17 of March 2015’s Best YA Books

Posted on 10th March 2015 by William the Bloody

The YA novels listed here look very exciting, and many have a Gothic, paranormal tinge to them, featuring witches, ghosts, and so on. I have to confess to not knowing any of these but I’ll be investigating them!

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Neck of the Woods, Manchester International Festival, Fri 10 Jul 2015 – Sat 18 Jul 2015

Posted on 10th March 2015 by William the Bloody

Not quite werewolves, but obviously of interest to those exploring those boundaries between wolf and human that the werewolf narrative explores. Neck of the Woods–a multimedia performance on the wolf–looks very intriguing:

MIF has invited Turner Prize-winning artist Douglas Gordon (Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait, Douglas Gordon and Philippe Parreno) and celebrated pianist Hélène Grimaud to create Neck of the Woods, a portrait of the wolf brought to life in a startling collision of visual art, music and theatre.

On the stage of our intimate new theatre, legendary actor Charlotte Rampling (The Night Porter, Broadchurch) will recite and perform the story of the wolf as never before.

– See more at: http://homemcr.org/production/neck-of-the-woods/#sthash.6fKqIxmI.dpuf

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Happy 18th, Buffy!

Posted on 10th March 2015 by William the Bloody

My interest in vampire fiction and subsequent exploration of the genre of paranormal romance was initially aroused by the now-classic TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which is eighteen years old today. Created by Joss Whedon and combining wit and inventive wordplay, strong characterisation, not a little social critique, and moments of authentically Gothic horror, it’s probably the TV programme most written about by academics–and with good reason. Buffy was possibly the first TV series to seriously carry out long story arcs that traverse the constraints of the episode (and even season). (I’ll probably be corrected here by people more expert in TV Stuides!) It was also, through the characters of Angel and Spike, a major influence on the transition form monster to sympathetic vampire to the vampire lover of paranormal romance.
There are many things to love about Buffy; these appraisals give an overview:

18 reasons Buffy The Vampire Slayer was the best show on TV

At 18, Buffy the Vampire Slayer Is Still Revolutionary

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Folklore, Vampires, and Haunted Landscapes: Research Seminars to Die For!!

Posted on 10th March 2015 by Sam George

springheeledjack

I am delighted to have the following speakers coming to the university in the spring. Their  papers tie in well with OGOM whilst opening up some interesting new research strands around folklore, gothic tourism and uncanny topographies. These research seminars are free and take place on Wednesdays 3.30-5.00.  All are welcome (depending on places available) and I am always happy to meet with interesting students and researchers who work in these areas. Time to put these in your diary. Do email me if you would like to attend on s.george@herts.ac.uk

6th May Dr Karl Bell,  University of Portsmouth, ‘Folkloric Crossovers: Spring-Heeled Jack and the nineteenth-century vampire myth’

13th May Prof. Lucie Armitt, University of Lincoln, ‘Haunted Landscapes: footfall, traveling and the uncanniness of topography’

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Caryl Churchill, The Skriker, with Maxine Peake, Manchester Royal Exchange, 3 July 2015-1 August 2015

Posted on 5th March 2015 by William the Bloody

This performance of Caryl Churchill, The Skriker, with Maxine Peake looks fabulous; I’d not, I’m ashamed to admit, heard of this play before. Very appropriately, I’ve just finished my chapter on werewolf narratives, ‘”But by blood no wolf am I”: Language and Agency, Instinct and Essence – Transcending Antinomies in Maggie Stiefvater’s Shiver series’. My remarks here seem relevant to this, too:

Amidst post-Romanticism and twenty-first century concerns about the environment, accompanied by currents of thought that seek to devalue the centrality of the human, werewolf narratives often express a longing for a less antagonistic relationship with nature, alongside utopian aspirations towards the heightened powers (particularly sensory perception) and imagined intensities of animal existence. However, many such fictions adopt an uncritical admiration for the instinctual and a postmodern denigration of agency and subjectivity that can lead to unexpectedly reactionary positions—as when hierarchies become legitimated by an essentialism derived from animal analogies. Generally, werewolves embody determinism more than other paranormal characters, biology inescapably dictating their identity.

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Dragon lovers: extract from Julie Kagawa’s Rogue

Posted on 2nd March 2015 by William the Bloody

One of the things that fascinates me while researching paranormal romance is the insight into the creation development, and interaction of genres. This genre itself is a mating between the monstrous (masculinised?) genre of Gothic horror and the feminine romance fiction, mirroring its central plot device of love between human and sympathetic other. Its relative newness allows us to observe its birth and progress quite closely, giving insights into the nature of literature itself. And, even in a short time, it has shown a remarkable ability to evolve by absorbing or being modulated by other genres than the primary couple. Thus many adult urban fantasy (the labels themselves are still fluid) is often modulated in terms of tone and plot by noir detective while keeping the essential plot of the romance with the demon lover. Other incarnations take on science fiction or classic epic fantasy, or fairy tale or the older form of romance itself (as in the mediaeval heroic narrative). Often, this seems motivated in part by commercial forces; thus, the waning popularity of the YA vampire romance, caused by the advent of Suzanne Collins’s dystopian Hunger Games led Holly Black and Julie Kagawa to fuse the two genres, reinvigorating paranormal romance in The Coldest Girl in Coldtown and Kagawa’s Blood of Eden series. Both of these writers had already played with genre (fairy tale, notably) in clever ways, and both are excellent writers. Now Kagawa is experimenting with the popular dragon narrative of epic fantasy, humanising that monster and involving it in romance. Here’s an extract from the second of her new series, Rogue, the sequel to Talon (though I haven’t read this yet, I must confess). It looks very appealing and very exciting!

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Alice in Wonderland Meets Dali and Nabokov in a New Exhibition

Posted on 1st March 2015 by William the Bloody

Jonathon Keats reviews a fascinating exhibition on Alice in Wonderland and its various translations and adaptations, including illustration. I didn’t realise Nabokov was the book’s Russian translator–I wonder what distinctive slant he might have given it? Nabokov’s book are full of paradoxes that might come out of Wonderland. Some lovely illustrations, too, including the famous Dali and Steadman versions.

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What Disney princesses would look like if they were zombies

Posted on 1st March 2015 by William the Bloody

I do like Disney, but it’s always fun to see its wholesomeness subverted. Here, classic Disney princesses have succumbed to the zombie state, their perfection decaying and their cuteness become horror. This is pure silliness, really, yet can raise interesting questions about adaptation and the interaction between genres, and perhaps about notions of desirability and monstrosity in a funny way.

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Vampire Queen Anne Rice and the Sympathetic Vampire (23 Feb 2015) By Ms Leigh McLennon

Posted on 27th February 2015 by William the Bloody

A thoughtful and well-researched blog article on the sympathetic vampire, acknowledging the lesser-known precursors before Anne Rice and noting the shifts from those vampire lovers of the 1970s to their descendants in contemporary paranormal romance by Leigh McLennon, PhD candidate at the University of Melbourne, Australia.

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Lauren Owen, ‘Varney – the Forgotten Vampire’

Posted on 27th February 2015 by William the Bloody

Possibly the ancestor of ‘the sympathetic vampire’ who features in present-day paranormal romance, the nineteenth-century Varney the Vampire, serialised by Malcolm Rymer, is not perhaps as well known as he should be. Lauren Owen of Durham University gives a detailed and perceptive account of him here.

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