The Newsletter of the
Sussex Centre for Folklore, Fairy Tales and Fantasy Aug-Sept 2015
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Contents
Gramarye issue 7 e-book out now ,. ,. ,. ,. ,. ,. ,. ,. ,. ,. ,. ,. ,. ,. ,. ,. 3 Alice in Wonderland: an exhibition of illustrations,. ,. ,. ,. ,. ,. ,. , 5 Upcoming events at the Sussex Centre
Networking event for fairy-tale writers/researchers,. ,. ,. , 6
Kate Mosse, 'The Taxidermist's Daughter' ,. ,. ,. ,. ,. ,. ,. ,. ,. 7
Folklore Map Relaunch events,. ,. ,. ,. ,. ,. ,. ,. ,. ,. ,. ,. ,. ,. ,. ,. , 8
Other events around the world,. ,. ,. ,. ,. ,. ,. ,. ,. ,. ,. ,. ,. ,. ,. ,. ,. , 9 Sneak peek at Gramarye 8,. ,. ,. ,. ,. ,. ,. ,. ,. ,. ,. ,. ,. ,. ,. ,. ,. ,. ,. ,. 11 Jonathan Jones was mean about Terry Pratchett,. ,. ,. ,. ,. ,. , 13
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Gramarye issue 7 e-book out now
Gramarye issue 7 is now available as an e-book from our online store. To guarantee your printed copy of future issues, please subscribe here. This issue’s contents include: • ‘Land Under Wave: Reading the Landscapes of Tiffany Aching’, Jane Carroll • ‘Jacek Yerka's Rhetoric of the Impossible’, Joe Young • ‘The King’s Amulet’, Rosalind Kerven • ‘The Seal Wife’, Judith Woolf • ‘They Say England Has No Folktales’, Jacqueline Simpson • ‘My Favourite Story When I Was Young’, Sadhana Naithani • A review of Veronica L. Shanoes’ Fairy Tales, Myth, and Psychoanalytic Theory: Feminism and Retelling the Tale, Naomi Wood • A review of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary, together with Sellic Spell, Tom Shippey • A review of Daniel Gabelman’s George MacDonald: Divine Carelessness and Fairytale Levity, Colin Manlove 3
• A review of Marina Warner’s Once Upon a Time, Martine Hennard Dutheil de la Rochère • A review of Malcolm C. Lyons’ Tales of the Marvellous and News of the Strange, Ruth B. Bottigheimer • A review of Adam Roberts’ The Riddles of The Hobbit, Jane Carroll • A review of Jelena Curcic’s Serbian Fairy Tales, Joanna Coleman • A review of Jonathan Walker’s Five Wounds: An Illuminated Novel, Robin Furth • A review of J.R.R. Tolkien: The Forest and the City, Alaric Hall Exclusive offer Gramarye readers are entitled to 20% off Scrivener software, the project management tool for writers. Just visit http://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.php and enter the coupon code ‘SUSSEXCENTRE’. The printed edition of Gramarye 7 is also available from: • Atlantis Books (London) • Byre Books (Wigtown) • Emporium Bookshop (Cromarty) • Foyles (London) • Kims (Chichester)
• Transreal Fiction (Edinburgh) • Treadwells (London) • Waterstones (Chichester) • Way Out There And Back (Littlehampton) 4
Alice in Wonderland: an exhibition of illustrations A selection of illustrations from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass by John Vernon Lord and Mervyn Peake is now on display in the University of Chichester's Otter Gallery. The exhibition is part of the nationwide celebration of Alice's 150th anniversary, and runs in association with the 'Wonderlands' symposium mentioned above. This is a free event running until September. For the gallery's opening times please visit http:// www.chi.ac.uk/otter-gallery/visit-us
Some of John Vernon Lord's illustrations from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (Artists’ Choice Editions, 2009) and Through the Looking-glass (Artists’ Choice Editions, 2011).
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Upcoming events at the Sussex Centre
Free networking event for fairy-tale writers/researchers Friday 18th September, from 5 p.m., Cloisters This free networking event for fairy-tale fiction writers/ researchers will be held here at the Sussex Centre (Bishop Otter Campus). The event is open to any fairy-tale fiction writers and researchers who wish to attend. The broad topic of discussion will be 'the enduring elements of fairy tales'. Sherryl Clark, a PhD student from Australia, is visiting the Sussex Centre as part of her research into these elements (what makes fairy tales 'stick', as Zipes puts it). She plans to use these elements in four original fairy-tale picture books and a novel for children. The event has been organised to allow her to discuss her topic with other researchers and writers.
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Kate Mosse, 'The Taxidermist's Daughter' Tuesday 17th November, 5.15-6.30 p.m., Cloisters Inspired by the folklore and mythology of Sussex landscapes and seascape – and a homage to Kate’s childhood passion for a museum of taxidermy in Sussex – The Taxidermist’s Daughter is a Gothic thriller set in Fishbourne in 1912, as the flood waters are beginning to rise. The Chichester-based bestselling novelist will celebrate paperback publication of her latest No. 1 bestseller by sharing her writing trade secrets: from old legends and ancient Sussex folklore, explaining how her research into taxidermy and bird mythology inspired the novel, and how landscape and Gothic fantasy provide its backdrop. A unique event to hear Kate talking in her home town about the novel set in Fishbourne and Chichester. Tickets £5/£3 concessions; free to University staff and students. Ticket prices can be discounted on books bought at the event. Contact h.robbins@chi.ac.uk for more information. 7
Folklore Map Relaunch
Thank you to everyone who offered folktales to add to the map. The map is now beautifully illustrated and all folktales have been added. It's been a big project and to celebrate the finished map the Sussex Centre for Folklore, Fairy Tales and Fantasy and the South Downs National Park are co-hosting two folklore events in October half-term. A Celebration of Sussex Folklore Saturday 31st October 2015, 2-4 p.m., Cloisters Dr Steve O'Brien will read 'St Dunstan and the Devil', Joanna Coleman will perform old Sussex tales and Cotillion will introduce the audience to a selection of Sussex folk songs for this special Hallowe'en event. The South Downs National Park is organising its own map celebration in the same week – more information to follow. Keep up to date by following us on Facebook or Twitter.
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Other events around the world
CfP:Victorian fairy tales: formations and innovation North-East Modern Language Association, University at Buffalo, State University of New York https://www.cfplist.com/nemla/Home/S/15865 CfP: Fairy Tales in Society and Culture North-East Modern Language Association, University at Buffalo, State University of New York, deadline 30 September: http://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/node/63276 Medieval Myths and British Identities Friday 18th September, Cardiff University An postgraduate conference to discuss the relationship between myth and national identity in the British Isles. http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/ugc/archives/7339 Celebrating Blake Piccadilly Waterstones, Saturday 19th September http://thebigblakeproject.org.uk/celebrating-william-blake-atwaterstones-in-london/
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'Magic Moments' Marina Warner and Heather O’Neill with Nicolette Jones, 27 September 2 p.m., Charleston nr Lewes: http://www.charleston.org.uk/whats-on/festivals/smallwonder/events/magic-moments/ CfP: Folklore, Fairy Tales and Legends 14-16 March 2016, Budapest. Deadline 2 October 2015. http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/probing-the-boundaries/ persons/fairy-tales-folk-lore-and-legends/call-for-participation/ Wonder Tales The 37th International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts 16-20 March 2016, Florida http://www.fantastic-arts.org/ CfP: Charms, Charmers and Charming Conference 2016 Innovation and Tradition Friday 6th – Sunday 8th May 2016 (Cork, Ireland) https://corkcharms.wordpress.com/
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Sneak peek at Gramarye 8
Gramary e
The Winter 2015 issue of Gramarye, the journal of the Sussex Centre for Folklore, Fairy Tales and Fantasy will include: • ‘The Mysterious Rolling Wool Bogey’, Simon Young • 'The Snow Queen', script by and interview with Anupama Chandrasekhar • ‘Three Roads River’, Judith Woolf • ‘But still, the heart doth need a language…’, George Green • 'A Carnivalesque Recasting of the Grimms’ Tales': a review of Claire Gilman, Linda Nochlin and Natalie Frank's Tales of the Brothers Grimm, Sandra L. Beckett • A review of Walter de la Mare's Told Again: Old Tales Told Again, Nicholas Tucker • A review of Daniel Ogden's Drakōn: Dragon Myth and Serpent Cult in the Greek and Roman Worlds, Jacqueline Simpson • A review of MacGillivray's The Last Wolf of Scotland, Niall McDevitt
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Winter 2015 Issue 8
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• A review of Ann Schmiesing's Disability, Deformity and Disease in the Grimms’ Fairy Tales, Seana Kozar • A review of Bernd-Christian Otto and Michael Stausberg's Defining Magic: A Reader, Marion Gibson • Plus correspondence between Jacqueline Simpson and Tom Shippey, Danish folktales and of course pages and pages of fantastic contemporary and Golden Age illustrations. The printed edition of Gramarye issue 8 will only be available to pre-ordering customers and subscribers. To guarantee your printed copy of future issues, please subscribe here. Cover illustration and left: Natalie Frank's Grimm illustrations.
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Jonathan Jones was mean about Terry Pratchett ‘Stories of imagination tend to upset those without one’. Terry Pratchett Jonathan Jones, an art journalist for the Guardian, has stated in a recent article that Terry Pratchett was not a literary genius. However, Jones has ‘never read a single one of his books’ as ‘life really is too short to waste on ordinary potboilers’. The rest of the internet immediately offered to show Jonathan Jones the error his ways. Sam Jordison responded in another Guardian piece by copying Jones’s praise of Mansfield Park – replacing it with Equal Rites. This summer I finally finished Equal Rites. How had I managed not to read it up to now? It’s shameful. But at least now it’s part of my life. The structure of Terry Pratchett’s’s morally sombre plot, the restrained irony of his style, the sudden opening up of the book as it moves from the tiny village of Bad Ass to Ankh Morpok and takes in the complex unreal social world of the pre-Vetinari Discworld – all that’s in me now. Great books become part of your experience. They enrich the very fabric of reality. 13
Jordison notes that the Discworld series often had a lot in common with Jane Austen’s work. They’re funny; they pose serious moral questions; they have tight-winding plots. They even include witty prose that, like Austen’s, rely on exquisite timing and rhythm: “The entire universe has been neatly divided into things to (a) mate with, (b) eat, (c) run away from, and (d) rocks.” The Daily Dot found that, rather than being ‘potboilers’, i.e. bad books written quickly to make money, the Discworld series were 'complex political and social satires, lampooning literary clichés and exploring issues of social class, religion, and cultural heritage'. Damien Walter condemned Jones’s piece as clickbait that showed ‘the least possible research or effort’, reflecting ‘the elitest, and poisonously classist world, of British arts and culture’. Walter says, ‘Even as his sales climbed towards hundreds of millons, Sir Terry’s books received none of the attention given to, say, Ian McEwan.’ This cultural snobbery goes back to ‘the early days of popular publishing, and “penny dreadfuls”, which ‘began the process of defining fantasy stories of all kinds as the literature of the working classes, while realistic novels became associated with the growing middle class.’
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In wondering why art critics often overlook or insult Pratchett’s work, Walter proposes that ‘a writer who can brutally satirise the media industry in Moving Pictures, or the finance industry in Making Money, or the poisonous glamour of elitism itself in Lords and Ladies, was not a writer Britain’s cultural elite felt safe around’. Marc Aplin at Fantasy Faction picked apart Jones’s argument that Pratchett can not be ‘good literature’ as ‘all great books can change your life, your beliefs, your perceptions’. Aplin says, ‘whether it was a look at Sexism, Feminism, Racism, Capitalism, Death, Religion, Political Systems – Pratchett was using heroes, orcs, goblins, mages, witches and dragons not to take rings to Mordor, but to explore issues that are affecting peoples’ lives today.... [T]hrough Fantasy Sir Terry enabled readers first to see an event as fantastical or silly, but then force them consider just how serious and worrying the real-life equivalent of what we’ve just read about truly is.' Jones advised Pratchett fans that 'Actual literature may be harder to get to grips with than a Discworld novel, but it is more worth the effort.' Apparently by admiring Pratchett's work we are 'robbing readers of the true delights of ambitious fiction.' Aplin (along with the rest of us) found this - the implication that Discworld fans must be simple or lazy - infuriating, and gives the final word to Sir Terry: 15
They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it’s not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance. Cheer yourself up with the Irish Examiner, which posted a wonderful round-up of the Twitter responses, and Buzzfeed, which gives 11 reasons why Terry Pratchett was, in fact, a literary genius.
Elena MÂŞ Vacas, 'Farewell, Sir Terry Pratchett' http://abend86.deviantart.com/art/Farewell-Sir-Terry-Pratchett-519883824
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If you have any queries or feedback about this newsletter, please contact Heather Robbins at h.robbins@chi.ac.uk
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