Demonic Carnival

Readers beware the rides may take your arms! You are traveling into a dark and humorous place. We start you off with light, soft stories, but be warned. You will find yourself falling into the ever darker, gorier, and more demonic stories with each passing story. From heartwarming endings to feeling like you just walked out of the Carnival Port-a-potty into another dimension - this collection will leave your mind spinning. The Fried Food stall, the Ferris Wheel, and even that carnival themed hotel in Vegas... all of it will never be the same for you after your visit to the Demonic Carnival. Remember... First Ticket’s Free...

Readers Beware of these twisted literary pieces! Everyone knows the classics such as Peter Pan, Huckleberry Finn, and The Wizard of Oz. Have you ever thought about what would happen in those stories if they were written just a little differently... More wickedly... What if Tinkerbell defended her love for Peter Pan, at any costs including her soul? What if Huck’s adventure took him down a more dangerous side of the river? What if The Wizard of Oz was nothing more than a surreal nightmare? The authors within this tome have brought your classic and timeless books back to life with a demonic twist only found in the Demonic Anthology collection. Expect a very different impression of the stories everyone grew up to love, written in such a way they just might be changed in unforgettable ways.

A study of the 'demonic markers' that run throughout Dostoevsky's fiction, this also explores the narrative and generic implications of the way Dostoevsky inscribed the demonic in his fictional works - implications that point to a new understanding of familiar concepts in the work of this Russian master.

Using insights derived from the critical theory of Mikhail Bakhtin, Wickens counters the usual view of The Dynasts as failed epic or tragedy, and instead situates the work as a novel within the serio-comical genres.

Not every story has a happy ending. Do you believe you can trust your own thoughts? What about your dreams? What of your desires? After all, isn't happiness just an illusion? Come and take a peek behind several lives with twists, turns, and broken bones. This creepy collection of stories will keep you awake at night, wondering what truly lurks in the shadow of your mind.

Merezhkovsky's bold claim that "all Russian literature is, to a certain degree, a struggle with the temptation of demonism" is undoubtedly justified. And yet, despite its evident centrality to Russian culture, the unique and fascinating phenomenon of Russian literary demonism has so far received little critical attention. This substantial collection fills the gap. A comprehensive analytical introduction by the editor is follwed by a series of fourteen essays, written by eminent scholars in their fields. The first part explores the main shaping contexts of literary demonism: the Russian Orthodox and folk tradition, the demonization of historical figures, and views of art as intrinsically demonic. The second part traces the development of a literary tradition of demonism in the works of authors ranging from Pushkin and Lermontov, Gogol and Dostoevsky, through to the poets and prose writers of modernism (including Blok, Akhmatova, Bely, Sologub, Rozanov, Zamiatin), and through to the end of the 20th century.

This major work offers a new interpretation of the witchcraft beliefs of European intellectuals between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries, showing how these beliefs fitted rationally with other beliefs of the period and how far the nature of rationality is dependent on its historical context.

While the writings of early modern medical practitioners habitually touch on performance and ceremony, few illuminate them as clearly as the Protestant physicians Felix Platter and Thomas Platter the Younger, who studied in Montpellier and practiced in their birth town of Basle, or the Catholic physician Hippolytus Guarinonius, who was born in Trent, trained in Padua and practiced in Hall near Innsbruck. During his student years and brilliant career as early modern Basle's most distinguished municipal, court and academic physician, Felix Platter built up a wide network of private, religious and aristocratic patients. His published medical treatises and private journal record his professional encounters with them as a healer. They also offer numerous vivid accounts of theatrical events experienced by Platter as a scholar, student and gifted semi-professional musician, and during his Grand Tour and long medical career. Here Felix Platter's accounts, many unavailable in translation, are examined together with relevant extracts from the journals of his younger brother Thomas Platter, and Guarinonius's medical and religious treatises. Thomas Platter is known to Shakespeare scholars as the Swiss Grand Tourist who recorded a 1599 London performance of Julius Caesar, and Guarinonius's descriptions of quack performances represent the earliest substantial written record of commedia dell'arte lazzi, or comic stage business. These three physicians' records of ceremony, festival, theatre, and marketplace diversions are examined in detail, with particular emphasis on the reactions of 'respectable' medical practitioners to healing performers and the performance of healing. Taken as a whole, their writings contribute to our understanding of many aspects of European theatrical culture and its complex interfaces with early modern healthcare: in carnival and other routine manifestations of the Christian festive year, in the extraordinary performance and ceremony of court festivals, and above all in the rarely welcomed intrusions of quacks and other itinerant performers.