The Newsletter of the
Sussex Centre for Folklore, Fairy Tales and Fantasy Jun-Jul 2014
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Contents
Gramarye issue 5 coming soon ...
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Winners of Fairy Tale architecture competition
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Bones of 7ft hellhound discovered
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Kate Bernheimer on Fairy Tale and Form (2)
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Mythgard Academy podcast, ‘The Lost Tales’
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Wonderlands Old and New
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Prospect Magazine interviews Marina Warner
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Tolkien around the web
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Gramarye issue 5 coming soon ...
This issue’s contents include: • ‘The Case of the Ebony Horse’ (Part I), Ruth B. Bottigheimer • ‘By Fynnon Ddu’, Katherine Langrish • ‘Fairy-Tale Adaptation in Jim Henson’s “The Storyteller”’, John Pazdziora • ‘Two Tales from Odds and Sods’, Stephen Badman • ‘“Iron is Stronger than Grief, but Love is Stronger than Iron”: Reading Fairy-Tale Emotions through Words and Illustrations’, Maria Nikolajeva • ‘My Favourite Rhymes and Stories when I was Young: Idaho Folklore in the 1940s’, D.L. Ashliman • A review of Cristina Bacchilega’s Fairy Tales Transformed? Twenty-First-Century Adaptations and the Politics of Wonder and Mar tine Hennard’s Reading, Translating, Rewriting: Angela Carter’s Translational Poetics, Sadhana Naithani • A review of Karl Bell’s The Legend of Spring-heeled Jack: Victorian Urban Folklore and Popular Cultures, Scott Wood • A review of Jack Zipes’ The Golden Age of Folk and Fairy Tales: From the Brothers Grimm to Andrew Lang, Lili Sarnyai 3
• A review of Kate Bernheimer’s xo Orpheus: Fifty New Myths, Catriona McAra Not to mention images by Walter Crane, Edmund Dulac, Charles Folkard, Brian Froud, Warwick Goble, Arthur Rackham and Binette Schroeder. To pre-order your copy go to our online store.
Winners of Fairy Tales architecture competition announced Blank Space hopes to engage the public in architecture through Fairy Tales, the world’s first architectural story-telling competition. The theme was chosen for its universal messages, and to address issues that are at the core of human existence. The best entries have been made into a book: Fairy Tales – When Architecture Tells a Story. To find out more, visit their website here. 4
Bones of a 7ft hellhound discovered
The bones of a seven-foot-long hound from hell have been discovered in the grounds of an ancient abbey in the Suffolk countryside. Black Shuck was believed to have roamed the countryside about 500 years ago. Folklore says the giant creature was the hound of hell, with savage claws and burning eyes, and killed worshippers in 1577. Black Shuck’s most notable attack came at the Holy Trinity church in Blythburgh. During a thunderstorm, the dog came in and killed a man and a boy, leaving scorch marks on the church doors as it fled. Discover more here. 5
Kate Bernheimer on Fairy Tale and Form (Part 2) Natalie Sutherland applies Kate Bernheimer’s theories about fairy tales to two tales, The Water Nixie and The Sweet Porridge, here.
Mythgard Academy lecture podcast, ‘The Lost Tales’ This podcast series, hosted by the Tolkien Professor, Corey Olsen, will explore “Middle-earth” in its very infancy. “The Book of Lost Tales”, published as volumes one and two of The History of Middle-earth series, contains the earliest versions of tales which were only glimpsed at in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, and were published (posthumously) in full, after many decades of changes and revisions, in The Silmarilion. 6
Wonderlands Old and New: The Magic of Books, Words and Pictures This continuing education programme will take place at the UNIL-EPFL Campus, Lausanne, Switzerland, on 12 September 2014, 8.30am-12.30pm. Registration deadline, 27 June. The programme is designed to stimulate reflection on the significance and relevance of imaginative literature today, from Milton’s great epic to contemporary crossover fiction. The morning talks will be followed by an afternoon staging of Alice as well as a book exhibition that will facilitate exchanges among English literature scholars, actors, musicians and participants. - See more here.
Prospect Magazine interviews Marina Warner The critic and mythographer on fairy tales, feminism, modern art, translation and the LRB, here. 7
Tolkien around the web as Beowulf translation published In celebration of Tolkien’s trans lation of Beowulf (collection of reviews here) appearing this month, we bring you a round-up of Tolkien blogs around the web: Tolkien Transactions: the Tolkien Society blog brings you this month’s news, essays, art, interviews, reviews, etc. Tolkien and Fantasy: The blog of Douglas A. Andersen, author of The Annotated Hobbit. The Journal ofTolkien Research is an open-access peer-reviewed journal of scholarly articles on Tolkien, appearing as soon as they are approved. Rhode Island College’s Tolkien course: The latest post is on the languages that inspired Tolkien. The University of Chicago’s course, Tolkien: Medieval and Modern. Latest posts are on C.S. Lewis’s fairies vs Tolkien’s elves, and sexism in Tolkien. 8
If you have any queries or feedback about this newsletter, please contact Heather Robbins at h.robbins@chi.ac.uk
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