Category Archives: Critical thoughts

Witches in Contemporary Culture

Posted on 7th May 2016 by William the Bloody

We’ve been pursuing witch related themes for a while now; I think this is becoming a central line of research for OGOM. This is a very interesting essay by Moze Halperin on the power of contemporary witch narratives, such as … Continue reading →

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Jane Eyre’s Fantastic Origins

Posted on 7th May 2016 by William the Bloody

More on Jane Eyre (it is, after all, the 200th anniversary of Charlotte Brontë’s birth) and its complex intertextual relationships with other texts and genres (following my post below). Here, Emma Butcher traces the novel’s origins in Brontë’s (and her … Continue reading →

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Jane Eyre–a YA novel?

Posted on 7th May 2016 by William the Bloody

A provocative article by the YA author Lena Coakley, claiming Charlotte Brontë’s classic novel of autonomy, education, and desire as a YA novel. This challenges ideas of the canon and of genre, of course, and does have a certain validity, … Continue reading →

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Vampire Zombies Run Amok in the Big Apple

Posted on 2nd May 2016 by Sam George

One of my PhD students Jillian has been writing on The Strain. For those of you who are not familiar with it The Strain is a 2009 vampire novel by Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan. It is the first … Continue reading →

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Disco and Dystopia

Posted on 2nd May 2016 by William the Bloody

With regard to Sam’s remarks on my previous post of a disco Walpurgisnacht, where we saw disco music as antithetical to Gothic, I was just reminded of this. It’s a dystopian Dr Moreau-like fantasy of science going wrong and mutating … Continue reading →

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Disney’s Walpurgisnacht

Posted on 30th April 2016 by William the Bloody

Witches and magical transformations are themes that OGOM will be pursuing over the next year or so. Disney’s wonderful adaptation of Walpurgisnacht in Fantasia (1941) makes full use of the potential of cinematic technology to depict the transformative powers of … Continue reading →

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Walpurgisnacht: Musical and textual variations

Posted on 30th April 2016 by William the Bloody

Sam has posted some fab items on witches below to celebrate Walpurgisnacht, so I’d better follow suit before dawn arrives and the wild partying has to end. The Walpurgisnacht motif has inspired artists in all sorts of media. It’s a … Continue reading →

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Shakespeare, Hobgoblins and the Never Never

Posted on 29th April 2016 by Sam George

Following my post on Gothic Shakespeare I wanted to mention the British Library’s mesmerizing show Shakespeare in Ten Acts  There are over 200 rare and unique items on display including the only surviving play-script in Shakespeare’s handwriting. Visitors are encouraged … Continue reading →

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Gothic Shakespeare: Enter the Gothspeare!!

Posted on 23rd April 2016 by Sam George

The nation is celebrating Shakespeare this weekend and it is time to enter the gothspeare and rediscover some of our blog entries on gothic Shakespeare see for example: Supernatural Shakespeares Shakespeare’s Vampires Shakespeare’s Irish Werewolves Buffyology Lessons in the Academy: … Continue reading →

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The Jungle Book and wild children

Posted on 19th April 2016 by William the Bloody

Here’s an interesting article on the new film of The Jungle Book, touching on themes of wolves, wild children, and the opposition of nature and culture much discussed at the Company of Wolves conference (and covered in the forthcoming book, … Continue reading →

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