Folklore and Mythology
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The Nameless, Shapeless Uncertainty of Demogorgon. Jon Solomon, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Modern scholarship derives Demogorgon from Plato’s demiurge or identifies similarities with Paul’s “Unknown God.” Both types of divinity are alien to the Greco-Roman pantheon and converged as a unique, unknown or unknowable, unspeakable or nameless, formless or invisible, powerful divinity.
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Fairyland and the Power of “Things”: Displaced Meaning in the Medieval Otherworld. Kristin Noone, University of California, Riverside
Sir Orfeo, Sir Launfal, and Celtic antecedents the Mabinogion and the Tain, present heroes who confront and return from Faerie. They bring home the knowledge of an enchanting yet inaccessible Otherworld, which offers a narrative of possession and fear of loss, the problem of owning objects of desire.
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Talented Ladies in the Garden: Mirroring Chinese Literati’s Utopia in Flowers in the Mirror. Sufen Lai, Grand Valley State University
This paper examines two Qing literati’s use of gender in their utopian gardens, particularly the one employed in Li Ruzhen’s Jinghua yuan (Flowers in the Mirror, ca. 1820)—a 100-chapter novel often regarded as China’s first feminist novel and frequently compared to Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels.
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"No Man of Flesh and Blood": Ivanhoe’s Locksley and the Ballad Tradition. Ruth Baldwin, University of California, Berkeley
This essay explores Scott’s use of the ballad tradition in his characterization of Locksley, the Robin Hood figure of Ivanhoe.
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