Pub Date : 2022-03-01DOI: 10.5325/preternature.11.1.0109
A. Sneddon
abstract:This article charts a decade-long project on the trial of the Islandmagee witches in County Antrim (Northern Ireland) in 1711. The project comprised three overlapping and connected phases that negotiated a pathway between researching the history of the trial, its interpretative representation in public discourse, and finding impactful ways to bring this research to wider audiences. It demonstrates that creatively and carefully pitched, microhistories of specific trials can fruitfully add to key historiographical debates in witchcraft studies but when combined with sustained, targeted dissemination and co-produced and collaborative public history, it can open up hidden, but important parts of cultural history and dark heritage to wider audiences. This is especially important in countries such as Northern Ireland that have largely overlooked their witch hunting past and where public remembrance and commemoration of witch trials can be difficult and provoke controversy.
{"title":"“Creative” Microhistories, Difficult Heritage, and “Dark” Public History: The Islandmagee Witches (1711) Project","authors":"A. Sneddon","doi":"10.5325/preternature.11.1.0109","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/preternature.11.1.0109","url":null,"abstract":"abstract:This article charts a decade-long project on the trial of the Islandmagee witches in County Antrim (Northern Ireland) in 1711. The project comprised three overlapping and connected phases that negotiated a pathway between researching the history of the trial, its interpretative representation in public discourse, and finding impactful ways to bring this research to wider audiences. It demonstrates that creatively and carefully pitched, microhistories of specific trials can fruitfully add to key historiographical debates in witchcraft studies but when combined with sustained, targeted dissemination and co-produced and collaborative public history, it can open up hidden, but important parts of cultural history and dark heritage to wider audiences. This is especially important in countries such as Northern Ireland that have largely overlooked their witch hunting past and where public remembrance and commemoration of witch trials can be difficult and provoke controversy.","PeriodicalId":41216,"journal":{"name":"Preternature-Critical and Historical Studies on the Preternatural","volume":"6 1","pages":"109 - 130"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83698512","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-08-11DOI: 10.5325/PRETERNATURE.10.1.0117
D. Frankfurter
abstract:In Mediterranean antiquity the ritual acts of binding and charming were often associated with ordinary domestic tasks reoriented through accompanying incantations and sometimes the adjustment of the task's gestures. Drawing on theories of ritualization (Bell, Humphrey, and Laidlaw) and extending the classical evidence with medieval and modern comparative materials, this article addresses how mundane economic practices are brought into service for magical performance. Ritualization highlights the process by which a domestic "agent" can isolate and transform some particular element or stage in an overall activity (clothes-making, cooking) to reflect a sense of stipulation, of traditional and efficacious action, and thus reorient the isolated domestic task for curse or binding charms.
{"title":"\"As I Twirl This Spindle, …\": Ritualization and the Magical Efficacy of Household Tasks in Western Antiquity","authors":"D. Frankfurter","doi":"10.5325/PRETERNATURE.10.1.0117","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/PRETERNATURE.10.1.0117","url":null,"abstract":"abstract:In Mediterranean antiquity the ritual acts of binding and charming were often associated with ordinary domestic tasks reoriented through accompanying incantations and sometimes the adjustment of the task's gestures. Drawing on theories of ritualization (Bell, Humphrey, and Laidlaw) and extending the classical evidence with medieval and modern comparative materials, this article addresses how mundane economic practices are brought into service for magical performance. Ritualization highlights the process by which a domestic \"agent\" can isolate and transform some particular element or stage in an overall activity (clothes-making, cooking) to reflect a sense of stipulation, of traditional and efficacious action, and thus reorient the isolated domestic task for curse or binding charms.","PeriodicalId":41216,"journal":{"name":"Preternature-Critical and Historical Studies on the Preternatural","volume":"21 1","pages":"117 - 139"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2021-08-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83466697","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-08-11DOI: 10.5325/PRETERNATURE.10.1.0090
Elaine C. Sanderson
abstract:This article examines the Bellum Civile's presentation and provocation of experiences that we might now consider to be uncanny. The first section offers an overview of the uncanny from psychoanalysis to literary and aesthetic criticism and outlines the framework through which I will approach the Bellum Civile's uncanny elements. The second section discusses how we may use this model of the uncanny to explore how Lucan represents his internal characters' incomprehension, confusion, and a lack of physical mastery when faced with the reality of civil war. The final section will consider how these uncanny experiences are projected beyond the page through the metonymic use of nefas (crime/horror), Lucan's overarching civil war signifier.
{"title":"A Wor(l)d beside Itself: Exploring and Experiencing the Uncanny in Lucan's Bellum Civile","authors":"Elaine C. Sanderson","doi":"10.5325/PRETERNATURE.10.1.0090","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/PRETERNATURE.10.1.0090","url":null,"abstract":"abstract:This article examines the Bellum Civile's presentation and provocation of experiences that we might now consider to be uncanny. The first section offers an overview of the uncanny from psychoanalysis to literary and aesthetic criticism and outlines the framework through which I will approach the Bellum Civile's uncanny elements. The second section discusses how we may use this model of the uncanny to explore how Lucan represents his internal characters' incomprehension, confusion, and a lack of physical mastery when faced with the reality of civil war. The final section will consider how these uncanny experiences are projected beyond the page through the metonymic use of nefas (crime/horror), Lucan's overarching civil war signifier.","PeriodicalId":41216,"journal":{"name":"Preternature-Critical and Historical Studies on the Preternatural","volume":"1 1","pages":"116 - 90"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2021-08-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89323702","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-08-11DOI: 10.5325/PRETERNATURE.10.1.0011
Anactoria Clarke
abstract:This article examines the practice of prophecy, delivered both through interpretation of signs and direct (enthusiastic) means, and how this practice relates to the uncanny. It discusses the relation of Freud's "The Uncanny," along with Julia Kristeva's theory of abjection, in reference to both what is known of ancient practice and how this is presented in ancient epic and reception texts. The key focus is Calchas, the prophet of the Iliad, and how he is rendered in ancient and modern reception, with specific attention to Euripides's Iphigenia at Aulis, Seneca's Trojan Women, Quintus Smyrnaeus's Posthomerica, Barry Unsworth's The Songs of the Kings, Michael Hughes's Country, and Pat Barker's The Silence of the Girls. This article also considers how prophecy in mythology is portrayed as uncanny, and how elements of enthusiastic prophecy heighten this uncanny aspect.
{"title":"Manti kakon: The Uncanny Prophecies of Calchas in the Iliad and Beyond","authors":"Anactoria Clarke","doi":"10.5325/PRETERNATURE.10.1.0011","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/PRETERNATURE.10.1.0011","url":null,"abstract":"abstract:This article examines the practice of prophecy, delivered both through interpretation of signs and direct (enthusiastic) means, and how this practice relates to the uncanny. It discusses the relation of Freud's \"The Uncanny,\" along with Julia Kristeva's theory of abjection, in reference to both what is known of ancient practice and how this is presented in ancient epic and reception texts. The key focus is Calchas, the prophet of the Iliad, and how he is rendered in ancient and modern reception, with specific attention to Euripides's Iphigenia at Aulis, Seneca's Trojan Women, Quintus Smyrnaeus's Posthomerica, Barry Unsworth's The Songs of the Kings, Michael Hughes's Country, and Pat Barker's The Silence of the Girls. This article also considers how prophecy in mythology is portrayed as uncanny, and how elements of enthusiastic prophecy heighten this uncanny aspect.","PeriodicalId":41216,"journal":{"name":"Preternature-Critical and Historical Studies on the Preternatural","volume":"1 1","pages":"11 - 33"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2021-08-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80159088","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-08-11DOI: 10.5325/PRETERNATURE.10.1.0001
D. Felton, Derrek Joyce
{"title":"Preface to Special Issue: \"The Supernatural and Uncanny in Classical Antiquity\"","authors":"D. Felton, Derrek Joyce","doi":"10.5325/PRETERNATURE.10.1.0001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/PRETERNATURE.10.1.0001","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":41216,"journal":{"name":"Preternature-Critical and Historical Studies on the Preternatural","volume":"1 1","pages":"1 - 6"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2021-08-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"75299472","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-08-11DOI: 10.5325/PRETERNATURE.10.1.0070
Miriam Kamil
abstract:In translating unheimlich, "uncanny," into Latin, Freud offers a term inseparable from landscape: locus suspectus, "suspicious place." As this term indicates, certain literary landscapes have the power to unnerve and disorient a reader. Ovid, recognized as a virtuoso of the locus amoenus, is also master of the locus suspectus, constructing uncanny landscapes in the Metamorphoses that provoke the reader's dread and expose our latent existential fears. Taking as a prime example the lair of Invidia at Met. 2.760–764, I demonstrate how Ovid uses intertextual reference and etymological wordplay to endow his setting with dreadful detail that transports the reader to the haunted underworld and to primordial chaos where boundaries collapse. The resulting landscape encapsulates the Freudian concept of the uncanny and so offers a vital counterpart to the locus amoenus in the study of Ovidian landscape.
{"title":"Locus suspectus: The Uncanny Landscape of Invidia's Lair (Ovid, Metamorphoses 2.760–764)","authors":"Miriam Kamil","doi":"10.5325/PRETERNATURE.10.1.0070","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/PRETERNATURE.10.1.0070","url":null,"abstract":"abstract:In translating unheimlich, \"uncanny,\" into Latin, Freud offers a term inseparable from landscape: locus suspectus, \"suspicious place.\" As this term indicates, certain literary landscapes have the power to unnerve and disorient a reader. Ovid, recognized as a virtuoso of the locus amoenus, is also master of the locus suspectus, constructing uncanny landscapes in the Metamorphoses that provoke the reader's dread and expose our latent existential fears. Taking as a prime example the lair of Invidia at Met. 2.760–764, I demonstrate how Ovid uses intertextual reference and etymological wordplay to endow his setting with dreadful detail that transports the reader to the haunted underworld and to primordial chaos where boundaries collapse. The resulting landscape encapsulates the Freudian concept of the uncanny and so offers a vital counterpart to the locus amoenus in the study of Ovidian landscape.","PeriodicalId":41216,"journal":{"name":"Preternature-Critical and Historical Studies on the Preternatural","volume":"149 1","pages":"70 - 89"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2021-08-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86124467","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-08-11DOI: 10.5325/PRETERNATURE.10.1.0034
Susannah L. Wright
abstract:The puzzling nature of Horace's fifth and seventeenth epodes is well known among scholars. Recent studies have worked to interpret the poems in terms of contemporary magical practices and folkloric concepts. In this article, I aim to add an additional facet to our understanding of these texts: ancient perspectives on the "night-mare," a perceived supernatural attack involving bodily paralysis, severe pressure on the chest, and extreme terror. I will first discuss a series of references to the night-mare in early medical texts and classifications of dreams, then turn to a possible night-mare simile in Virgil and, finally, the place of the night-mare in Horace's two magical epodes. Investigating how this phenomenon has been regarded and described through time enables us to better understand these enigmatic epodes and, more broadly, to explore how people of the past viewed a frightening affliction as old as humanity itself.
{"title":"Nocturnus Occurram Furor: The \"Night-Mare\" in Horace, Epodes 5 and 17","authors":"Susannah L. Wright","doi":"10.5325/PRETERNATURE.10.1.0034","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/PRETERNATURE.10.1.0034","url":null,"abstract":"abstract:The puzzling nature of Horace's fifth and seventeenth epodes is well known among scholars. Recent studies have worked to interpret the poems in terms of contemporary magical practices and folkloric concepts. In this article, I aim to add an additional facet to our understanding of these texts: ancient perspectives on the \"night-mare,\" a perceived supernatural attack involving bodily paralysis, severe pressure on the chest, and extreme terror. I will first discuss a series of references to the night-mare in early medical texts and classifications of dreams, then turn to a possible night-mare simile in Virgil and, finally, the place of the night-mare in Horace's two magical epodes. Investigating how this phenomenon has been regarded and described through time enables us to better understand these enigmatic epodes and, more broadly, to explore how people of the past viewed a frightening affliction as old as humanity itself.","PeriodicalId":41216,"journal":{"name":"Preternature-Critical and Historical Studies on the Preternatural","volume":"2 1","pages":"34 - 69"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2021-08-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78076973","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-08-11DOI: 10.5325/PRETERNATURE.10.1.0007
Elaine C. Sanderson, Hannah Burke-Tomlinson
{"title":"Introduction: The \"Uncanny\" in Classical Antiquity","authors":"Elaine C. Sanderson, Hannah Burke-Tomlinson","doi":"10.5325/PRETERNATURE.10.1.0007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/PRETERNATURE.10.1.0007","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":41216,"journal":{"name":"Preternature-Critical and Historical Studies on the Preternatural","volume":"17 1","pages":"10 - 7"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2021-08-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79623936","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-07-28DOI: 10.5325/preternature.10.2.0249
Daniel Siepmann
abstract:From 1981 to 1991, the band Psychic TV served as the audio-visual propaganda unit of Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth (TOPY), an international network of occultists designed by Genesis P-Orridge to resemble a subversive, militant youth movement. This essay investigates how P-Orridge, Psychic TV, and TOPY embarked on a calculated campaign of “occult research” to test whether chaos magick rituals might conjure the widespread belief that P-Orridge and h/er followers pioneered the UK acid house movement. Primary sources from this epoch, such as Psychic TV’s compilation albums with pseudonymous artist names, demonstrate how acid house’s trademark psychedelia became a conduit for recruiting listeners into these occult experiments.
{"title":"Occultism in the Acid House Music of Psychic TV","authors":"Daniel Siepmann","doi":"10.5325/preternature.10.2.0249","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/preternature.10.2.0249","url":null,"abstract":"abstract:From 1981 to 1991, the band Psychic TV served as the audio-visual propaganda unit of Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth (TOPY), an international network of occultists designed by Genesis P-Orridge to resemble a subversive, militant youth movement. This essay investigates how P-Orridge, Psychic TV, and TOPY embarked on a calculated campaign of “occult research” to test whether chaos magick rituals might conjure the widespread belief that P-Orridge and h/er followers pioneered the UK acid house movement. Primary sources from this epoch, such as Psychic TV’s compilation albums with pseudonymous artist names, demonstrate how acid house’s trademark psychedelia became a conduit for recruiting listeners into these occult experiments.","PeriodicalId":41216,"journal":{"name":"Preternature-Critical and Historical Studies on the Preternatural","volume":"9 1","pages":"249 - 292"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2021-07-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84693627","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-07-28DOI: 10.5325/preternature.10.2.0163
Richard Raiswell
abstract:Early modern demoniacs were diagnosed through a process of negotiation between patient and community. Possession knowledge, then, was locally generated, a function of the space in which it was produced. This article, though, turns to consider the related problem of how a contested possession—one where this dynamic seems to have broken down—was established for a national audience in print. It examines how the author of the 1593 The Most strange and admirable discoverie of the three witches of Warboys, an account of the possession of the five daughters of Robert Throckmorton, endeavored to fashion a credible relation to convince readers that the three witches recently executed for murder by witchcraft were also responsible for the bewitching of the Thockmorton girls. I argue that this was done in a process analogous to diagnosis in situ, with the author establishing for himself a reputable persona, and deploying the rhetorical technique of enargeia in order to craft a beguiling textual spectacle.
{"title":"Writing Demon Possession: The Case of the Witches of Warboys","authors":"Richard Raiswell","doi":"10.5325/preternature.10.2.0163","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/preternature.10.2.0163","url":null,"abstract":"abstract:Early modern demoniacs were diagnosed through a process of negotiation between patient and community. Possession knowledge, then, was locally generated, a function of the space in which it was produced. This article, though, turns to consider the related problem of how a contested possession—one where this dynamic seems to have broken down—was established for a national audience in print. It examines how the author of the 1593 The Most strange and admirable discoverie of the three witches of Warboys, an account of the possession of the five daughters of Robert Throckmorton, endeavored to fashion a credible relation to convince readers that the three witches recently executed for murder by witchcraft were also responsible for the bewitching of the Thockmorton girls. I argue that this was done in a process analogous to diagnosis in situ, with the author establishing for himself a reputable persona, and deploying the rhetorical technique of enargeia in order to craft a beguiling textual spectacle.","PeriodicalId":41216,"journal":{"name":"Preternature-Critical and Historical Studies on the Preternatural","volume":"17 1","pages":"163 - 194"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2021-07-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86020688","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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