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Articles 91 - 120 of 171
Full-Text Articles in European Languages and Societies
Hell In Anime And Manga, From Go Nagai’S Devilman, Kentaro Miura’S Berserk, Hell Girl Project’S Hell Girl, The Works Of Junji Ito And Everything In Between, Minna Nizam
Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)
This paper will explore the influence of Hell in Anime and Manga. The discussion will begin with Go Nagai’s Devilman then lead into other examples of anime/manga with the same theme. The focus will be on the titular character, Akira Fudo, his transformation, and the villains throughout the story. Then a larger discussion on Kentaro Miura’s Berserk and his interpretation of hell will be taken into account. From Griffith’s transformation to Femto, to the iconography of the monsters Guts battles. Then another popular anime franchise will be discussed: Hell Girl and its impact on modern media. The story of revenge …
"Nor Am I Out Of It": The Modern Bureaucratic Hell On Page And Screen, Janet Brennan Croft
"Nor Am I Out Of It": The Modern Bureaucratic Hell On Page And Screen, Janet Brennan Croft
Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)
SESSION VI
5:30 PM—6:20 Eastern
4:30 PM—5:20 Central
3:30 PM—4:20Mountain
2:30 PM—3:20 Pacific
9:30 PM—10:20 GMT
Reforming Xibalba In Gods Of Jade And Shadow, Anne Acker
Reforming Xibalba In Gods Of Jade And Shadow, Anne Acker
Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)
When Gods of Jade and Shadow was published in 2019, it was acclaimed both for its excellent writing and its revisioning of Mesoamerican mythology. While there is certainly a centering of indigenous American myth over the Western religion, depicted as alien and imposed, the novel also belongs to a growing body of feminist literature in the #MeToo era that critiques and reimagines the power structures of the original stories. This paper explores the literary reconstruction of Xibalba, the underworld of Mayan myth, as Casiopea Tun seeks to restore the god Hun-Kame to his rightful throne at great personal cost. The …
Panel: Deep Places Of The World: Journeys In The Underworlds Of Middle-Earth, Alicia Fox-Lenz, Laura Grabowski, Constance Wagner, Jim Wert
Panel: Deep Places Of The World: Journeys In The Underworlds Of Middle-Earth, Alicia Fox-Lenz, Laura Grabowski, Constance Wagner, Jim Wert
Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)
In many world mythologies, underworlds are typically subterranean lands that house the dead. Sometimes these underworlds are visited by living heroes who pass trials only to return to the land of the living transformed. Tolkien uses this mythological theme to great effect throughout his legendarium. From The Hobbit to the Silmarillion, Tolkien’s world is littered with underworlds through which characters journey and emerge forever changed. Join us for a lively discussion of Tolkien’s underworlds and how they transform the characters who enter them, as well as the shape the larger events of Middle-earth.
Grey Town: The Practical Theology Of The Great Divorce, Reggie Weems
Grey Town: The Practical Theology Of The Great Divorce, Reggie Weems
Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)
As one of the most-read Protestant authors of the last two centuries, the legacy of C.S. Lewis is surprisingly rooted in his various writings about Hell. And yet, even though his works are permeated with the mysterium tremendum et fascinans, Lewis rarely spoke directly or clearly about Hell, such as he did in a single chapter in The Problem of Pain (1940). He nonetheless attempted to demythologize Hell from God’s viewpoint in The Pilgrim’s Regress (1933), Satan’s outlook in The Screwtape Letters (1942), and the human perspective in The Great Divorce (1945), his last and perhaps, most insightful …
The Road To Hell: Rebirth And Relevance In Musical Adaptations Of Katabatic Myth, Jarrod Deprado
The Road To Hell: Rebirth And Relevance In Musical Adaptations Of Katabatic Myth, Jarrod Deprado
Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)
Adapting Greek mythology provides a framework to reapproach classic works through a contemporary lens to better understand the present. Of particular interest is the depiction of characters traveling to Hell in search of a better future. Looking at two myth-inspired musicals—The Frogs by Stephen Sondheim and Burt Shevelove and Hadestown by Anaïs Michell—we see two disparate journeys to the Underworld given contemporary relevance. The Frogs (1974) depicts Dionysus’ journey to Hades to bring back a poet (originally Euripides, now George Bernard Shaw). However, it was not until the 2004 Broadway adaptation that overtly anti-authoritarian messages were added, aimed at …
Re-Visioning Underland: C. S. Lewis’S The Silver Chair As Dystopian Fiction, William Thompson
Re-Visioning Underland: C. S. Lewis’S The Silver Chair As Dystopian Fiction, William Thompson
Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)
In C. S. Lewis’s The Silver Chair, Jill, Eustace, and Puddleglum follow the four signs given to them by Aslan and descend into the underworld in order to rescue the lost prince. They find the enchanted Prince Rilian, along with thousands of Earthmen, enslaved to the Green Lady, who has a plan to subjugate the people and creatures of Narnia. Michael Ward, in Planet Narnia: The Seven Heavens and the Imagination of C. S. Lewis, takes a primarily Christological approach to the Narnia series, but finds a further analogue to Underland of The Silver Chair in the underworld …
Thinking Makes It So? Hell As A (Fixable) State Of Mind In The Good Place And Lucifer, Erin Giannini
Thinking Makes It So? Hell As A (Fixable) State Of Mind In The Good Place And Lucifer, Erin Giannini
Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)
While different in genre, sitcom The Good Place and drama Lucifer share a certain irreverent tone and a somewhat unique approach to the afterlife. In The Good Place, there is no mention of gods or devils, only demons, a Good Place committee, and a judge. Lucifer, loosely based on Neil Gaiman’s graphic novels, however, features angels, demons, God, and the Devil, providing its own spin on established cosmology with embodied versions of prominent figures such as the archangel Michael and biblical brothers Cain and Abel. Yet what ties The Good Place and Lucifer together is a focus on …
Panel: “Hell Is Other People: Looking At The Political Rage Machine In Tolkien Fan Spaces And Media”, Alicia Fox-Lenz, Grace Moone, Cara Marta Messina
Panel: “Hell Is Other People: Looking At The Political Rage Machine In Tolkien Fan Spaces And Media”, Alicia Fox-Lenz, Grace Moone, Cara Marta Messina
Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)
Following the backlash against the Tolkien Society’s “Tolkien and Diversity” seminar and the airing of the first season of Rings of Power, social media fan spaces for Tolkien remain politically charged and reactionary. Building on the foundation of Mythcon 51’s Roundtable “Race, Racisms, and Tolkien,” and Craig Franson’s work showcased there and on the podcast “American Id,” we will discuss the current state of Tolkien discourse on social media and how to navigate the landscape as safely as possible.
Substance Abuse: C.S. Lewis And The Symbolic Geography Of Hell, Richard Angelo Bergen
Substance Abuse: C.S. Lewis And The Symbolic Geography Of Hell, Richard Angelo Bergen
Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell by William Blake the Romantic, proffers a Romantic vision of hell, and a geographical representation of capacity and scope with an energetic apology. On the other hand, C.S. Lewis’s vision of hell in The Great Divorce is that of a land without substance: a land of addiction to mental maladies, an endless mental substance abuse, an emptying of presence. As one surveys the conversations throughout the book, one gets an increasing sense of the importance of understanding place correctly, as a matter of eternal consequence. One chapter concerns a well-travelled ghost who repeats his …
“Hell Is Only A Word. The Reality Is Much, Much Worse”: Black Holes As Fantasy Gateways To Hell, Kristine Larsen
“Hell Is Only A Word. The Reality Is Much, Much Worse”: Black Holes As Fantasy Gateways To Hell, Kristine Larsen
Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)
Black holes are frequently described as the scariest objects in the universe, even by the normally staid scientists who study them. Like the warning on the gate of Hell in Dante’s Inferno, any (hu)man or matter that dares to cross the event horizon abandons all hope before literally being ripped to shreds by the object’s extreme tidal forces. As the heart of the beast is approached, the laws of physics break down, time loses its simple everyday meaning, and mathematical madness reigns supreme. It is no wonder that Hollywood has repeatedly adopted the black hole as more than merely …
Hell On Earth In Garth Nix’S Old Kingdom, John Rosegrant
Hell On Earth In Garth Nix’S Old Kingdom, John Rosegrant
Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)
I explore psychological meanings embedded in the Old Kingdom. Its River of Death is a hell impinging on life: Like Dante’s Inferno it has nine sectors; the dead take hideous Boschian forms; and helped by necromancers wielding “free magic” they often return to life. On this metaphor Nix builds the insight that desiring to live deeply and joyously risks turning hellish if early life was loveless. Necromancers and Free Magic are battled by Abhorsens and others wielding “Charter magic,” Free Magic transformed by symbols. Immersion in the Charter gives a joyous experience of connection to all life. Symbolization must …
Those Queer Devils: Queercoding Villains, Devils, And Demons In Mythopoeic Film And Media, Grace Moone
Those Queer Devils: Queercoding Villains, Devils, And Demons In Mythopoeic Film And Media, Grace Moone
Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)
In the early years of Hollywood’s Golden Age, The Hays Code functioned as a rigid morality code designed to shape the norms of Western culture. Its far-reaching impacts remain visible even decades after its enforcement was no longer required. In this talk, we will explore one of the most pervasive elements of the code’s legacy: the prohibition against showing LGBTQ characters in a positive light, and the resulting phenomenon of “queer-coding” characters. The practice of portraying LGBT+ characters through a lens of villainy and stereotype to adhere to the Hays Code requirement that queerness be punished and depicted as undesirable …
Animated Dancing To Hell And Back: Disney’S Fantasia, Matthew Elfenbein
Animated Dancing To Hell And Back: Disney’S Fantasia, Matthew Elfenbein
Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)
Imaginative images of Heaven and Hell capture the sociocultural engagement with Walt Disney’s Fantasia (1940), which demonstrates animated dancing bodies to represent the descent and passage of the hero’s journey. This journey is presented with many different forms of conflict and images that become unique through the qualities of the animated screendance. This form of dance on film is accentuated by the visualization of imaginative bodies, a conflict between knowledge and curiosity, and the spectacle of layering images on top of symbolic meanings to emphasize the power of identification with the audience. The spectators of this film are engaged with …
From Hell (Or Not): Representations Of Merlin And His Origins In The Comics, Michael A. Torregrossa
From Hell (Or Not): Representations Of Merlin And His Origins In The Comics, Michael A. Torregrossa
Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)
The Arthurian figure of Merlin has a long literary history, but he never seems able to shake off the effects of his parentage. In medieval tradition, Merlin is sired by inhuman powers: first a seemingly benign dæmon and then a decidedly wicked demon. This preternatural aspect to his conception grants Merlin the skills and powers he uses to support the realm, yet it also taints him as someone potentially dangerous. Although Merlin’s background cannot be changed, creative artists often choose to ignore or alter his origins, especially when retelling his story for mass audiences. In contrast, other creators, usually those …
Denethor’S Descent Into Hell, Craig Boyd
Denethor’S Descent Into Hell, Craig Boyd
Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)
One character in Tolkien’s Legendarium stands out as one of the more morally sad and complicated individuals: Denethor, the Steward of Gondor. Although he tries to defend the kingdom he cares for, his own significant moral weaknesses subvert even the best of his intentions. His despair, provoked by the death of his favorite son—and the apparent death of his other son—sends him into a spiral of self-destructive harm from which there is no return. What accounts for this are three factors. First, his self-imposed isolation from others cuts him off from the necessary fellowship that could sustain his character; his …
Feasting At The Threshold: Transubstantiation, Queer Desire, And Homonationalism In Diane Duane’S The Tale Of The Five, Taylor Driggers
Feasting At The Threshold: Transubstantiation, Queer Desire, And Homonationalism In Diane Duane’S The Tale Of The Five, Taylor Driggers
Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)
Diane Duane’s ongoing pulp fantasy series The Tale of the Five (1979- ) is set in a world marked by constant bodily transgressions and surprises, where a human and dragon can occupy the same body and become lovers and a one-night stand can bring one face-to-face with God. This essay will argue that Duane’s series articulates eroticism in a manner comparable to Linn Marie Tonstad’s (2016) queer re-visioning of transubstantiation and bodily and spiritual transformation through the Eucharist. Acts of eating and drinking serve to highlight how characters’ pansexual, polyamorous relations with each other and the love of the Goddess …
The Underworld As The Heroine’S Journey Home: Marvel, Xena, And Mythic Reimaginings, Valerie Estelle Frankel
The Underworld As The Heroine’S Journey Home: Marvel, Xena, And Mythic Reimaginings, Valerie Estelle Frankel
Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)
Hell is traditionally a place of torment, where the young heroine, like Persephone or Eurydice, is kidnapped by the patriarchy, leaving others to rescue her. The last few decades, however, have offered a model closer to Sumerian Inanna, in which the heroine is enlightened by hell or even conquers it. Angela, Queen of Hel: Journey to the Funderworld by Marguerite Bennett (2016) gives its heroine this path. Winning back her beloved, Angela, sister of Thor and Loki, becomes queen of the underworld but then prefers to bring Sera back to earth in a flip on Eurydice. The Xena episode “Fallen …
Infernal Landscape In Jacob’S Ladder (1990) In Light Of Carl G. Jung’S Theory Of Individuation, Fryderyk Kwiatkowski
Infernal Landscape In Jacob’S Ladder (1990) In Light Of Carl G. Jung’S Theory Of Individuation, Fryderyk Kwiatkowski
Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)
Carl G. Jung’s conception of the human psyche as an inner realm that gives access to profound, numinous experiences inspired many artists and popular culture authors to portray heaven and hell as symbolic expressions of the opposite forces within the human psyche rather than cosmological or supernatural regions. In my paper, I will concentrate on how the Hollywood film Jacob’s Ladder (1990) directed by Adrian Lyne, by portraying the main character’s descent into a deathbed vision depicted as hellish reality, reflects Jung’s theory of individuation, a process of self-realization that aims at reconciling various elements of the psyche and achieving …
Hell On His Mind: Dean Winchester’S Journey To Hell And Back, Anna Caterino
Hell On His Mind: Dean Winchester’S Journey To Hell And Back, Anna Caterino
Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)
Season three of Supernatural (2005-2020) closes with a shot of Dean Winchester (Jensen Ackles) in Hell. The place has no discernible features and resembles neither the long waiting line nor the gothic castle of later seasons. The few elements that do characterize it, however, make it look like a brain, the labyrinth of ropes reminiscent of neurons. This association introduces Hell as a place that exists first and foremost in Dean’s dead. The lack of establishing shots and the abstract terms used to discuss Hell, damnation, and Dean’s experience further support this claim, working in its favor. After all, the …
The Righteousness Of The Damned In Jeffrey Konvitz’S The Sentinel, Raymond G. Falgui
The Righteousness Of The Damned In Jeffrey Konvitz’S The Sentinel, Raymond G. Falgui
Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)
The paper will examine the nature of the damned in Jeffrey Konvitz’s 1970s pulp horror novel The Sentinel by using a framework utilized by C.S. Lewis in The Great Divorce, wherein damnation involves a species of spiritual blindness that masquerades as righteousness and shields the damned (for a time) from an awareness of their ultimate condition. Specifically, the paper will provide a character analysis of the co-protagonist Michael, arguably one of Konvitz’s more complex literary creations, and the role he plays in briefly elevating a generic genre-contrived plot into the realm of true spiritual horror. While making such a …
Welcome And Announcements, Mythsoc Stewards
Welcome And Announcements, Mythsoc Stewards
Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)
Welcome and Announcements
Join us for a screening of the Welcome and Announcements video, and have a cup of coffee before we get started!
Holy Matter Making Holy Meaning: Fashioning Memory, Community And Dissimilar Similitude In Middle Dutch Sister-Books And The Book Of Margery Kempe, Godelinde G. Perk
Holy Matter Making Holy Meaning: Fashioning Memory, Community And Dissimilar Similitude In Middle Dutch Sister-Books And The Book Of Margery Kempe, Godelinde G. Perk
Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality
The Middle Dutch sister-books and The Book of Margery Kempe are fifteenth-century vernacular texts by women chronicling their female subjects’ conversion and arduous attempts at a holy life. They share an (auto)hagiographic enterprise and formal and thematic features, including a display of rags and riches by the vitae’s subjects and a desire for mnemonic engagement on the part of the readers with the text. This article is the first to present the Diepenveen and Deventer sister-books and the Book as conversation partners. I draw on two main conceptual tools: 1) medieval memoria and 2) the notion of “dissimilar similitude” …
Steps Toward Healing From The Possessive Other: The Vital Role Of Fantastical Literature In Trauma Theory, Rebekah Izard
Steps Toward Healing From The Possessive Other: The Vital Role Of Fantastical Literature In Trauma Theory, Rebekah Izard
English (MA) Theses
Fantastical narratives such as fairy tales and magical realist literature utilizes fantastic and intangible spaces to unpack that which is often beyond the limitations imposed on our understanding by reality: the stunting experience of individual and generational traumas. This study aims to contribute to the current literary discourse’s understandings of fantastic literature and its subgenres as a tool for healing from trauma through the application of ontological notions of Selfhood and Otherness supplied by 20th century philosopher, Paul Ricoeur, and the notion of Orientalism by postcolonial scholar, Edward Said. The dialogue generated by these schools of thought provide a space …
Veiled Victorian Vampires: What Literary Antagonists Reveal About Societal Fears Of 19th Century England, Jenna Harford
Veiled Victorian Vampires: What Literary Antagonists Reveal About Societal Fears Of 19th Century England, Jenna Harford
Honors Theses
In my thesis paper I look at three primary texts, Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations, and Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray to analyze their main antagonists through a vampiric lens. I explain how the characters of Bertha Mason, Miss Havisham, and Dorian Gray are all written with veiled vampiric traits that revolve around themes of sexuality, secrecy and seclusion, and unbridled physical and emotional violence. Although none of these texts is obviously a “vampire novel”, the authors lean into vampire tropes including eerie physical description, doubled relationships, and other vampire lore that can be best …
“A Sick Eagle” And “I Am”: Hymns To Sculpture By Keats And Rilke, Ya-Feng Wu
“A Sick Eagle” And “I Am”: Hymns To Sculpture By Keats And Rilke, Ya-Feng Wu
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
At the turn of eighteenth and nineteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries, sculpture came to serve as an emblem of humanity’s response to the challenges of the times. John Keats and Rainer Maria Rilke, felt compelled at their encounters with ancient Greek sculpture in the museum to reflect upon their vocation in an age disrupted by political upheaval and rampant commercialization respectively. Keats’s sonnet, “On Seeing the Elgin Marbles” (1817), registers an intimation of his latent grandeur in the form of a “sick eagle,” confronting “a shadow of a magnitude.” To overcome this experience, Keats made attempts at epic on the …
Seeking Margaret Baker: Identifying The Author Of Three Manuscript Receipt Books, Kimberley G. Connor
Seeking Margaret Baker: Identifying The Author Of Three Manuscript Receipt Books, Kimberley G. Connor
ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830
This paper uses recipe contributors named in three early modern manuscript receipt books (Sloane MS 2485, Sloane MS 2486 and Folger V.a 619) to identify the author as Margaret Baker, daughter of Richard Baker the Chronicler (c.1568-1645) and Margaret Mainwaring (died c.1652). A familial connection is also made to Wellcome MS 212. The Margaret Baker example is used to argue for the necessity of identifying a broader range of receipt, or recipe, book writers in order to understand the spatial and temporal distribution of recipe book production, and their social context. In the case of Margaret Baker, additional information about …
Eotenas And Hobbits: Finn And Hengest, And Tolkien’S Speculation About Origins, Nicholas Birns
Eotenas And Hobbits: Finn And Hengest, And Tolkien’S Speculation About Origins, Nicholas Birns
Journal of Tolkien Research
This essay examines Tolkien’s Finn and Hengest, particularly concentrating on Tolkien’s interpretation of the word eotenas as meaning Jutes rather than ‘monsters’. As opposed to “Beowulf: The Monsters and The Critics,” where Tolkien emphasizes supernatural elements at the expense of history, Tolkien’s lecture on the Finnsburg episode in Beowulf and the Finnsburg fragment seems to present Hengest as an English national hero, despite the bloodiness and vengeance of his reprisals against Hnaef and the Frisian court. The use of the word 'eotenas,' which can be constructed as either 'monsters' or 'Jutes,' is at the nub of the conflict here, …
Tolkien, Cline, And The Quest For A Silmaril, Tom Ue, James Munday
Tolkien, Cline, And The Quest For A Silmaril, Tom Ue, James Munday
Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)
J. R. R. Tolkien has had a significant influence on American writer Ernest Cline. In Ready Player One (2011), the character Ogden Morrow invites Wade and his friends to his mansion, which is modelled after Rivendell from Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings films (2001- 03). Cline goes further in his sequel Ready Player Two (2021) by staging a part of Wade’s virtual quest on Arda I, the First Age of Middle Earth. In this paper, we focus on this episode and, in so doing, argue for Cline’s insights into how we approach fantasy. First, we attend to the …
Who’S His Daddy? Approaches To Merlin’S Father In Children’S And Ya Media, Michael Torregosa
Who’S His Daddy? Approaches To Merlin’S Father In Children’S And Ya Media, Michael Torregosa
Online Midwinter Seminar (OMS)
In the 1130s, Geoffrey of Monmouth originated the character of Merlin, setting him upon the world stage as a wonder-working youth fathered (in the tradition of Greek and Latin authors of the past) by a daemon. However, later writers of the Middle Ages, beginning with Robert de Boron, reconceived Merlin within a more Christianized world, altering his heritage and transforming his sire into a demon from Hell. This shift from benign daemon to malevolent demon has impacted the representation of the wizard of Camelot for centuries. Contemporary fiction for the page as well as for the screen has adopted and …