The essay also argues that the anti-vivisectionism of several stories is an aspect of this feminist orientation. The article recognizes Nesbit as being a problematic figure for scholarly attempts to reclaim feminist authors, since she herself evinced ambivalence about the women's movement and the New Woman, but argues that the unleashing of Nesbit's most counter-hegemonic impulses in her Gothic writings points to the political significance of this generic form, making Nesbit a figure of substantial interest for scholars working on women's supernatural fiction.

Most of us can probably agree that in the real world, there are no drooling monsters, no rotting zombies, no bloodthirsty vampires, and no moaning ghosts. Yet such outlandish ideas capture our attention and figure prominently in popular culture. The horror genre—a natural home for scary monsters—is more in vogue than ever, but also more paradoxical than ever. People in modern societies have little reason to fear being attacked by big terrestrial predators or dangerous reptiles, let alone supernatural monsters. Why, then, do they flock to be scared and thrilled by imaginary monsters in fiction and interactive entertainment? I argue that an evolutionary perspective is uniquely equipped to explain the form, the function, and the widespread appeal of horror entertainment. The emotions elicited by horror media are real emotions, and the best currently available conceptual framework for understanding human emotion comes from evolutionary psychology. Hence, an evolutionary perspective can explain why horror entertainment across media is structured in predictable ways to elicit predictable reactions in its audience. Drawing on illustrative examples from cinema, literature, and computer games, I make the case that an understanding of human phylogeny, in particular the evolution and design specifications of human precautionary cognitive architecture, crucially contributes to a comprehensive, vertically integrated explanation for the persistence of fear-inducing media presentations.

M.R. James was writing at a time when the archive profession was becoming more highly defined, and increasingly differentiated from the figures of librarian, historian or antiquarian. The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries saw the publication of two seminal archive manuals by Muller, Feith and Fruin (1898) and Hilary Jenkinson (1922), and these helped to fashion the concept of the archivist as custodian of the truth, impartial gatekeeper of documentary evidence, and privileged interpreter and mediator of texts. While James’ fiction has frequently been viewed through the analytical lenses of archaeology and excavation, we can instead employ a rich body of archival theory to pose new questions about the function of texts - archives, manuscripts, books and catalogues - in James’ writing. Concepts such as Jacques Le Goff’s ‘politics of archival memory’ and Derrida’s ‘archival violence’, or textual ‘death-drive’, reveal Jamesian hauntings which are reliant upon interpretation, curation, memory and provenance. Archival theory also illuminates the ways in which James plays with the reader’s preconceptions of the relationships between text, artefact, and the supernatural.

Akinari Ueda's collection of supernatural stories, Tales of Moonlight and Rain, was published in 1776 during the Edo period of Japan, a period known for its isolationist practices, but which still received an ooze of Western ideas through the Dutch trading island of Dejima, as well as visits from Chinese and Korean emissaries and traders. Akinari, after an unsuccessful decade as a merchant, later trained as a doctor; Tales of Moonlight and Rain was published the year he became a practicing physician in the culture-and merchant-rich city of Osaka, where Western ideas filtered in through popular culture and "practical" applications like medicine. Though identified with the kokugaku school of thought (rejecting foreign influence on Japan), reflected in these supernatural stories are the strange and fearful results of contact with detached pieces of learning and advancement from an unseen, little-known world. This paper examines the reflection of Western science and technology (mainly from the Dutch, with rangaku) in Japan during the Edo period in Akinari's supernatural stories—from the new Western concept of timekeeping (minutely and equally divided portions of time versus the Japanese method with varying " hour " lengths) affecting the pacing and build-up of anxiety to his exposure to a Western physician's understanding of the human body and illness lending realism to the unnatural—in terms of their gothic and grotesque nature as "otherworldly " curiosities.

Roald Dahl has typically been acclaimed as an author who wrote successfully for an audience of all ages, and as one whose stories are often fantastic – “fairy tale[s] in disguise” (Petzold 186). “The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar,” then, is exemplary of Dahl's oeuvre; it contains a large supernatural element at the centre of its plot, and seems to be intended neither solely for adults nor absolutely for children. Problems that arise from attempting to define the story's genre become obvious in as simple an exercise as looking Roald Dahl up on Wikipedia; whereas Dahl's English-language Wikipedia page lists the volume in which it first appeared, The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More, under 'adult fiction,' its Dutch-language counterpart categorises it under 'children's books.' Yet readers on Goodreads.com appear not to recognise this problem – they almost unanimously agree that “Henry Sugar” is a children's tale. (A user named Michael Fogelman recalls childhood memories of reading it, baRbRa muses “I wanted to be Henry Sugar” and many other users mention it as being less well known but certainly on a par with works like James and the Giant Peach and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.) In an attempt to account for this discrepancy, this essay will argue that though “The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar” (like Dahls oeuvre) cannot easily be classified as either intended for children or for adults, it is the form and function of the supernatural in the story which ultimately explains why many readers feel it is a children's tale.

Personal endeavour and research project into the genesis and evolution of Gothic literature from 17th Century to the present day. Feel free to cite. Informative, accessible and thoroughly-researched. Also was a passion project, not aligned with my current academic degree.

L’ironia e il soprannaturale, due aspetti del Furioso collegati l’uno all’altro, sono state tra le questioni più studiate dalla critica ariostesca degli ultimi anni. Una delle tesi che è stata proposta riguarda l’«insegretimento» dell’ironia nel Cinquecento. Più o meno consapevolmente rimossa dai primi lettori del Furioso, l’ironia sarebbe stata riscoperta e valorizzata solo diversi secoli dopo, mettendo noi lettori di oggi in una posizione migliore per apprezzare i procedimenti attraverso cui il Furioso raggiunge i suoi effetti ironici e il particolare statuto del soprannaturale che caratterizza il poema, per capire quindi ciò che c’è di “ariostesco” in Ariosto. Il presente contributo riesamina il problema della specificità dell’Orlando furioso sia dal punto di vista delle caratteristiche testuali sia da quello del modo in cui sono state notate nel tempo e si propone di dimostrare che la comprensione di un determinato aspetto del testo non coincide necessariamente con l’adeguatezza degli strumenti teorici utilizzati per descriverlo.

Recent Ariosto scholarship focused extensively on the interrelated questions of irony and the supernatural in the Orlando Furioso. Especially influential has been the idea of the “burial” of Ariostan irony in the sixteenth-century. More or less consciously repressed in the first part of the reception history of the Orlando Furioso, irony would be rediscovered only several centuries later, putting us today in a better position than the one that Ariosto’s contemporaries had to appreciate the strategies of the Furioso for producing irony and the specific form of the supernatural in the poem – that is, to highlight the Ariostan elements in Ariosto. This essay reconsiders the problem of the specificity of the Orlando Furioso from the points of view of both the textual features of the poem and the way in which these characteristics have been noted in the reception history, and it aims at showing that the recognition of specific aspects of the text does not necessarily coincide with the adequacy of the theoretical tools that are used for their description.

This paper was presented in shortened form at the 4th Symposium of Old Norse Folklorists Network in Tartu on 11 December 2015, and is based on research done as part of my Masters dissertation, entitled ‘Paranormal Objects in the Fornaldarsögur: Their Role in the Portrayal of Heroic Luck’, submitted at the University of Cambridge in June 2014. The paper examines the two sets of arrows in Ǫrvar-Odds saga and the explores how the multivalency of their underlying symbolism affects the eponymous protagonist as well as the texture of the saga.

As the Biblical patriarch Jacob, after twenty years of exile, is about to cross the river that separates him from home, he gets into a nocturnal fight with a supernatural figure, traditionally referred to as ‘the angel’. As a result of the wrestling match Jacob is injured, however he also receives a blessing and a new name: from now on he is called Israel.
The present study proposes a Jungian reading of this famous episode in Genesis. The focus is on the intriguing identity of Jacob’s enigmatic adversary: who or what is that figure on the riverside and what does he want from Jacob? In order to clarify this matter, parallels from other mythological tales are discussed. It will be shown that Jacob is by no means the only character in world mythology to get into a conflict with a demon or deity, even though Jacob’s attitude towards unwilling divine powers is rather special. Reading like a detective story, the book takes us on a journey that slowly but steadily unlocks the true nature of Jacob’s mysterious opponent. The surprising outcome adds to our understanding of the figure of Jacob-Israel. Moreover, it makes us aware of a number of hitherto overlooked characteristics that modern Western society inherited from its Judaeo-Christian past.

Word Count: 3,110 Twist of Fate: Elements of the Supernatural, Mythical, and the Fairytale, in Wide Sargasso Sea and Jean Eyre A commonly encountered motif in both Charlotte Bronte' Jane Eyre (1847) and Jean Rhy's Wide Sargasso Sea (1966) is the fairytale. Both Bronte and Rhys, by including elements of the fantastic, suggest that greater forces are at work within their narratives that ultimately determine the fate of the protagonists. In other words, circumstances of the supernatural mixed within normality seem to give the impression of the fairytale story, and creates an environment where familiar motifs, character developments, and plot twists can be identified and enjoyed. The theme of predetermined destiny, a hallmark feature of fairytale stories, is most clearly manifested within the setting, instances of the supernatural, omens, dreams, characterization, and the names of places and people. These aspects reinforce the theme of the fairytale and of the fated lives of both protagonists. The setting and environment of both Jean Eyre and Wide Sargasso Sea permeate with elements straight from fantasy literature. The landscape in Jamaica and the Dominican invokes a sense of the legendary that pervades the ill-fated marriage between

This is a low-resolution, uncorrected proof of my monograph THE BIRTH OF THE AMERICAN HORROR FILM, published by Edinburgh University Press in 2018.  It contains a small  number of typos that were corrected for publication.

While I am sharing this online, it is crucial for any readers to understand that this is an uncorrected proof.  Anyone wishing to cite this work should refer to a published copy.

In Supernatural Entertainments, Simone Natale vividly depicts spiritualism’s rise as a religious and cultural phenomenon and explores its strong connection to the growth of the media entertainment industry in the nineteenth century. He frames the spiritualist movement as part of a new commodity culture that changed how public entertainments were produced and consumed.

Starting with the story of the Fox sisters, considered the first spiritualist mediums in history, Natale follows the trajectory of spiritualism in Great Britain and the United States from its foundation in 1848 to the beginning of the twentieth century. He demonstrates that spiritualist mediums and leaders adopted many of the promotional strategies and spectacular techniques that were being developed for the broader entertainment industry. Spiritualist mediums were indistinguishable from other professional performers, as they had managers and agents, advertised in the press, and used spectacularism to draw audiences.

Addressing the overlap between spiritualism’s explosion and nineteenth-century show business, Natale provides an archaeology of how the supernatural became a powerful force in the media and popular culture of today.

Reviews:

“Approaching Victorian supernaturalism as popular spectacle, Natale makes a compelling argument that nineteenth-century spiritualism made a significant contribution to what would become the dominant religion of the twentieth century: the entertainment industry. Rather than seeing the spiritualists and their energetic followers as gullible or deluded, Natale explores the more fascinating possibility that medium, circle, and audience helped redefine the possibilities of domestic leisure and public performance.”
—Jeffrey Sconce, Northwestern University

“We all know that the supernatural is entertaining. Just turn on your television set or go to the movies. But this entertaining? Supernatural Entertainments is one of the most original books I have read in a long time. Simone Natale’s embrace of the history of technology, celebrity studies, material culture, popular culture, photography, and film studies to plumb the immediate historical background of the modern supernatural also makes it astonishingly capacious and interdisciplinary. Get ready for a ride. Or a show.”
—Jeffrey J. Kripal, author of Mutants and Mystics: Science Fiction, Superhero Comics, and the Paranormal

"This is an ambitious, overdue book ... Natale depicts a more light-hearted version of Spiritualism than the politically and epistemically fraught social history that other authors have established. Such arguments are detailed, compelling, and themselves enchanting instances of media history."
—Susan Zieger, in Media History

This paper offers an analysis of the effect of the supernatural within the genre of the fictional document, how the artist (usually a writer, or filmmaker) reconciles the incorporation of the fantastic into a seemingly realistic medium and any resultant narrative disruption therein, and how the genre has
evolved during contemporary technological history to intricately simulate and also provide commentary on the various forms of media imitated.

This paper will argue that the fictional document is a prescient genre – often taking the form of official documents, video diaries, documentaries, or websites (sometimes devoid of context) - and how its shape as an objective 'artefact' differs from its more literary predecessors such as the frame story, the
discovered manuscript, and the epistolary, by foregrounding its authentic form first and then 'presenting' the supernatural through the form's befitting stylistic conventions and limitations.

By focussing in-depth on four specific texts (two works of literature: Robert Aickman's Pages From a Young Girl's Journal (1975) and China Miéville's Reports of Certain Events Around London (2005), and two two motions pictures: REC (2007) and Troll Hunter (2010)) this paper will present how the significance of supernatural phenomena, used metaphorically, can be utilised in multiple ways to alter and sometimes obscure any received narrative, causing the often pedestrian familiarity of the document's form to become uncanny and alienating. Such occurrences provide commentary not only on contemporary media-fixated concerns arising from taking mass information for granted (and any subsequent misunderstanding arising), but also the risks of desire for knowledge and clarification,
especially within the synthetic hyperreality of digital media, and the effect of assumptions and preconceptions in the pursuit of such understanding.

Coleridge, in his poems, has successfully presented to his readers a “nature and supernatural” blend that is considered very amazing. Coleridge perceives nature something that surrounds man and considers it a privilege to interpret it. “The Rime of The Ancient Mariner” is although composed in romantic tradition, it contains a high imagination of the poet and covers supernatural elements for which it is regarded a masterpiece of supernatural poetry. At the same time, it contains moral lessons for its readers; that whether big or small, no crime can go unpunished. The paper analyzes Coleridge’s treatment of Nature and Supernatural in this poem.

Courtesy of Living Time™ Media International this complete publication is available to download from Academia.Edu until 31st December 2019. This short story anthology contains thirteen complete tales of horror by the following authors: Saki (H.H. Munro), W.W. Jacobs, Sir Osbert Sitwell, Washington Irving, H.G. Wells, H.P. Lovecraft, Guy de Maupassant, Leonid Andreyev, Jakob Sandman, Ray Bradbury, Edgar Allan Poe, Ambrose Bierce and Dylan Thomas. The collection of stories ranges over all territories of horror - the uncanny, the gruesome, the supernatural, the unexplainable and the simply scream-out-loud terrifying. All of the stories are presented in their re-edited formats by LTMI™ and the collection is opened by a short introduction by Alderson Smith, Head of Publishing for Living Time™ Media International.

Situates the life and fiction of Inkling Charles Williams in the network of modern occultism, with special focus on his initiatory experiences in A.E. Waite’s Fellowship of the Rosy Cross. Roukema evaluates fictional projections of magic, kabbalah, alchemy and ritual experience in Williams’s seven novels of supernatural fantasy. From this specific analysis, he develops more broadly applicable approaches to the serious expression of religious experience in fiction. Roukema shows that esoteric knowledge has frequently been blurred into fiction because of its inherent narrativity and adaptability, particularly by authors already attracted to the syncretism, multivalence and lived fantasy of the modern occult experience.

Dans le cadre de cette thèse, nous nous intéressons aux représentations de la sorcière dans la littérature d’inspiration historique à partir des années 1970. Nous analysons la construction de cette figure protéiforme et les métamorphoses qu’elle connaît dans l’imaginaire social lors des dernières décennies du XXe siècle. Plus précisément, nous examinons les différentes facettes de la sorcière, telles qu’elles apparaissent dans quatre romans francophones d’inspiration historique, en relation avec les discours historiques, féministes et postcoloniaux, et les autres productions culturelles de la même période. En étudiant les interactions entre les représentations de la sorcière et d’autres œuvres, travaux et tendances de l’époque, notre thèse met en lumière les problématiques abordées à travers cette figure dans les textes littéraires. La figure de la sorcière reprend notamment des enjeux qui marquent les dernières décennies du XXe siècle, tels la place des femmes et des cultures minoritaires dans la société, la représentation du corps féminin, le recul des religions traditionnelles et l’écriture de l’Histoire. Au moyen des approches sociocritique et intertextuelle, nous explorons ces enjeux et analysons la façon dont les œuvres développent ou prolongent ces réflexions en abordant la figure de la sorcière.

De manière à pouvoir tracer l’évolution de la figure et des questions qui lui sont liées, la thèse est divisée en trois parties, représentant chacune une décennie distincte. Après un préambule brossant un tableau de l’imaginaire de la sorcière au début des années 1970, une première partie se concentre sur la construction de la figure de la sorcière dans les romans Les Enfants du sabbat d’Anne Hébert et La Fontaine obscure de Raymond Jean, parus lors de la décennie 1970. Une deuxième partie, centrée sur la décennie 1980, se penche sur le roman Moi, Tituba sorcière... de Maryse Condé. Enfin, une troisième partie s’intéresse au roman Instruments des ténèbres de Nancy Huston, publié pendant les années 1990. En combinant différentes approches, cette thèse tend à mieux comprendre la fonction de la sorcière dans la littérature et les idées qui lui sont associées dans l’imaginaire social à partir de 1970.

In his classic study, Supernatural Horror in Literature, H. P. Lovecraft discusses the emergence of what he called spectral literature, a literature that involves the gothic themes of the supernatural found in the past but also concerned about modern society and humanity. Beyond indicating how authors of such works derived much of their thrills from a sense of cosmic atmosphere, Lovecraft did not elaborate on what he meant by the term spectral as a form of haunted literature concerned with modernity.

In Lord Dunsany, H. P. Lovecraft, and Ray Bradbury: Spectral Journeys, William Touponce examines what these three modern masters of weird fiction reveal about modernity and the condition of being modern in their tales. In this study, Touponce confirms that these three authors conceived of storytelling as a kind of journey into the spectral. Furthermore, he explains how each of these writers identifies modernity with capitalism in various ways and shows a concern with surpassing the limits of realism, which they see as tied to the representation of bourgeois society.

The writings of Lord Dunsany, H. P. Lovecraft, and Ray Bradbury together span the length of the tumultuous twentieth century with hundreds of stories. By comparing these authors, Touponce also traces the development of supernatural fiction since the early 1900s. Reading about how these authors’ works were tied to various stages of capitalism, the reader can see the connection between supernatural literature and society. This study will be appeal to those interested in any of the three authors discussed as well as to scholars and others interested in the connection between literature and society, criticism of supernatural fiction, the nature of storytelling, and the meaning and experience of modernity.

Focusing on Hervarar saga ok Heiðreks, the present article closely examines Hervör’s assumption of male identity in the context of this character's confrontation with the dead on Sámsey, going beyond the conventional binary-gender model which still continues to be employed in saga criticism. Situating this study within the discursive matrix of Old Norse-Icelandic worldview, I engage recent research on seiðr and ergi which challenges standard readings of these concepts, expanding ergi from mere “unmanliness” to the broader notion of “queerness” as ambiguous magical otherness, and seiðr to supernatural empowerment. A closer examination of the ergi complex provides a platform from which an interplay of multiple gender possibilities may be observed – not as fixed dichotomous polarities as they appear in modern perspective, but as a polyphonic inter-gender continuum. One’s positioning within this continuum, then, depends upon the extent of one’s immersion into the supernatural. The case of Hervör is used as an illustration of how the inter-gender dynamics of incremental alterity play out in that situation. I argue that Hervör’s cross-dressing activity is not ad hoc, but is crucial for this character's supernatural transformation into a wielder of power that can awaken the dead at Sámsey.

Bien qu'elle soit désormais largement admise comme fantaisiste, la thèse selon laquelle l'auteur américain de « fictions surnaturelles » (supernatural fictions) Howard Phillips Lovecraft (1880 – 1937) aurait eût de l'intérêt pour ledit surnaturel (comprendre : en dehors de celui lié à sa qualité d'écrivain), voire même qu'il aurait été un « initié », mérite toujours autant qu'on s'y attarde. En effet une nouvelle opinion, a priori plus raisonnable que la précédente mais qui en procède en fait indirectement, tend subtilement à la supplanter : si l'on en croit celle-ci, en dépit de son « matérialisme mécaniste » revendiqué, Lovecraft n'en demeurerait pas moins un « inspiré » et son œuvre en témoignerait malgré elle.

Sur quels éléments de sa fiction s'appuient ces considérations ? Comment ont-elles constituées des biais par lesquels l'occultisme a ensuite tenté d'annexer son œuvre ? Et surtout : pourquoi celle de cet auteur en particulier ?

active throughout the mid-nineteenth century, wrote literature generally regarded to be part of the Romantic Movement and often dealt with themes related to New England Puritans and their society. On the other hand, Chesnutt was an African-American author who wrote literature for less than a decade, between the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century, that explored the complexities of race relations in both the pre-and post-Civil War American South. While superficially unalike, these authors both concerned themselves with the perceived social and moral injustices of their hometowns' pasts. Born in Ohio and subsequently relocated to North Carolina at the age of eight for the remainder of his youth, Chesnutt spent most of his formative years in same region that his forebears were enslaved and that all of his conjure stories are set. Similarly, as the grandson of a judge in the Salem witch trials, Hawthorne had not only a casual interest in the history of his birthplace, but also a personal connection to the atrocities in that history and wrote about them often in his stories. It is true that Chesnutt and Hawthorne did not write about the same regions of the United States and each of these regions did have unique problems, and that this may account for the fact that these authors do not tend to be studied in conjunction; however, both of these authors confront the ugly histories of their towns and attempt to upset the oppressive power

A primera vista, resulta bastante curioso que un sacerdote católico, aunque converso, se dedique a escribir relatos sobrenaturales o de terror en lo que aparecen espíritus, fantasmas y entidades por el estilo. Pero, si se profundiza un poco, tiene una lógica dentro de su cosmovisión y de su plan apologético.

This collection of thirteen chapters takes as its starting point H. P. Lovecraft's essay of 1927, "Supernatural Horror in Literature" (SHL), in which the author most axiomatically sets out his paradigms of "cosmic horror" and "weird fiction," models with a vast (if selective) historical antecedence and a tentacular reach into the present of the horror genre, and its likely future. Divided into three sections, the volume focuses primarily on Lovecraft's own reading practices and his ungainsayable, yet controversial, influence on contemporary understandings of the weird. As John Glover puts it in his contribution to the collection, SHL "encapsulates the views that Lovecraft held which dictated the terms of weird fiction's reception for more than half a century." 2 As anyone even cursorily acquainted with Lovecraft's work will know, a great many of said views amount to a complex of hatreds whose breadth is remarkable, comprising just about every imaginable kind of racism as well as homophobia and misogyny, and whose putative 1 Niall Gildea is a researcher based in the UK. He is the author of Jacques Derrida's Cambridge Affair: Deconstruction, Philosophy and Institutionality, published by Rowman & Littlefield in 2020. 2 John Glover, "Reception Claims in Supernatural Horror in Literature and the Course of Weird Fiction," in Sean Moreland, ed.

Η παρουσία του φαντάσματος στη "Mostellaria" του Πλαύτου εδράζεται στην δεισιδαιμονία, θρησκοληψία και χειραγώγηση των μαζών στη Ρώμη. Οι μεταφυσικές τους ανησυχίες εκδηλώνονταν με ανάμικτα συναισθήματα, από τον θαυμασμό για το μυστήριο της φύσης, μέχρι τον απίστευτο φόβο που εμφορούνται οι άνθρωποι για το άγνωστο. Με αφορμή την παρουσία/απουσία του υπερφυσικού στοιχείου στη ρωμαϊκή κωμωδία, θα φωτίσουμε ενδιαφέρουσες, αναπάντεχες και, ως επί το πλείστον, άγνωστες πληροφορίες για τα διοσημεία, τα φαντάσματα, τα στοιχειωμένα σπίτια, τα όνειρα και τη μαγεία στη Ρώμη, στοιχεία που απαντούν σε μια σειρά από κείμενα, ως λογοτεχνικά - και όχι μόνο - μοτίβα.

Tales of Wonder is a landmark work in the history of Gothic
literature, and a milestone in Romantic poetry. Percy Shelley owned the
book as a young man, and drew ghosts and monsters in its margins;
indeed, a cluster of Shelley’s juvenile poems are imitations of the
supernatural ballads collected here. Sir Walter Scott allowed himself to
be tutored by its author and compiler, and both Scott and Robert
Southey provided Gothic poems and ballads for the collection, originally
to be titled Tales of Terror. These are the Introductions to both volumes of my complete annotated edition of Lewis's collection. This annotated edition traces the literary origins of the poems and the stories behind them, connecting them to the long line of eccentric antiquarian scholars who collected classical, Runic, English, and Scottish manuscripts or folk material. The poems here also reveal the late 18th-century British project of constructing a pagan pre-history for England.

This paper explores the ways in which the "duppy," or malevolent spirit, circulates the fictive landscape of the queer novels of Michelle Cliff and Shani Mootoo. I explore the ways in which the unhappy ghost is a figure which comments on the sexual pathology of postcolonial queerness in the Caribbean. I focus on the characters of Clare in "Abeng" and Mala in "Cereus Blooms at Night" in a bid to elucidate the ways that Caribbean lesbianism invokes, on the one hand, what M. Jacqui Alexander calls "erotic autonomy as a form of decolonization politics" in the material eroticism of women characters. On the other hand, and at the same time, however, these practices resurrect spectres of dissent that index queerphobia in the Caribbean that is a direct result of exploitative economic strangulation, past and present.

El siglo XX fue testigo del relevo entre la narrativa y el cine en lo que lo fantástico se refiere. La enorme popularidad alcanzada por el género en la pantalla –especialmente en su vertiente terrorífica– perfila el medio fílmico como el más apropiado cauce para este tipo de historias y la(s) estética(s) aparejada. Aun cuando se siguen publicando cuentos y novelas adscritos a esta cuerda –y actualmente vivimos un auge en los países de habla hispana–, la ingente cantidad de películas producidas y estrenadas cada año en las más diversas latitudes –entre ellas, las que nos interesan– denota una clara primacía. En contraste, el teatro, que ya desde los tiempos de la literatura gótica incluyera ingredientes sobrenaturales y perturbadores en sus dramas, sigue viéndose postergado, desatendido por la crítica e ignorado por el gran público. La charla propuesta se pregunta por las razones de este desequilibrio: acudiendo a factores sociológicos y materiales, pero también formales, establece una comparación entre teatro y cine, siempre con el género, o sistema, fantaterrorífico como telón de fondo. Reflexiona, asimismo, sobre las posibilidades que se le plantean a la escena para representar el terror fantástico de una manera tanto o más efectiva que los modos aludidos.

En el presente estudio abordamos la tradición de las maravillas en las Andanças e viajes de Pero Tafur, un escrito de viajes español redactado durante el siglo XV. En primer lugar, examinamos el concepto de lo maravilloso en la tradición de los relatos de viajes medievales de los siglos XIII al XV, analizando la tipología de las maravillas extraordinarias, mágicas, milagrosas, extrañas y monstruosas. Posteriormente, revisamos la narración de las maravillas en el libro de viajes de Pero Tafur, quien conserva la tradición de los viajeros medievales, las cuales incentivan la curiosidad y el anhelo de conocer nuevas cosas, donde las maravillas asombran por su naturaleza fabulosa, extraordinaria y prodigiosa.