Witchcraft And Paganism In Midcentury Women S Detective Fiction

Witchcraft and paganism exert an insistent pressure from the margins of midcentury British detective fiction. This Element investigates the appearance of witchcraft and paganism in the novels of four of the most popular female detective authors of the era: Agatha Christie, Margery Allingham, Ngaio Marsh and Gladys Mitchell. The author approaches the theme of witchcraft and paganism not simply as a matter of content but as an influence which shapes the narrative and its possibilities. The 'witchy' detective novel, as the author calls it, brings together the conventions of Golden Age fiction with the images and enchantments of witchcraft and paganism to produce a hitherto unstudied mode of detective fiction in the midcentury.

If the head is religion, the gut is magic. Taking up this provocation, this Element delves into the digestive system within transnational Afro-Diasporic religions such as Haitian Vodou, Brazilian Candomblé, and Cuban Lucumí (also called Santería). It draws from the ethnographic and archival record to probe the abdomen as a vital zone of sensory perception, amplified in countless divination verses, myths, rituals, and recipes for ethnomedical remedies. Provincializing the brain as only one locus of reason, it seeks to expand the notion of 'mind' and expose the anti-Blackness that still prevents Black Atlantic knowledges from being accepted as such. The Element examines gut feelings, knowledge, and beings in the belly; African precedents for the Afro-Diasporic gut-brain axis; post-sacrificial offerings in racist fantasy and everyday reality; and the strong stomachs and intestinal fortitude of religious ancestors. It concludes with a reflection on kinship and the spilling of guts in kitchenspaces.

This Element takes as its remit the production and use of amulets. The focus will be on amulets with no, or minimal, textual content like those comprising found stone, semi-precious gem and/or animal body parts. That is a material form that is unaccompanied by directive textual inscription. The analysis considers this materiality to understand its context of use including ritual and metaphysical operations. Through discussion of selected case studies from British, Celtic, and Scandinavian cultures, it demonstrates the associative range of meaning that enabled the attribution of power/agency to the amuletic object Uniquely, it will consider this material culture from an interdisciplinary perspective, drawing together insights from the disciplines of cultural studies, religious studies, 'folk' studies, archaeology and Scandinavian studies. It develops the concept of 'trans-aniconism' to encapsulates an amulet's temporal relations and develops the proposition of 'landscape amulets.'

Reading Shakespeare through a Christian Lens Not only huge English literature fans or apologetics aficionados will be delighted by this special Advent issue of An Unexpected Journal. The aim is to interest the scholar, yes, but also the general reader who has no special knowledge of English literature, Shakespeare, or apologetics. The defense of the Christian faith believes that no domain of human experience. All areas, including the history of ideas political, philosophical, scientific, and social, are fair game for apologetic research and discussion. All that we express in literature (especially the dramatic arts) deals with our experience, and experience is tied to the One who Makes, Redeems, and Sanctifies experience. With features from guest editors: Joe Ricke: "A Guide to Reading this Volume," "Introduction," "Against Pessimism: As You Like It (or Not)" Sarah R.A. Waters: "Lewis, Lear, and The Four Loves" As well as contributions from Shakespearean Scholars: Jem Bloomfield: "Disclosures of Form" John D. Cox: "Paradoxia Shakespeareana" Jack Heller: "Dogberry’s Inscrutable Grace in Much Ado about Nothing" Laura Higgins: "Shakespeare’s Hidden Ghosts" Crystal Hurd: "Ophelia" Corey Latta: "Hamlet’s Father" and "Othello" Tony Lawton and Editors: "Shakespeare and Cultural Apologetics" Tracy Manning and Editors: "An Interview with Tracy Manning" Louis Markos: "Letters From Shakespeare: Love" and "Letters From Shakespeare: Fools" D.S. Martin: "A Poem Emerging From An Epigraph Concerning Hamlet’s Indirection" G. Connor Salter: "Adaptation and Cultural Apologetics" John Stanifer: "Authorship: A Poetic Meditation" Jennifer Woodruff Tait: "Scripture" and "Jaques Tells His Story" Grace Tiffany: “Who is’t can read a woman?” Gary L. Tandy: “O, I have ta’en too little care of this” Including excerpts from the works of William Shakespeare: "Sonnet 55" "Cordelia To Lear" "Isabella’s Speech (On Mercy)" "Bottom’s Dream + Biblical Source" "On Mercy and Prejudice" "Sonnet 116" And commentary from classic authors: "On Shakespeare" by George MacDonald "On MacBeth" by G.K. Chesterton Erasmus On Fools "On Shakespeare" by John Milton 250 pages Volume 5, Issue 4 (Advent 2022)

This study argues that allusion is a central part of classic British detective fiction. It demonstrates the fraught status of Shakespeare and the Bible during the Golden Age of the British detective novel, and the cultural currents which novelists navigated whilst alluding to them. The first part traces the complex web of allusions to Shakespeare and the Bible which appear in the novels of Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers, examining the meanings these allusions produce. The second part explores the way in which Sayers’ own collection of detective novels became a canon, on which later novelists exercised those same allusive practices. It studies allusions to Sayers’ novels throughout the twentieth century and into the twenty-first, from Gladys Mitchell and P.D. James to Reginald Hill and Sujata Massey. This study reveals allusion as a shaping force at the origin of the classic British detective novel, and a continuing element in its identity.

Ronald Hutton is known for his colourful and provocative writings on original subjects. This work is no exception: for the first full-scale scholarly study of the only religion England has ever given the world; that of modern pagan witchcraft, which has now spread from English shores across four continents. Hutton examines the nature of that religion and its development, and offers a microhistory of attitudes to paganism, witchcraft, and magic in British society since 1800. Its pages reveal village cunning folk, Victorian ritual magicians, classicists and archaeologists, leaders of woodcraft and scouting movements, Freemasons, and members of rural secret societies. We also find some of the leading of figures of English literature, from the Romantic poets to W.B. Yeats, D.H. Lawrence, and Robert Graves, as well as the main personalities who have represented pagan witchcraft to the world since 1950. Densely researched, Triumph of the Moon presents an authoritative insight into a hitherto little-known aspect of modern social history.

A superbly rich and engrossing exploration of C.S. Lewis' The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Paths in the Snow traces the literary allusions and echoes to be found in this beloved novel, drawing the reader deeper into the magic and meaning of Narnia.

During and after the Second World War, there was a concerted thinking about religion in Britain. Not only were leading international thinkers of the day theologians--Ronald Niebuhr, Paul Tillich, Jacques Maritain--but leading writers contributed to discussions about religion. Graham Greene, Muriel Spark, and Barbara Pym incorporated miracles, evil, and church-going into their novels, while Louis MacNeice, T. S. Eliot, and C. S. Lewis gave radio broadcasts about the role of Christianity in contemporary society. Certainly the war revived interest in aspects of Christian life. Salvation and redemption were on many people's minds. The Ministry of Information used images of bombed churches to stoke patriotic fervour, and King George VI led a series of Days of National Prayer that coincided with crucial events in the Allied campaign. After the war and throughout the 1950s, approximately 1.4 million Britons converted to Roman Catholicism as a way of expressing their spiritual ambitions and solidarity with humanity on a world-wide scale. Religion provided one way for writers to answer the question, 'what is man?' It also afforded ways to think about social obligation and ethical engagement. Moreover, the mid-century turn to religion offered ways to articulate statehood, not from the perspective of nationhood and politics, but from the perspective of moral action and social improvement. Instead of being a retreat into seclusion and solitude, the mid-century turn to religion is a call to responsibility.