Category Archives: Critical thoughts

Buffy: ‘academia’s most-studied pop cultural artifact’

Posted on 9th March 2017 by William the Bloody

Buffy the Vampire Slayer was first shown twenty years ago this week. Its multi-layered cleverness, its wit and wordplay, the depth of its characterisation and its subtle feminism, have not faded. Its influence on TV has been huge and it … Continue reading →

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Folklore and Fiction: Hybrid Creatures from the Owl Man to the Demon Dog

Posted on 5th March 2017 by Sam George

I am always pleased to find references to English folklore so I just wanted to make mention of this lively and accessible article by Nic Rigby from the BBC site. Serpents, Owl Men and Demon Dogs discusses the way British writers have … Continue reading →

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Wolves of Finland

Posted on 26th February 2017 by William the Bloody

An interesting article here by Patrick Barkham on the conflicting attitudes to wolves in Finland. Some of the issues raised in OGOM’s Company of Wolves conference (and featuring in our forthcoming book) on our relationship to nature and the image … Continue reading →

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Comforted by Wolves

Posted on 16th February 2017 by Sam George

The ending of the cult film ‘Withnail and I’ ( a 1987 black comedy written and directed by Bruce Robinson) came up in our discussions at Cumberland Lodge this weekend after my talk on wolves and wolf children. This was … Continue reading →

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The Icelandic Dracula

Posted on 6th February 2017 by William the Bloody

Fascinating article by Hans Corneel de Roos on an Icelandic vampire novel from 1900 which has a curious hypertextual relationship with Bram Stoker’s Dracula (‘hypertextual’ is Gérard Genette’s term for that variety of intertextuality where one text is modelled on … Continue reading →

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Werewolves, pulp fiction, and folklore

Posted on 6th February 2017 by William the Bloody

OGOM’s very own Kaja Franck has contributed a fascinating item, ‘Old Tails in New Bottles: Folklore’s Influence on Pulp Fiction Werewolves‘ to the marvellous Folklore Thursday website, talking about the interactions between and generic transformations among popular fiction and folkloric … Continue reading →

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Better the Devil You Know: Part Two

Posted on 22nd January 2017 by Sam George

I raised questions about visual images of the devil in my Better the Devil You Know post yesterday, even suggesting that he was once blue and winged rather than red and horned. Following this discussion Daisy alerted me to this wonderful … Continue reading →

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Better the Devil You Know: Was the Devil Once Blue and an Angel?

Posted on 21st January 2017 by Sam George

I have always wondered how the devil came to be depicted as red with horns and cloven feet and I once heard that one of the first visual images of the devil depicts him as a blue angel. So did … Continue reading →

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All the Better to See You With: Wolves and US

Posted on 11th January 2017 by Sam George

I found myself in Bolton in the pantomime season en route to Glasgow and was fortunate to stumble across an exhibition on ‘Animals and US’ at Bolton Central Library and Museum.  This ‘family-friendly’ exhibition, purports to show how animals feature in … Continue reading →

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Preparing for a Viva – Further Thoughts

Posted on 4th January 2017 by firekrank

At the behest of Sam, I have been persuaded to write more about viva “process”. As I said in my previous post, preparing for a viva can be strange. There are many reasons for this: 1) you can’t help thinking … Continue reading →

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