The Newsletter of the
Sussex Centre for Folklore, Fairy Tales and Fantasy Oct-Nov 2015
1
Contents
Pre-order Gramarye issue 8 now. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Upcoming events at the Sussex Centre
Folklore Map Relaunch. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Kate Mosse, 'The Taxidermist's Daughter'. . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
What happened at our Fairy-Tale Networking event?. . . . . . 8 Other events around the world. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
2
Pre-order Gramarye issue 8 now
Gramarye issue 8 is now available to preorder from our online store. This issue’s contents include: • ‘The Mysterious Rolling Wool Bogey’, Simon Young
Gramary e
ISBN 978 -1-9078 ISSN 205 52-??-?
The Jou
rnal of the
Sussex
Centre
for Folklo
re, Fairy
Tales and
New wo
• Sim rk by on Youn g • An up • Jud ama Chandrasek ith ha • Ge Woolf org • Nicho e Green • San las Tucker dra L. Be • Jac queline S ckett im • Sea na Kozar pson • Ma rio • Niall n Gibson McDevit t
Fantasy
Winter 2015 Issue 8
• ‘The Snow Queen’, script by Anupama Chandrasekhar • An interview with Anupama Chandrasekhar
1
• ‘Three Roads River’, Judith Woolf • ‘Arianrhod’, Steve O’Brien • ‘But still, the heart doth need a language…’, George Green • ‘My Favourite Fairyland Fiction’, Ruth B. Bottigheimer • A Carnivalesque Recasting of the Grimms’ Tales: a review of 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 3
0 2915
• A review of Daniel Ogden's Drakōn: Dragon Myth and Serpent Cult in the Greek and Roman Worlds, Jacqueline Simpson • A review of Ann Schmiesing's Disability, Deformity and Disease in the Grimms’ Fairy Tales, Seana Kozar • A review of Defining Magic: A Reader, Marion Gibson • A review of MacGillivray's The Last Wolf of Scotland, Niall McDevitt • A review of The Gothic Fairy Tale in Young Adult Literature: Essays on Stories from Grimm to Gaiman, Malini Roy • A review of Jan Beveridge's Children into Swans: Fairy Tales and the Pagan Imagination, Katherine Langrish • A review of Eliza Granville's Gretel and the Dark, Andrew Teverson • A review of Terry Pratchett's The Shepherd’s Crown, Jane Carroll Plus correspondence between Jacqueline Simpson and Tom Shippey, 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. 4
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 8 is also available from: • Atlantis Books (London) • Byre Books (Wigtown) • Foyles (London) • Kims (Chichester) • Treadwells (London) • Waterstones (Chichester) Cover illustration and left: Natalie Frank's Grimm illustrations.
5
Upcoming events at the Sussex Centre
Folklore Map Relaunch The finished map is now beautifully illustrated and available to be downloaded for free at www. chi.ac.uk/folklore-map. Please join us for its relaunch: 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.
Tickets ÂŁ5/ÂŁ3 concessions; free to University staff and students. Contact h.robbins@chi.ac.uk for more information. 6
Kate Mosse, 'The Taxidermist's Daughter' Tuesday 17th November, 5.15-6.30 p.m. NB: Due to overwhelming popularity this event has been moved to the Mitre Lecture Theatre. 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 Chichesterbased 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
What happened at our Fairy-tale Networking?
On 18th September 2015, the Sussex Centre for Folklore, Fairy Tales, and Fantasy hosted a free networking event for those interested in fairy-tale fiction and research. The event was sparked by a visit to Chichester by Sherryl Clark, a creative writing PhD candidate at Victoria University in Melbourne, Australia. Sherryl’s PhD is focused on writing original fairy tales for children and young adults, and the research component of her work is investigating the ‘enduring elements’ of fairy tales. At the networking event, this idea of the ‘enduring elements’ of fairy tales opened the floor for a lively discussion between undergraduates, postgraduates, fiction writers, and the Sussex Centre staff. It was an excellent chance for attendees to discuss with one another ‘why fairy tales stick’ (and of course, some talk of fairy-tale scholar Jack Zipes’ book by the same name was almost preordained!). That there is something difficult to define that is inherent within the fairy tale itself was possibly the most agreed-upon 8
answer within the group. Also considered important was the fact that similar tales replicate in many cultures and across time, so the tales perpetuate themselves, strengthening the claims by Zipes and Neil Gaiman that tales are ‘memetic’ and ‘viral’. Many in the group felt that the fairy tale’s passive, childlike tone and its ‘happy-ever-after’ ending hold a promise that everything will be okay (something that speaks to the subconscious) and the comforting assurance that even the good simpleton can become a king. If fantasy fiction subverts this trend, perhaps, attendees mused, it is because recent fantasy is written in a time when reality is mostly safe and okay, and unhappy endings don’t feel as threatening because they probably won’t happen to us. Since many of the attendees were inspired by fairy tales in their own fiction work, this also became a prominent point of discussion. How to use fairy tales in personal writing and how to make familiar tales fresh was something which tied very well into Sherryl’s research, and attendees discussed ways they personally liked to write with fairy tales. Like Sherryl does with her doctoral work, some attendees wanted to create something new that worked within a framework of the genre. Many of them discussed freewriting as a technique which was ideal for writing fairy tales, since it allowed for the natural emergence of a moral, the recalling of childhood concerns and pleasures (since the genre is, in modern times, often associated with writing for children), 9
and working on an unconscious level which brought out the similarly unconscious inherent characteristics found in fairy tales. Others in the group liked adapting and subverting their fairy-tale fiction, through placing established characters in new settings or switching the customary genders in a tale. It was agreed that the usually sparse world of fairy tales can provide a good foundation to which the contemporary writer can add further details. Overall, the event was wonderfully engaging, and it was fantastic to see the wide variety of interests that people have within the subject of fairy tales. It was exciting to see what kind of research and work is happening across the world, and a great opportunity for the Sussex Centre to encourage local and international connections between researchers and writers. I am sure I speak for all in attendance in thanking the Sussex Centre for putting on this event and to Sherryl Clark for travelling so far and sharing her research with us. I look forward to the next chance to sit with like-minds and deliberate once again on fairy tales!
by Rose Williamson
10
Other events around the world
Ghosts and demons of the City (London) 31st October, 3-5 p.m. (But if you're closer to us than London you should come to our Celebration of Folklore!:) http://forteanlondon.blogspot. co.uk/2015/10/ghosts-and-demons-of-city-walk.html The Baba Yaga Show Soho Theatre, 16th November, 8 p.m.: In a night of fairytale for grown-ups, Xanthe Gresham Knight gets us lost in the woods and into the bony hands of granny bandylegs, the classic hag superior. http://www.sohotheatre.com/whats-on/ crick-crack-club-the-baba-yaga-show/ “From 'breathless catalogue' to 'beyond text': A Hundred Years of Children's Folklore Collecting� Katherine Briggs lecture, 18 November (London) by Dr Julia C. Bishop (University of Sheffield, UK) http://folklore-society.com/events/the-katharine-briggslecture-2015 11
The Ontology of Supernatural Encounters in Old Norse Literature and Scandinavian Folklore 10-12 December 2015,Tartu, Estonia http://www.flgr.ut.ee/et/osakonnad/ontology-supernaturalencounters#_blank 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 Reflected Shadows: Folklore and the Gothic 5-17 April, Kingston Uni, (London): http://folklore-society. com/events/reflected-shadows-folklore-and-the-gothic CfP: Charms, Charmers and Charming Conference 2016 Innovation and Tradition Friday 6th – Sunday 8th May 2016 (Cork, Ireland) https://corkcharms.wordpress.com/
12
If you have any queries or feedback about this newsletter, please contact Heather Robbins at h.robbins@chi.ac.uk
13