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Post by dem bones on Feb 8, 2016 19:39:53 GMT
David Sutton (ed.) - Fortean Times # 337 (February, 2016) Cover art [uncredited] Hector Garrido THE RETURN OF GOTHIC ROMANCE: Guillermo del Toro described his recent film Crimson Peak as a “classic Gothic Romance”, a genre that has been consigned to oblivion for nearly four decades. But what is Gothic Romance, what makes it different from horror and why did it fall into obscurity? MARIA J PEREZ CUERVO dons her best nightie and goes in search of answers …"The single-lit window from one of the top levels is a merciless eye that watches the heroine's every movement ...." First issue of FT I've bought in over five years, and that primarily on the strength of the cover feature, Maria J. Perez Cuervo's thoughtful and enthusiastic article on the rise, fall and (if Crimson Peaks has anything to do with it), mini-revival of the Gothic Romance genre in fiction and on screen. The Return Of Gothic Romance runs to eight pages, but as four of these are devoted to a reproduction of a Harry Barton painting, a Paperback Fanatic style mini-gallery, and the aforementioned interview with Guillermo del Toro, it's important that the author cuts straight to the chase, and she does. Following the briefest history lesson, MJPC hones in on four novels of particular significance: Ann Radcliffe's Mysteries of Udolpho, Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca and Hitchcock's film treatment of same , "Victoria Holt"'s overnight sensation Mistress Of Mellyn (a hybrid of Charlotte Brontë and du Maurier), and, shrewdly, Louisa May Alcott's decidedly non-Gothic sell-out to "monstrous domesticity," Little Women. According to Maria, Alcott's preference had been to continue writing tales of terror until persuaded that sentimental slush had greater sales potential. Her most famous work doubtless kept the bank manager sweet, but Alcott detested it. It's a fascinating piece on a subject I hope the author will return to at a later date. Elsewhere we find Theo Paijmans on "Monster panics" among the Afro-American communities of South Carolina and Florida throughout 1938, featuring an El Paso precursor to the Gorbals Vampire, an otter on the rampage, and a dog-eating "thing," one or more of which entities may have been the invention of a racist newspaper hack. Amanda Rees sets out in search of "the twins of Tregavon," supposedly genuine Neanderthals who survived into the nineteen sixties, last known whereabouts, high up in the Welsh hills behind a ruined monastery. Paul Koudounaris travels to Indonesia to fraternise with the Salawesi mummies on their special day of the dead, and Alan Murdie investigates spooky phenomena in eldritch, legend-haunted Bishop Stortford. Weird news round up The Wilder Shores Of Love proves there's someone for everything, be it playground slide, tow bar, or miniature pony, although the initial report on the arrest of a serial tractor-molester in Sussex - "When officers searched his terraced home they found 5,000 images on his laptop" - has since been revealed as a (very wonderful) hoax. Finally (for time being), long-time resident artist Hunt Emerson and his partner in crime Kevin Jackson subject mystic-author-Grailoid Charles 'War in Heaven' Williams to the Phenomenomix treatment. Coming next issue. In Crowley's Uniform: The Esoteric History of David Bowie.
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Post by ropardoe on Feb 2, 2017 21:15:28 GMT
I have a letter in the new issue of Fortean Times (number 350). They've headed it "Baby-eating". I'm nothing if not versatile!
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Post by ropardoe on Feb 3, 2017 9:38:47 GMT
I have a letter in the new issue of Fortean Times (number 350). They've headed it "Baby-eating". I'm nothing if not versatile! My previous letter in Fortean Times, a couple of years ago, was headed "Stretchy Dog". Eating babies and stretching dogs - what sort of monster am I??
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Post by ripper on Feb 12, 2017 17:02:20 GMT
I have a letter in the new issue of Fortean Times (number 350). They've headed it "Baby-eating". I'm nothing if not versatile! That's intrigueing, Rosemary. I quite often scan their online forum but only occasionally purchase issues of the magazine nowadays.
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Post by helrunar on Aug 7, 2023 21:43:17 GMT
I'm intrigued by the current issue of Fortean Times--and may have to special order a copy of the mag--because the cover story is all about Dr Margaret Murray, with the tag-line "Grandmother of Wicca." Not really accurate though Dr Murray did write a short foreword to Gerald Gardner's Witchcraft Today, the book which had a strong media profile in 1954 informing the public that the "Old Religion" of Witchcraft (not yet re-dubbed "Wicca"--that word was used originally in Craft circles to refer to an Initiate of the Order, or the collective Priesthood) was still alive and in evidence, with covens to be found tucked away here and there.
I saw a rather blurry scan of the first two pages of the Murray article online today. No idea if it's any good. Most references to her don't go beyond trashing her up hill and down dale for her putative "sins" of scholarship or what have you.
Hel.
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Post by 𝘗rincess 𝘵uvstarr on Aug 8, 2023 12:18:14 GMT
I'm intrigued by the current issue of Fortean Times--and may have to special order a copy of the mag--because the cover story is all about Dr Margaret Murray, with the tag-line "Grandmother of Wicca." Not really accurate though Dr Murray did write a short foreword to Gerald Gardner's Witchcraft Today, the book which had a strong media profile in 1954 informing the public that the "Old Religion" of Witchcraft (not yet re-dubbed "Wicca"--that word was used originally in Craft circles to refer to an Initiate of the Order, or the collective Priesthood) was still alive and in evidence, with covens to be found tucked away here and there. I saw a rather blurry scan of the first two pages of the Murray article online today. No idea if it's any good. Most references to her don't go beyond trashing her up hill and down dale for her putative "sins" of scholarship or what have you. Hel. I suppose some like the Murray claim that there was an actual surviving pagan religion that was still active and so knowledge was passed down that way, the problem seems to be a lack of evidence for any such thing.
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Post by 𝘗rincess 𝘵uvstarr on Aug 9, 2023 15:02:10 GMT
There seems to be a need by some to have an ancient origin for Wicca. I suppose the idea you are practicing some hidden secret knowledge passed down from ages ago has a strong appeal. It's not as if modern ritual magick is ancient anyway, it was mostly created by Éliphas Lévi, and later by Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers for the Golden Dawn, using a hodgepodge of sources from his reading at the British Library, like Dr Dee's Enochian language. Surely Mathers, because of his influence, there could be no Aleister Crowley or Wicca without him, is one of the influential figures of the 20th century. And if you look at the Tarot, it was originally a card game, only taken up by fortune-tellers in the late 18th century. None of this is a criticism of Wicca by the way, though some practitioners always take it to be. The Golden Dawn system seems to take a lot of effort to do, it trains the mind, Yeats was one who studied it. Arthur Machen was a member, but probably not a very senior one. If I had to pick I'd pick Golden Dawn ceremonial magic over Wicca, as it is much harder.
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Post by humgoo on Sept 14, 2023 13:10:43 GMT
Fortean Times Presents Monster Hunters: In Search of Unknown Animals (Diamond Publishing Limited, 2023) Etienne Gilfillan/Alex Tomlinson/Adobe Stock Dr Karl Shuker - Introduction Stu Neville - Shooting Bigfoot: The Patterson/Gimlin Film Adam Davies - I Thought I Saw a Sauropod Karl Shuker - You've Been Trunkoed! Michael Williams & Ruby Lang - Yowieland Benjamin Radford - The Lizard Man of Scape Ore Swamp Edward Crabtree - Snowman's Land: The Search for the Russian Yeti Martin Gately - The Crypto Kid Investigates Adam Davies - Death Worm! Richard Freeman - If You Were the Only Gul in the World... Neil Arnold - The Mane Attraction Richard Svensson - The Serpents of Sweden Karl Shuker - On the Track of the Nandi BearReprints of old FT articles, with Karl Shuker's "Final Thoughts" appended to each (except the Nessie piece, the "Final Thoughts" on which has been omitted due to reasons of space but can be read on Dr. Shuker's blog). "The Crypto Kid Investigates" is NOT about Bitcoin.
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