E-Book, Englisch, 222 Seiten
Reihe: Exeter New Approaches to Legend, Folklore and Popular Belief
Landscape, Folklore and the Supernatural
E-Book, Englisch, 222 Seiten
Reihe: Exeter New Approaches to Legend, Folklore and Popular Belief
ISBN: 978-1-80413-096-4
Verlag: University of Exeter Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)
When people saw spirits, surface identity mattered less than common nature. Whether manifesting as fairies, revenants, local saints or fiends, they came in stock types: goblins, lovers, hunters, pygmies, dogs, indescribable shape-shifting objects. Just as they had preferred forms, so they appeared in particular places. The tradition of English supernatural place-names, never before gathered into a corpus, matches the medieval texts to show what places were haunted and why. The dark pools into which otherworldly things were exorcised, the paths on which they led travellers astray, the hills onto which they descended in search of people to command and seduce, and the meadows where they danced—all these can be found on the cognitive map of the peasantry.
This book sheds new light on anomalous experience in medieval life and the relations it forged between vernacular life-stories and the gate-keepers of the written word. Fairies could cure as well as harm, prophecy as well as deceive: that made them a disruptive force in history, theology and morals. They challenge our ideas of a church-dominated society and once they are admitted into the picture, the Middle Ages will never look the same.
Autoren/Hrsg.
Fachgebiete
- Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Europäische Geschichte
- Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Regional- & Stadtgeschichte
- Sozialwissenschaften Ethnologie | Volkskunde Volkskunde Volkskunde: Sitten, Traditionen, Mythen, Legenden
Weitere Infos & Material
Preface
Part I: PEOPLE
1. Strange Meetings
2. Tales of Wonder, Tales of Sorrow
3. Inconstant Shapes
Part II: PLACES
4. Haunted Landscapes
Afterword
Elfin Place-Names: A Corpus
Notes
Sources
Index