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A bestiary is a compendium of beasts. Originating in the ancient world, bestiaries were made popular in the Middle Ages in illustrated volumes that described various animals and even rocks. The natural history and illustration of each beast was usually accompanied by a moral lesson. This reflected the belief that the world itself was the Word of God and that every living thing had its own special meaning. For example, the pelican, which was believed to tear open its breast to bring its young to life with its own blood, was a living representation of Jesus. Thus the bestiary is also a reference to the symbolic language of animals in Western Christian art and literature.
Cryptozoology is a pseudoscience and subculture that searches for and studies unknown, legendary, or extinct animals whose present existence is disputed or unsubstantiated, particularly those popular in folklore, such as Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster, Yeti, the chupacabra, the Jersey Devil, or the Mokele-mbembe. Cryptozoologists refer to these entities as cryptids, a term coined by the subculture. Because it does not follow the scientific method, cryptozoology is considered a pseudoscience by mainstream science: it is neither a branch of zoology nor of folklore studies. It was originally founded in the 1950s by zoologists Bernard Heuvelmans and Ivan T. Sanderson.
A demon is a malevolent supernatural entity. Historically, belief in demons, or stories about demons, occurs in folklore, mythology, religion, and literature; these beliefs are reflected in media including comics, fiction, film, television, and video games. Belief in demons probably goes back to the Paleolithic age, stemming from humanity's fear of the unknown, the strange and the horrific. In ancient Near Eastern religions and in the Abrahamic religions, including early Judaism and ancient-medieval Christian demonology, a demon is considered a harmful spiritual entity that may cause demonic possession, calling for an exorcism. Large portions of Jewish demonology, a key influence on Christianity and Islam, originated from a later form of Zoroastrianism, and was transferred to Judaism during the Persian era.
A monster is a type of fictional creature found in horror, fantasy, science fiction, folklore, mythology and religion. They are very often depicted as dangerous and aggressive, with a strange or grotesque appearance that causes terror and fear, often in humans. Monsters usually resemble bizarre, deformed, otherworldly and/or mutated animals or entirely unique creatures of varying sizes, but may also take a human form, such as mutants, ghosts, spirits, zombies, or cannibals, among other things. They may or may not have supernatural powers, but are usually capable of killing or causing some form of destruction, threatening the social or moral order of the human world in the process.
Layamon or Laghamon – spelled Laȝamon or Laȝamonn in his time, occasionally written Lawman – was an English poet of the late 12th/early 13th century and author of the Brut, a notable work that was the first to present the legends of Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table in English poetry.
The preternatural is that which appears outside, beside or beyond the natural. It is "suspended between the mundane and the miraculous".
English folklore consists of the myths and legends of England, including the region's mythical creatures, traditional recipes, urban legends, proverbs, superstitions, dance, balladry, and folktales that have been passed down through generations, reflecting the cultural heritage of the country. This body of folklore includes a diverse array of characters, such as heroic figures like Beowulf or Robin Hood, legendary kings like Arthur, and mythical creatures like the Green Man and Black Shuck. These tales and traditions have been shaped by the historical experiences of the English people, influenced by the various cultures that have settled in England over centuries, including Celtic, Roman, Anglo-Saxon, Norse, and Norman elements.
Ælfric of Eynsham was an English abbot and a student of Æthelwold of Winchester, and a consummate, prolific writer in Old English of hagiography, homilies, biblical commentaries, and other genres. He is also known variously as Ælfric the Grammarian, Ælfric of Cerne, and Ælfric the Homilist. In the view of Peter Hunter Blair, he was "a man comparable both in the quantity of his writings and in the quality of his mind even with Bede himself." According to Claudio Leonardi, he "represented the highest pinnacle of Benedictine reform and Anglo-Saxon literature".
The Junius manuscript is one of the four major codices of Old English literature. Written in the 10th century, it contains poetry dealing with Biblical subjects in Old English, the vernacular language of Anglo-Saxon England. Modern editors have determined that the manuscript is made of four poems, to which they have given the titles Genesis, Exodus, Daniel, and Christ and Satan. The identity of their author is unknown. For a long time, scholars believed them to be the work of Cædmon, accordingly calling the book the Cædmon manuscript. This theory has been discarded due to the significant differences between the poems.
Hilda Roderick Ellis Davidson was an English folklorist. She was a scholar at the University of Cambridge and The Folklore Society, and specialized in the study of Celtic and Germanic religion and folklore.
Grendel's mother is one of three antagonists in the anonymous Old English poem Beowulf, the other two being Grendel and the dragon. Each antagonist reflects different negative aspects of both the hero Beowulf and the heroic society in which the poem is set. Grendel's mother is introduced in lines 1258b to 1259a as: "Grendles modor/ides, aglæcwif".
An Alp is a supernatural being in German folklore.
Christ and Satan is an anonymous Old English religious poem consisting of 729 lines of alliterative verse, contained in the Junius Manuscript.
Frankenstein Island is a 1981 science fiction horror film produced, written, composed, edited and directed by Jerry Warren and starring John Carradine and Cameron Mitchell. The plot concerns a group of balloonists stranded on an island where they are captured by Dr. Frankenstein's female descendant, Sheila Frankenstein, who has been kidnapping shipwrecked sailors for years and turning them into zombies.
La cruz del diablo is a 1975 Spanish horror film directed by John Gilling and starring Carmen Sevilla, Adolfo Marsillach, Ramiro Oliveros and Emma Cohen. Its plot concerns a hashish-smoking British writer who travels to Spain to visit his sister, only to discover she has been murdered by a satanic cult.
The Curse of the Doll People, or The Devil Doll Men, is a 1961 Mexican horror film directed by Benito Alazraki. It was produced by Cinematográfica Calderón S.A. The screenplay by Alfredo Salazar is an uncredited adaptation of the novel Burn Witch Burn! by A. Merritt.
Richard Raiswell is an historian at University of Prince Edward Island, Canada, and Honorary Research Fellow in the School of Graduate Studies, University of New Brunswick, Fredericton. He teaches classes on medieval and Renaissance History, as well as the History of Ideas, specialising, in particular, on premodern geography and exploration, and the antecedents of the Scientific Revolution.
The Laud Herbal Glossary is a twelfth-century copy of the single biggest compilation of plant-name glosses of its time in England, rooted in Anglo-Saxon sources. Its lemmata are mostly Latin, and these are mostly glossed into Old English/Middle English.
Lisa M. C. Weston is a scholar of medieval literature and Old English language. She teaches at Fresno State Department of English, and served as interim chair of the department in 2019.
References
- ↑ "Peter Dendle" | Penn State Mont Alto
- ↑ "Cinema's (Still) Dead" | On the Media Archived December 1, 2008, at the Wayback Machine
- ↑ "'Devil Possessions'" Swept England After Invasion, Study Suggests" | National Geographic News
- ↑ "Cryptozoology in the Medieval and Modern Worlds" | Folklore
- ↑ "Cryptozoology and the Paranormal in Harry Potter: Truth and Belief at the Borders of Consensus" | Children's Literature Association Quarterly
- ↑ "Textual Transmission of the Old English 'Loss of Cattle' Charm" | The Journal of English and Germanic Philology
- ↑ "Direct Discourse and Gender in the Ágrip af Nóregs konunga sögum" | Neophilologus
- ↑ "How naked is Juliana?" | Philological Quarterly
- ↑ "The Old English “Life of Malchus” and Two Vernacular Tales from the Vitas Patrum in MS Cotton Otho C.i: A Translation" | English Studies
