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The features of the image of the otherworldly space in the novel “The Kukotsky Enigma” are considered. The relevance of the topic is due to Lyudmila Ulitskaya’s understanding of the text as a tool with which one can “see the otherworldly”. The concepts of “otherworldly” and “otherworldly space” have been differentiated. The main principles of the image of the otherworldly space in the novel are highlighted: mirroring, carnivalization, its timeless arrangement. Attention is paid to the level organization of space in the novel. The mythologemes of water, sand and fire as fillers of space are investigated. It is noted that the novel “The Kukotsky Enigma” is characterized by the connection of the other world with reality through a number of border spaces: dreams, motives of water and illness. It is noted that the water in the novel is a “portal” to the other world, in which it is transformed into sand; the possibility of rebirth in the Middle World, the author solves the problems of the moral and philosophical order. It is concluded that the Middle World desert is associated with the female womb, where the characters are experiencing a new birth. It is shown that the space also determines the change of the onomapoetic code: the characters traveling in the Middle World change their names to nicknames, and the names remain with the characters who crossed the border of no return and remained permanent inhabitants of the other world.

This article discusses language materialities and the Otherworld through the findings of mammoth remains and text-artifacts representing Nenets verbal art. The remains and verbal art are read together as a network of mythic knowledge that forms a semiotic whole, where different signs interact and create potentials for new significations. The article aims to open up a web of relations in which materialities of differing ages and durabilities meet and affect each other through their semiotic potentialities. The materialities operate on several levels of signification, ranging from basic metaphors for mammoths to larger regimes that organize the signification. Consequently, mythic knowledge concerns worlds that are, on the one hand, imperceptible but, on the other, sensible through narration and imagination in terms of materialities. The key material elements of the mythic knowledge are tainted by the narration, such that they cannot be considered without the mythic qualities. In addition, the knowledge concerning the world affects Nenets rituals and ways of dwelling.

During the Upper Paleolithic, Ice Age peoples in Europe and Australia used their fingers to trace figurative and non-figurative images in soft sediments that lined the walls and ceilings of the limestone caves they encountered. The resulting images, while fragile, are preserved in at least 70 caves with the oldest dating to approximately 36,000 years ago. During the first 100 years of the study of Paleolithic cave imagery, these finger flutings were largely ignored. Though they make up a larger percentage of cave art than any other form, they are enigmatic and not always visually appealing. In 1912, Henri Breuil famously referred to them as “traits parasites” (parasite lines) and deleted them from his re-drawings of cave images, believing they detracted from the figurative art. Flutings have been interpreted alternately as doodling, serpent or water images, the residue of surface preparation for making, and evidence of the moment when a shaman touches the “skin” of the otherworld. In this paper, we argue that there are three reasons why finger flutings have taken on greater significance in the study of Pleistocene visual cultures. First, theories concerning the meaning and relevance of finger flutings were developed without supporting evidence as no methodology existed by which to study flutings until the beginning of the twenty-first century. Second, there has been a broadening of the definition of “art” in a Paleolithic context to include categories of materials, including finger flutings, which would traditionally have been excluded from consideration. Third, there has been a concomitant shift from a focus on the final product—“the artwork” to an exploration of the embodied process of manufacturing the imagery—the “work” of art. Finger flutings carry with them physical evidence of this process. Finally, by presenting a detailed study of finger flutings at Gargas Cave (France), we consider what is gained by including finger flutings in the study of Paleolithic art and what this “archaeology of intimacy” can tell us about the lived lives of Ice Age peoples.

The case study investigates the burial customs of the Middle Bronze Age Vatya culture in the Carpathian Basin. It aims to deliver a comparative analysis of the archaeological finds and characteristics of several cemeteries where communities cremated and buried their dead in urns. It also examines the ways grave artefacts are placed, and the shape and ornamentation of ceramics. It also gives a concise review on beliefs related to cremation. The case study aims at presenting just how much information the seemingly monotone burial customs of the Vatya culture can offer on their belief system by analysing the shapes, arrangements and ornamentations of buried artefacts.The decoration of grave ceramics often includes solar – light symbols, therefore, the author argues that the regular use of light symbols has a significant role in their belief system, especially in the deceased’s journey to the Otherworld.

As historiography shows, sociocultural aspect is the main perspective commonly analyzed in the interpretation of symbolic meaning of Scythian bronze cauldrons. The deposition of such vessels is typical to burials: average barrows of ordinary members of society as well as unique wealthy graves of Scythians with high social status. The hypothesis of sacral symbolic meaning of a cauldron in social perspective is primarily based on some passages by Herodotus (IV, 61 and IV, 81). These written sources merge with general context of archaeological findings — cauldrons are associated with rich grave goods. Number of scholars made some successful attempts to calculate the size of Scythian cauldrons, correlate it with a reconstructed nomadic food-value and archaeological context (such as high of the mound and grave goods). Therefore, the cauldrons became a definite marker in Scythian society stratification study. But such viewpoint does not explain the urgent need to deposit Scythian bronze vessels during the burial ritual. The article introduces ethnoanalogy as a method, vital for interpretation of spiritual and ideological nature of artifacts. It is underlined that the approach in choosing analogies in ethnography should be structured and calibrated in order to escape scholar’s personal influence on results and to broaden the range of possible meanings. Earlier researches failed to find constant features of the cauldron agency in Scythian burial practice and thus to interpret them. The author states that a cauldron possesses certain characteristic features in every case of Scythian burial practice. Such peculiarities include the disposition (namely the main chamber, dromos and household premises), quantity in one grave, quality of a vessel. Strictly correlated with archaeological data, ethnoanalogy reveals that cauldron’s agency in Scythian burial practice is strongly connected with the Otherworld (votive offerings, border guard), and this symbolic meaning is realized in the concrete context of depositions.

This article focuses on the mystical connotations of the olfactory images in V. Nabokov’s prose from his French period (1937–1940). The authors analyse the connection between Nabokov’s mystical, philosophical, and aesthetic conceptions. They demonstrate that mystical experience is not conveyed by the writer directly but through the narration structure and forms of the mystical code in literature and philosophy (as in N. Gogol, P. Ouspensky, A. Bergson, etc.). The research refers to studies that prove the metafictional nature of Nabokov’s mysticism and its connection with perceptual imagery. As a result, the authors distinguish the ambivalent meaning of olfactory images. Smell is an element of the observer’s sensorial hallucination and a way in which the otherworld impacts on characters’ perception. On the other hand, images of smell are used to assess the ability of language to convey not only familiar smells, but also supersensory experiences. In Nabokov’s prose, the main smell characteristics are the temporal and spatial distance between the source and the subject of perception, the correlation with the observer’s viewpoint, and the peculiarities of nomination. More particularly, the magical meaning of smell images that create the plot for solipsistic characters is associated with the perception of the grotesque nature of smell. The authors conclude that mysticism is an attribute of Nabokov’s fictional world itself. The mystical connotations of smell lie in its transgressive and irrational forms: the fact that smell is difficult to verbalise is due to its ability to transcend the boundaries of fictional worlds, imaginary reality, and narration about it.

Charles Williams and his characters need no spaceship or enchanted wardrobe to enter the otherworld, for it is simply the hidden heart of this one. Its portal is awakened vision. As both a fervent Christian and a practicing ritual magician, Williams used magic to open the supernatural dimension that features so prominently in his novels. Once a potent magical object has been loosed into the world, where it unleashes havoc, the damage must be contained by a saintly character who surrenders to the Divine, restoring the cosmic balance. Williams establishes striking parallels between magical sight and contemplative vision, as also between the performance of magic and the act of prayer. Focusing on The Greater Trumps, this essay considers the Fool (the figure numbered “zero” in the tarot deck) as an image of Christ who stands at the center of the magical dance enacted by the cards. Two maiden aunts, seemingly with little in common, turn out to be parallel seers of the divine: Nancy's aunt Sybil, a saintly contemplative, and her fiancé’s aunt Joanna, a gypsy madwoman obsessed with the goddess Isis.

The article attempts to render a speculative image of the otherworld as represented in Russian onomastic material. The concept itself refers to an imagined metaphysical reality in which most important locations and characters are specified by proper names. The study deals with proper names that suggest references to death and the related notions (metaphorical names of death, cemeteries, topographic objects, and creatures of the otherworld). A particular focus is made on name constituents of dialectal phraseological units in the vernacular of the Kama River area (field materials collected from 2003 to 2018 in the southern and northern parts of the Perm Region). These onymic components are regarded as linguocultural concepts reflecting believers’ worldview and attitude to existence. The semantic analysis of set phrases is carried out against the background of general Russian dialectology, with occasional references to the context of folk traditions of the Kama Region (texts of visions, dreams, and loose retellings of Biblical plots). The study illustrates that proper names add to the clarity and consistency of the afterlife image. In its onomastic reflection, the otherworld is more similar to the real world other than a hostile and dangerous demonic space. The analysis of semantic properties and cultural connotations of the personal and place names under study reveals that, in popular understanding, the otherworld is inseparable from the earthly life. This verbal representation of the otherworld, on the one hand, testifies to the archaic state of worldview with no division into real and imaginary and, on the other hand, serves as a form of psychological adaptation to the problem of life’s ending. The findings of the study may contribute to further research on the cognitive and virtual aspects of onomastics.

The present book by Hu Baozhu explores the subject of ghosts and spirits and attempts to map the religious landscape of ancient China. The main focus of attention is the character gui 鬼, an essential key to the understanding of spiritual beings. The author analyses the character gui in various materials – lexicons and dictionaries, excavated manuscripts and inscriptions, and received classical texts. Gui is examined from the perspective of its linguistic root, literary interpretation, ritual practices, sociopolitical implication, and cosmological thinking. In the gradual process of coming to know the otherworld in terms of ghosts and spirits, Chinese people in ancient times attempted to identify and classify these spiritual entities. In their philosophical thinking, they connected the subject of gui with the movement of the universe. Thus the belief in ghosts and spirits in ancient China appeared to be a moral standard for all, not only providing a room for individual religiosity but also implementing the purpose of family-oriented social order, the legitimization of political operations, and the understanding of the way of Heaven and Earth.

As readers of fantasy literature, we look for clues in the stories we read, familiar landmarks whose shapes we unconsciously know. These landmarks ensure that, while the stories we read may be new to us, we know (or think we know) where it leads. One legend commonly adapted as a landmark for modern fantasy is the Otherworld, a parallel dimension of supernatural creatures that has featured in Celtic stories for thousands of years. It is a magical place that inspires both fear and wonder. Patrick Rothfuss adapts this legend for his Kingkiller Chronicle. He calls his version of the Otherworld the Fae Realm, and the supernatural creatures who inhabit it Fae Creatures. In this paper I attempt to show that Rothfuss’s strikingly Celtic Fae Realm functions as a unique sort of landmark; since stories of the Celtic Otherworld are multifarious and often contradictory, and encounters with the Otherworld and its people often have diverse impacts on heroes, its presence in the Kingkiller Chronicle acts as an unsettling force, raising questions about the capacity of the initially invincible Kvothe to overcome the effects of this unpredictable obstacle.

espanolEn el Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, se conservan dos placas de bronce que reproducen la iconografia del celebre Bronce Carriazo. Se consideran camas laterales de un bocado de caballo elaborado por un taller fenicio occidental en torno al s. VII a. C., y presentan algunas diferencias iconograficas y, sobre todo, tecnicas, con la conocida pieza sevillana. Los bocados representan a la diosa qudsu ’astart, una divinidad alada guerrera vinculada a la realeza fenicia. Las dos cabezas de anades a ambos extremos parecen formar la proa y la popa de una barca solar, con el sol simbolizado en una roseta central, pues el barco solar realizaba el viaje al mas alla en el extremo Occidente, navegando por un cielo de agua. Estas producciones de bronces hispano-fenicios, inspiradas en los repertorios orientales, reflejan la asuncion por las aristocracias orientalizantes de la Peninsula Iberica de una ideologia y simbologia mitica y religiosa de raigambre oriental en el Hierro Antiguo. EnglishThe Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New York, exhibits two bronze plaques which reproduce the iconography of the famous Spanish item known as ‘Bronce Carriazo’. They are considered as lateral cheeks of a horse bridle bit cast by a West Phoenician workshop around the 7th century bc. They present some iconographic and, above all, technical differences with the Sevillian piece. These horse harness pieces represent the goddess qudsu ’astart, a winged warrior divinity linked to the Phoenician royalty. The two heads of birds at the upper edges seem to configure the bow and the stern of a solar boat (the sun itself is symbolized in a central rosette). It would be the solar ship that sails through a water sky, depicting the trip to the otherworld in the extreme West. These Hispanic-Phoenician bronzes are inspired by the oriental repertoires and they reflect the assumption of a mythical and religious ideology, strongly rooted in Orient, by the western Iberian aristocracies throughout the Early Iron Age.

The Great God of the Five Paths, Wudao dashen 五道大神, in charge of rebirth in the Five Paths, has been one of the prominent otherworld bureaucratic deities in Chinese popular religion since the early...

[Extract] The twelfth-century account of the Irish knight Owein’s descent into the otherworld through St. Patrick’s Purgatory, the Tractatus de Purgatorio sancti Patricii, distinguishes itself from many other contemporary visions by its insistence upon the embodied experience of its visionary protagonist and the epistemic value of that embodiment. In most contemporary accounts of voyages to the afterlife, visionaries traveled in spirit or saw the sights of the otherworld within their own minds. In contrast, Owein claimed he reached the afterlife differently, literally walking into it through a cave in northern Ireland.1 He then saw the otherworld “with his own bodily eyes” and endured the torments there in his own flesh.

Since palaeolithic times, shamans involved animal depictions in cave ceremonies and adopted animals as helping spirits during their trance journeys. This study aims at explaining the rituals with new evidence: the shamans were acting rationally to deal with an inverted otherworld, still rooted in many traditional beliefs, and seen as an impressive natural phenomenon in superior mirages. After experimenting with unhealthy upside down positions, shamans have adopted more convenient ways to “invert” their consciousness by generating oxygen deficiency and trance for entering the inverted world. San rock art from Brandberg, Namibia, is used as a model to learn more about the logic behind shamanistic trance travel, for example aimed at attracting rain. When travelling to an inverted otherworld San shamans used, besides trance-inverting their consciousness, symbols of inversion (inverted sex, inverted body posture and body painting) and were hiding their faces. Negative hand stencils, dotted (mirage) animals and hidden faces were correspondingly used in palaeolithic caves during trance ceremonies. The animals painted on cave walls were aimed at meeting their counterparts in the other world, a condition for the termination of earthly life, to enable their successful hunting. Animals seen to behave “supernaturally” in mirages and mirage phenomena themselves became helping spirits for the voyage. The mirage of earthly objects into the sky itself served as role model for shamanic travel. Voluptuous Venus figures were carved for the inverted world. They show an inversion of reality. The conclusion is that early spiritual and religious concepts developed rationally, like other strategies for survival, in attempts to deal with an occasionally but worldwide seen natural phenomenon which suggested an inverted otherworld.

One of the aspects of the relationship between rock art and shamanism, which has been supposed to be of a universal nature, inspired by trance experience, concerns the intentional integration of the images with rock. Rock surface therefore has been interpreted, in numerous shamanic rock-art contexts, as a veil beyond which the otherworld could be encountered. Such an idea was originally proposed in southern Africa, then within Upper Palaeolithic cave art and also other rock-art traditions in diverse parts of the world. This paper for the first time discusses the relevance of this observation from the perspective of unquestionable shamanic culture in Siberia. It shows that the idea of the otherworld to be found on the other side of the rock actually is a widespread motif of shamanic beliefs in Siberia, and that variants of this belief provide a new mode of insight into understanding the semantics of Siberian rock art. Siberian data therefore support previous hypotheses of the shamanic nature of associating rock images with rock surface.

Taking its starting point from the current trend towards using Indo-European comparative material for elucidating Scandinavian Bronze Age rock art sites, this article develops an interpretation of the overall iconographic program of the Massleberg Stora Skee rock art panel in Bohuslän, southern Sweden. It focuses on the hunting scene which forms one of the centerpieces of the site and poses the question of how this hunting scene relates to the remaining iconographic elements of the panel, especially the ships and footprints, and to the water flowing over the rock. Using analogies drawn from Old French “Breton lays,” medieval Irish and Welsh literature, and the archaeology of the Hallstatt period (the Strettweg cult wagon), it is possible to develop an interpretation which connects the hunt with the communication between the human world and an “Otherworld” and to show how such an interpretation can tie in with the other iconographic as well as natural elements of the site. On this basis, the article concludes with a general discussion of the use of typological analogies versus the application of concepts of Indo-European heritage for the analysis of Scandinavian rock art and discusses the wider applicability of the “Otherworld” term as an analytical concept.

To the early medieval Irish, the non-Christian Otherworld—the sid—was at once familiar and exotic. Its immortal creatures moved in and out of human reality, unseen; its portals lay concealed in the ancient religious monuments and placenames of local landscapes. Early medieval authors (ca 650–800 CE) conveyed the complexities of this inherited Otherworld in vernacular tales of otherworldly folk set in the Iron Age past of their ancestors. Although scholars have debated the relative Christian or “pagan” nature of Irish otherworldly literature and its locations, in fact, the sid and its folk were neither—they were supernatural. Tales of the sid attest to the pace and texture of religious change in early medieval Ireland, and sketch the ways that ordinary people made and remade their religion on the ground.

The poem Draco Normannicus includes a correspondence between King Arthur, now ruler of the Antipodes, and Henry II. Arthur reminds Henry of his deeds to discourage him from conquering Britanny. Henry first laughs at Arthur’s letter, but then, urged by the news of his mother’s death, he replies suggesting that he will hold Britanny under Arthur’s suzerainty.This paper analyses these fictional letters, focusing on two main aspects, closely related to each other. 1) Intertextuality on different levels: Arthur’s letter is modeled on Lucius Tiberius’ letter in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae; Henry suggests a comparison between this correspondence and the one between Darius and Alexander; Arthur claims that the deeds he mentions are true because already told by Gildas and Geoffrey of Monmouth. 2) Political ideology: humour is not the only key to interpret the text, the purpose of the poem is not only to mock the ‘Breton hope’, but also to celebrate Henry II as a glorious monarch, legitimately ruling over his ‘empire’. Le poème Draco Normannicus contient une correspondance entre le roi Arthur, alors roi des Antipodes, et Henri II. Arthur rappelle à Henri les hauts faits qu’il a entrepris pour lui faire renoncer à conquérir la Bretagne. Henri, dans un premier temps, se gausse de la lettre d’Arthur, mais ensuite, poussé par la nouvelle de la mort de sa mère, répond en déclarant qu’il administrera la Bretagne au nom d’Arthur.L’article analyse ces lettres imaginaires, en se concentrant principalement sur deux aspects étroitement liés. 1) L’intertextualité sur plusieurs niveaux : la lettre d’Arthur est écrite sur le modèle de Lucius Tiberius dans l’Historia Regum Britanniae de Geoffroi de Monmouth ; Henri compare cette correspondance avec celle de Darius et Alexandre ; Arthur déclare que les hauts faits qu’il raconte sont vrais parce qu’ils ont jadis été narrés par Gildas et Geoffroy de Monmouth. 2) L’idéologie politique : l’humour n’est pas la seule interprétation possible du texte, le but de l’épisode n’est pas seulement de ridiculiser « l’espoir Breton », mais également de présenter Henri II comme un monarque glorieux, qui règne légitimement sur son « empire ». Il poema Draco Normannicus include una corrispondenza tra re Artù, ora re degli Antipodi, ed Enrico II. Artù ricorda a Enrico le sue imprese per farlo desistere dalla conquista della Bretagna. Enrico inizialmente ride della lettera di Artù, ma poi, spinto dalla notizia della morte di sua madre, risponde dichiarando che reggerà la Bretagna in nome di Artù.Questo articolo analizza queste lettere immaginarie, soffermandosi su due aspetti principali strettamente connessi fra di loro. 1) L’intertestualità su più livelli : la lettera di Artù è modellata su quella di Lucius Tiberius nell’ Historia Regum Britanniae di Goffredo di Monmouth ; Enrico suggerisce un paragone fra questa corrispondenza e quella fra Dario e Alessandro ; Artù dichiara che le imprese da lui narrate sono vere perché già narrate da Gilda e Goffredo di Monmouth. 2) L’ideologia politica : l’umorismo non è la sola chiave per comprendere il testo, lo scopo dell’episodio non consiste solo nel ridicolizzare la « speranza bretone », ma anche nel celebrare Enrico II come un glorioso monarca che regna legittimamente sul suo « impero ».

The article analyses expressions for the otherworld in Baltic languages. Attention is given in particular to expressions containing the lexeme ‘world’ and to the lexeme’s origin – literally ‘a place under the sun’ – is highlighted. Comparison with close languages (Slavic) and not only linguistic approach, but also some data from folkloristics and mythology research seem to be important. Based on the linguistic analysis, comparison and folkloristic data, up to three groups of placement could be found in the analysed expressions – first: ‘beyond’, ‘behind’, included in the Latvian prefix aiz-, Lithuanian už-. Second ‘opposite to’, ‘across’, ‘on the other side’, represented by the pronoun part viņš in Latvian compounds and anas, kitas the Lithuanian set phrases. There is also possibly a third: a location conveyed by a taboo-induced concealing term in the pronoun part of the expressions. Nevertheless, the main distinction which defines the ‘otherworld’ in Baltic languages seems to be the contrast to ‘our world’, ‘the world upon which the sun is shining’.

The brunt of scholarship on Marie de France’s Lanval portrays Lanval’s fantastical “Otherworld” as “utopic” in the term’s oldest sense: it is a world that has “no place.” Such scholarship severs the linkage of Otherworld and reality indicated by the lai; the relationship between earth and Avalon, in which one achieves the other, is dis-placed for a simple and disjointed “multivalence of reality” (Hodgson 23). This article discusses Lanval’s Otherworld/Avalon using Anne Wilson’s psychoanalytic approach to a fantastical text “as if the text were a human subject.” Through this approach, this article hopes to reclaim the latent, universal significance of the notion of “Otherworld.”

Many medieval tales feature encounters between human characters and Otherworld beings. In most cases, the Otherworld visitor is female, but in the Middle Irish Cath Maige Tuired, the Middle English Sir Degaré, and in Marie de France’s Yonec, a young woman is visited by a supernatural man who seems to have been summoned by her own desires. In each case, the man impregnates her and leaves tokens to pass on to their child. Although these tales also express anxieties over dynastic succession, their depiction of intense emotional moments focalized through a female perspective suggests an interest in women’s subjectivity that is highlighted through contact with the Other.

This brief discussion of Sir Gawain's journey across the Wirral seeks to open up questions of how literature 'thinks' landscape and how that might feed into eco-critical debates. It deals with lost geographies and invented ones, and touches on notions of the otherworld as underpinning our responses to this one. (GR)Cir Gawain and the Green Knight is a text which apparently cries out for 'green reading.' The name by which we all know this text now ensures that Gawain shares the stage with a figure whose title positively invites ecocritical reading. What could be more appealing than a giant Green Knight? Here, it seems, is a creature who embodies nature, and so can be regarded as the representation of how humans think about and react to the non-human world. As such, this Green Knight acts as a representation of the human concept of Nature in a poem that abounds with descriptions of the physical world, from birds to boars and icicles to grass knolls. It is a world through which man travels, with which he battles and aspects of which he hunts, but it is also a world which fundamentally ignores man when it can. The natural year is marked by the seasons that follow their own rhythm, as the much-praised opening stanzas of Fitt II show, and while human festivals are mentioned in passing, they are irrelevant to the shift from winter to spring and back again. It thus works well to read the Green Knight as the embodiment of the natural world, whose bursting in to Camelot's Christmas festival easily lends itself to being interpreted as the powers of nature interrupting the rituals of culture-a reading which again fixes that Knight as a personification of all aspects of the non-human world.1 However, the Green Knight should not be the only feature of the poem to draw ecocritical attention, as Michael W. Twomey's consideration of the poem in terms of the 'green world' indicates.2 What follows here continues such investigations, albeit taking a slightly different stance, and is a brief discussion of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and the Wirral journey with a view to opening up questions of how literature 'thinks' landscape and how that might feed into eco-critical debates. It deals with lost geographies, and indeed invented ones, touches on notions of the otherworld as underpinning our responses to this one, and is also, I hope, a further example of how practical theory, to borrow Paul Strohm's phrase, may help reveal aspects of a text about which it is otherwise silent.3 It is, in short, an attempt to perturb the text Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and it does so by focusing on the landscape in which Gawain himself seems least at ease-the natural and somewhat inhospitable one of the Wirrai in winter.I. THE WILDERNESS OF WIRRALThe Gawain of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight sets forth from Camelot (exact location unnamed) to find the green chapel where he is due to meet for the second time the Green Knight who features in the received title of the poem. The journey is described in just over two stanzas of the poem (lines 691-752) during which we are told he travels through 'J^e ryalme of Logres' (691) into North Wales, leaving Anglesey on his left, crosses the ford at Holy Head and thence enters 'J^e wyldrenesse of Wyrale' ten lines later at line 701.4 All this seems geographically precise. We may not be sure of the exact whereabouts of the Holy Head ford, but the poet and his contemporaries probably were, or at least as sure as one can be of something that might conceivably shift location in the wake of particularly high tides or heavy storms. However, once across that ford, the poem's landmarks become progressively vague, so that having taken unfamiliar paths ('gates straunge,' 709) Gawain finds himself in 'countrayes straunge' by the time he reaches the next stanza Here we are among generic or at least unspecified hills, fells and rivers, as the poem no longer links its hero's journey to named areas of the country. …

Ringforts, the most numerous archaeological monument in the Irish landscape, have a dual character as places of early medieval habitation and as supernatural points of access to a fairy Otherworld. In my paper, I examine how these understandings interacted with, challenged and reinforced each other in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, and how oral perceptions had a significant if generally unacknowledged role in determining supposedly scientific archaeological perceptions of these monuments.

This paper discusses the ancient Greek beliefs from a different perspective; I attempt to approach the old themes in an interdisciplinary way. I refer to the studies of French anthropology and on the ethnological studies of the conceptualization of the landscape through oral tradition. Some classical antiquity researchers have already done so. Such authors that relate to ancient Greece as a whole discuss the symbolism of sacrifices and snakes. Thus, the belief system of the community manifests in the landscape in its symbolic sense, and with this working guide, I managed to apply the abovementioned contemporary (modern) perspectives to the example of the ancient Greek Delphi.

The quite ‘historical’ question of when the lower Otherworld in Ireland was first separated from the upper world is dealt with in a number of early Irish tales. The problem of áes síde and their antagonism with humans is posed in order to determine the conflict in the tales. The paper focuses on an opening fragment from an Ulster cycle tale ‘The drunkenness of the Ulaid’ (Mesca Ulad). The special allocation of the Otherworld is associated in the text (as well as in other narratives to be discussed) with the coming of the sons of Míl and the beginning of Goidelic Ireland. The very notion of separation between the world of humans and the Otherworld is closely related to the beginning of history as such. When the history begins the sacred (belonging to gods) has to be separated from profane (belonging to mortals). Since this separation is performed the binary opposition between the lower Otherworld and the upper world of humans becomes a distinctive feature of the early Irish mythological narrative. Typologically similar phenomenon is observed in the northern Russian “synthetic history” and folklore dealing with the hidden supernatural autochthons (чудь белоглазая). Both Celtic and Slavic examples seem to reflect a transition stage when cosmological elements are superimposed on the emerging historical consciousness.

Saint Patrick’s Purgatory on Lough Derg is one of the most important pilgrimage sites in Western Europe. The tradition of the Purgatory is strictly connected with the diffusion of a text, the Tractatus de Purgatorio sancti Patricii, composed in the last part of the twelfth century, which tells of an Otherworld journey undertaken physically by a living person after having crossed a geographical threshold located in Ireland. This treatise, however, does not explicitly mention any recognizable place on the Irish isle. On the other hand, there exist accounts of a pilgrimage ritual a few years later in a place that can be identified as an island (or two) on the Lough Derg in the North of Ireland. In other words, in the tradition of Saint Patrick’s Purgatory, the primary literary text originated and developed independently from a given place, just as the ritual of pilgrimage to the Purgatory was independent from a given text. But both the text and pilgrimage came together in Avignon around 1353, from which time both textual traditions and pilgrimage reports began to interact and modify each other, inspiring and shaping new texts and new ritual forms, while creating fictional characters derived from historical figures and, conversely, portraying literary characters as historical figures.

Hell is traditionally understood as a theological and eschatological matter concerned with the destiny of the dead in an otherworld even until eternity. Although the beliefs and characteristics of the various hells in the world religions share many similarities, there are nevertheless some striking differences. In a comparative perspective the Christian hell is the worst, but the belief that hell is solely an eternal abyss of fire torturing the damned is a late construct. Apart from theological explanations, in order to understand how these beliefs have developed a perspective emphasizing historical processes and the role of materiality in religion may add new knowledge to why the different hells have various characteristics. With regards to the Christian hell, it became physically manifest on earth in several ways. The burning of witches alive on pyres illuminated the gruesome pains the sinners faced and thus visualized the suffering in hell. Various places were also ascribed the characteristics ...

DH. Lawrence was a magpie. Anything colorful enough to catch his eye might go into the building of a story: friends and people he met in passing, their conversations, their houses, their landscapes, their desires, and any of their private feelings that he might detect.1 Lawrence incorporates all these items into his fictional captivity narrative, “The Woman Who Rode Away.”2 Written in 1924 soon after he had traveled down the west coast of Mexico, the story begins in the Mexican landscape that Lawrence encountered on that trip, but the secret mountain village where the woman is held captive by supposedly Mexican Indians is in fact a Pueblo Indian village, with its houses and dances meticulously described, uprooted from the United States and transported south. Of particular interest for Melville and Lawrence scholars alike is the link that Lawrence provides between two sites he knew from the real world, the fictional woman’s home and her place of captivity. He links them through a scene lifted from Typee, a landscape familiar to Lawrence only from Melville’s fiction. Perhaps that scene brought along with it further Melvillean elements that appear in Lawrence’s story, such as the idea of the otherworld journey, cultural cliches about tribal practices, concepts of both the ailing and alien body, experiences of interracial touching and gazing, and, above all, a deeply ambiguous attitude toward the natives that the protagonist encounters. Furthermore, Lawrence interrogates the genre of the captivity narrative in general and Melville’s story in particular, as well as his own penchant for romanticizing the native Other. Both Typee and “The Woman Who Rode Away” involve a quest-like flight from a familiar but imprisoning environment toward a land of tribal

This paper is an attempt at constructing a model of the landscape of the Gaelic imagination, including the otherworld, as evinced by place‐names, poetry, songs and tales. A major division is noted between those parts where nature is domesticated, and the wilderness where nature is the ascendant force, in constant need of propitiation. The model has its roots in pagan Gaelic mythology, when the invading Gaels banished the spirits of the land underground or across the sea, while still requiring union with them and co‐operation. Time in the otherworld is circular, and chaos, regeneration and creativity both threaten and attract people. The model is partly subsumed into Christianity, making exile attractive to a people who revered the wilderness. Though this model is culturally specific, it is argued that it expresses a fundamental need for negotiation between man and nature, which remains a major concern to our survival on the planet.

Seneca's Apocolocyntosis , the earliest extant example of ancient Menippean satire, tells of Emperor Claudius' death and ascent to heaven, where his request for deification is rejected by the council of the gods, and his subsequent descent to the underworld, where he is condemned of mass murder of Roman noblemen. Claudius is not an observer of things in heaven and the underworld or a character involved in a quest for knowledge and truth, but a dead character who undergoes judgment. He is also a dead character who behaves as if he were still alive. Seneca suggests that Claudius' afterlife is a mere continuation of his earthly life and vice-versa that he had always been living in an isolated and “fantastic” world. The Apocolocyntosi s parodies epic descents and historiographical topoi as well as the mythological otherworld of punishment and reward, ideas of afterlife, and imperial deification.

This paper explores the ancient names which have been associated with Lundy Island. They all describe traditions which belong to the magical realm of the “Otherworld.” The objective has been to bring together for the first time the many disparate and, at times, perhaps tenuous links with Lundy in literature. Consideration is also given to aspects of the island's past which may have contributed toward this mythological status.

New analysis explores Tech Midchúarta (the ‘Banqueting Hall’) from the point of view of a sacral, processional approach to the summit of the Hill of Tara, the pre‐eminent cult and inauguration site of prehistoric and early medieval Ireland. It is suggested that aspects of its architectural form symbolize the liminal boundary between the human world and the Otherworld of Tara, and that in so far as Tech Midchúarta is also designed to control and manipulate how the ceremonial complex is disclosed to the observer, it assembles the existing monuments into one, integrated ceremonial campus. It is argued that Tech Midchúarta is one of the later monuments on the Hill of Tara and that it may date from the early medieval period. Using the evidence of documentary sources and extant monuments, a possible processional route from Tech Midchúarta to Ráith na Ríg is described. peer-reviewed

67 Wilkie Collins’s The Moonstone, the popular mid-nineteenth century work of crime fi ction which weaves into itself the tale of adventure of three Indian Brahmins, traces the journey of a precious yellow diamond from India to England as a part of colonial booty. Tellingly, the novel ends with the repossession of the gem by the Hindu-Brahmins. The Brahmins pursue the diamond with an unerring determination through to the end and, fi nally, escape with it from England to their native land. It is particularly signifi cant that the novel concedes victory to the Brahmins over the English police and the nineteenth-century systems of Western scientifi c detection. Not only does this confl ictual sense of poetic justice in Collins’s work celebrate the heroism of the Brahmin priests, but these high-caste men are also idealized in various other ways. In forging his Gothic vision of a ‘prehistoric’ Hindu religion, Collins contrasts what I term the ‘Brahmin Sublime’ with English middle-class domesticity in order to question the latter’s comfortable illusions of safety and its all too easy assumptions of moral superiority. At the same time, in its strong ethnographic fascination with the institution of caste the novel emphasizes the caste system as the ‘essence’ of Indian social formations and reinforces the idea of a hierarchical and Brahmin-centred model of caste. While it seems obvious that within the Gothic economy of Collins’s novel the prehistoric and dark ‘otherworld’ of India should be depicted as a site of colonial terror, what is particularly noteworthy is the way in which Collins portrays this romanticized India as a predominantly ‘HinduBrahminical’ society.2 His vision of India reveals the degree to which he draws from then current Orientalist ideologies which defi ned India, as we shall see, largely in terms of its Brahminical traditions to the detriment, and hence silencing, of other ethnic and religious communities.

Elämä rinnastetaan matkantekoon, matkaamiseen monissa kulttuureissa ja kieliympäristöissä. Elämä on matka -metaforaa on käytetty ajattelumallina kuvaamaan elämää prosessina, jolla on alku (syntymä), keskiosa (elämän eri vaiheet) ja loppu (kuolema). Artikkelini keskittyy tarkastelemaan karjalaisessa rituaalirunoudessa (itkuvirsissä ja loitsuissa) heijastuvaa ja niissä luotua käsitystä elämästä matkana. Karjalaisessa rituaalirunoudessa elämä ymmärretään hyvin konkreettisena matkaamisena tämänpuoleisessa ja tuonpuoleisessa sekä näiden kahden maailman välillä. Tuonpuoleinen ja sen olijat ovat olleet aina tavoitettavissa, näkyvään maailmaan kietoutuneina muodostaen yhtenäisen kokonaisuuden. Tämänpuoleiset ja tuonpuoleiset tiet ja matkat risteytyvät ihmisen elämässä ja elämän käännekohdissa. Risteyskohdissa tulee suorittaa symbolisia, merkityksellisiä toimia, joilla varmistetaan tuonpuoleisen matkojen, teiden ja rajojen onnistunut ylittäminen. Siirtymät jokaisessa elämänvaiheessa − syntymässä, avioitumisessa, synnytyksessä, sotaan lähtiessä ja kuolemassa − on käsitetty runoudessa ja rituaalisissa toimissa siirtyminä maailmojen välillä. Siirtyminen oli fyysistä liikettä tämänpuoleisen ja tuonpuoleisen välillä. Kuolema päätti tuonpuoleisessa alkaneen elämän kaaren, jolloin ihminen palasi oman suvun vainajien luo ja muuttui esi-isäksi, syntysiksi., In Karelian ritual poetry, birth, death and major transitions to a new life situation are all described through images and motifs of travelling, of making a journey. During major rites of passage, Karelians mainly used two types of oral ritual poetry, laments and incantations. Interestingly, laments were used only during the separation stage of the ritual whereas incantations were used during the incorporation stage. Whereas today the ‘life as a journey’ metaphor tends to be understood as beginning with birth and ending with death, the Karelian model presents life as beginning in the otherworld and the journey into life is conceived in quite literal terms. The transitions of each stage of life, birth, marriage, giving birth, military conscription and death were all conceived in terms of movements between worlds, between the seen world of the living and unseen otherworlds beyond. Death concluded the cycle that had begun with a journey into the world of the living by finally returning to the family, becoming an ancestor. On the journey of life, Karelians were travelling constantly on the threshold of the seen and unseen worlds, making contact with the otherworld at each turning point of the journey. The otherworld was immanent, ever present.

This paper applies psychoanalytic frameworks to the survival horror franchise Silent Hill, a series which is itself informed by psychoanalytic themes. Concerns include the construction of game space as maternal womb, cinematic sequences as primal fantasies, and the representation of memory across the games within a psychoanalytic context. The horror genres’ preoccupation with monstrous mother figures is evident in boss battle adversaries, the depiction of gamespaces as bloody «maternal caves», and in narratives concerning characters’ searching for their parental origins Distinguishing between videogames’ playable sequences and cinematics as conscious and sub-conscious aspects, cut-scenes are analysed as reproducing primal fantasies, serving to explain protagonists’ backstory and situating play within narrative contexts. Such moments intrude into the game, marking transformations between the ordinary world and the abject Otherworld, or heralding the emergence of psychoanalytically-resonant monstrous creatures which the protagonist must destroy. Finally, Silent Hill: Shattered Memories is examined as a game which, even more than others, foregrounds the series’ explicit reference to psychoanalytic preoccupations, engaging with contemporary understandings concerning the relationship between memory, media and fantasy., En el presente artículo se aplica el marco de estudio psicoanalítico a la serie de survival horror Silent Hill, ella misma basada en temas psicoanalíticos. Entre los asuntos tratados cabe mencionar la construcción del espacio del juego como un vientre materno, las secuencias cinemáticas como fantasías originarias (Urphantasien), así como la representación de la memoria durante las partidas en un contexto psicoanalítico. El interés del género de terror por las figuras maternas monstruosas es evidente en los adversarios que combate el jefe, en la descripción de los espacios del juego como sangrientas «cuevas maternales» y en los relatos sobre la búsqueda que emprenden los personajes para hallar su ascendencia. Distinguiendo entre secuencias jugables de videojuegos y secuencias cinemáticas como aspectos conscientes e inconscientes, las cinemáticas son analizadas como reproducciones de fantasías originarias que sirven para explicar el pasado de los protagonistas y emplazar el juego en contextos narrativos. Tales elementos irrumpen en la partida, señalando el paso del mundo ordinario al abyecto Más Allá (y viceversa) o anunciando la aparición de monstruosas criaturas de resonancias psicoanalíticas que el protagonista debe destruir. Finalmente, Silent Hill: Shattered Memories es estudiado como un juego que, incluso más que otros, pone en primer plano las referencias explícitas de la serie a cuestiones psicoanalíticas, entroncando con las interpretaciones contemporáneas acerca de la relación entre la memoria, los medios y la fantasía.

At the centre of this article stands a letter written by Abbot Richard of Saint-Vanne sometime during the first quarter of the eleventh century. The letter describes two voyages to the otherworld taken by two monks at the abbey of Saint-Vaast in Arras in 1011 and 1012. A careful reading of the letter reveals that behind what appears to be a standard text, belonging to the very popular genre of otherworld journeys, hides an apocalyptic message of urgent warning that the world is about to reach its end. The letter thus serves as a prooftext for the existence of apocalyptic tension in the period between A.D. 1000 and A.D. 1033, and as such contributes to the ongoing debate regarding the ‘terrors of the year 1000’.

The Centre of the World: Robert McGhee's Inter-Connected Actic The Last Imaginary Place: A Human History of the Arctic World. By Robert McGhee. Toronto: Key Porter Books; Gatineau, QC: Canadian Museum of Civilization, 2004. 296 pp. $39.95 (hardcover). ISBN 1-55263-637-2. Ian MacRae As those who have researched in the far North will know, the Polar Continental Shelf Project (PCSP), from its base in the resettled community of Resolute Bay (Qaussittuq) on Cornwallis Island, provides much of the ground and air support for field work in the Canadian High Arctic. The PCSP control room can be a high-stress and high-stakes place, where Twin Otters and helicopters are deployed across thousands of kilometres of formidable terrain under fickle and often treacherous conditions. One afternoon a few years ago I was at PCSP, checking the weather on Ellesmere Island, waiting to fly out to Alexandra Fiord, and as I waited I couldn't help but overhear the station's chief operator who, in between firing off directions and co-ordinates to far-off pilots and ground crews into his headset-umbilicus, busily moving people and fuel and gear across the Arctic archipelago, was humming the old Janis Joplin tune, "Me and Bobby McGee." Robert McGhee was out there somewhere, he told me, digging through a pile of old bones. It was not a slight but an homage, one that should serve as introduction enough for an eminent Canadian archaeologist, the curator of Arctic Archeology at the Canadian Museum of Civilization, and for his latest book-length work, The Last Imaginary Place: A Human History of the Arctic World (2004). If they are singing about you at PCSP, then this is good enough for me. The Last Imaginary Place is a book that is truly circumpolar in scope and articulation. A compendium of some 35 years of thinking and travelling and working in the Arctic, it has the feel of a summarizing effort, one that treats the deep patterns of climate and language and the flows of goods and people across the top of the world. Its structure is episodic, with each of 12 chapters treating a specific region and time (the first two more generally than the rest), such that the entire Arctic region is covered. The chapters are only loosely linked into an overall thesis, which slowly emerges as the evidence accumulates, that the Inuit are not a timeless, isolated, primeval people, but are our contemporaries, alive in this same historical time. Along with other northern peoples, asserts McGhee, the Inuit are active participants in globalized flows of resources and economy, and are well prepared and equally willing today to manage their relationships with the modern world, as indeed they always have been: "The small nations of the north have histories as long and as complex as those of more southerly peoples, a fact that archaeologists are continually and surprisingly demonstrating" (McGhee 2004, 41). To establish a baseline for his argument, McGhee reaches back to the beginnings of Homo erectus in Africa, and moves forward through the warming and cooling events that have impacted human and animal migrations throughout time. He traces Western perceptions of the Arctic in ancient Greek thought, the apocryphal escapades of the Irish monk St. Brendan, the Norse and their societies in Iceland and Greenland, Basque whalers and French fur traders, and the English and the vanity of their follies in a frozen world. Inuit shamanism and the "beauty, security and comfort" (35) of Arctic life for hunting peoples are considered, as are European voyagers such as Thomas Hearne (who wins some respect travelling overland with the Dene) and Martin Frobisher (who, mining for gold on a bleak Arctic island, gains little). Peary and Cook and their race to the pole are taken up, with emphasis on the support of the Inughuit, the local Inuit of northwestern Greenland, the unsung Sherpas of the north. McGhee is clear in his conclusion that the Arctic has largely served as a foil, a blank screen for the West to project its fears of death and imaginings of paradise: "To most southerners," says McGhee, "the Arctic remains what it was to their counterparts centuries and perhaps even millennia ago: the ultimate otherworld" (19). …

In this article Mikhail Bakhtin's conception of chronotopes, the interconnectedness of time and space in literature, is applied to explore how enchantment influences temporal and spatial relationships and the image of man in narrative. The article examines the ways in which enchantment changes man's relation to the human world and the otherworld, how it affects his perception, his sense of the body and its location in space, and his notions of time and of his personality. I utilize Swedish-language legends collected in Finland in the 1800s and 1900s as a case study. These legends are related to religious texts, which provide a basis for the construction of what might be labeled "the human chronotope." The religious concept of free will turns out to be an important component of this human chronotope. Enchantment, in contrast, may be characterized as a subversion of those traits most intimately connected with the human chronotope, specifically as they are derived from the teachings of the Christian church. As a result, enchantment is a flying in the face of God and a denial of His power. Nevertheless it is the power of God that returns everything to normal and brings the enchanted individual back to the human, Christian realm through the process of disenchantment. Furthermore, in a Christian conception, human life is a twisted and distorted reflection of eternal life, which it cannot accurately reflect and fathom. The relationship of human life to eternal life is thus parallel to the relationship of enchantment to human life, and human life and enchantment do not seem so different from each other after all.

An exploration of the semantic and cultural fields behind the term ‘Breton’ suggests that the modern word ‘Celtic’ corresponds better to what is implied by the expression ‘Breton lay’. It is commonly supposed that the Breton lays, in both Old French of the 12th century and Middle English of the 14th century, were based on songs originally sung by Breton minstrels. But the word ‘Breton’ is misleading ; while it now refers to the inhabitants of Brittany, in medieval literature ‘Breton’ and ‘Briton’ were undifferentiated, applying to the early, non-Germanic inhabitants of Britain and Armorica, whose language was Old Welsh. For the English and French, these people were ‘other’, their culture a source of mystery. Being neither English, Norman or French, the language of the Bretons, Britons, or British appeared exotic to the dominant political groups. Their poetry, often associated with the Otherworld and a belief in fairy magic, would be labelled ‘Celtic’ later in history, but that term was not available when the ‘Breton lays’ first appeared. The Anglo-Norman poet ‘Marie de France’, writing for the Plantagenet royal court in the 12th century, had at her doorstep the well-attested riches of Welsh literature as a model and inspiration, whereas no evidence exists for any independent songs or tales from Brittany at this time. It would thus be more apt to speak of ‘Celtic lays’ in Old French and Middle English, since the word ‘Celtic’ now conveys to us what medieval French and English poets meant by the word ‘Breton’.

Introduction The idea for this special issue began as a proposal for a double session on the convergences of Eastern and Western Drama for the International Congress on Medieval Studies at Kalamazoo in the spring of 2003. Entitled "East Meets West in Drama," these sessions were intended to provide an opportunity to initiate a dialogue and to engage in a broader discussion of an area of drama that had not previously been addressed in a venue of its own at the Congress before. The two-part session, located that year in one of the infrequently used and out-of-the-way buildings on the campus of Western Michigan University (Sangren Hall), drew a modest audience of interested conferees, some more knowledgeable on the subject than others, but all there to share what they knew and to learn more of what they did not know. What became apparent from the active exchange of information and the sharing of firsthand viewing experiences was that another series of sessions would be necessary to continue the discussion we had just initiated. With that in mind, the next year brought further development of the topic, a broadening of its parameters, and a decision to feature mixed-media presentations, one by Max Harris on the Croatian sword dance (written with Lada Cale Feldman) (1) and another by Zvika Serper, which included a live performance. Two of the essays in this special issue derive from that early beginning--Mikiko Ishii's analysis of weeping mothers in Japanese Noh and early English drama and Serper's discussion of the complementarity of Noh and Kyogen drama. The three other essayists and their topics--Dongchoon Lee on the carnivalesque function of Korean mask dance, Min Tian on the script markings of Chinese Yuan zaju, and Cecilia Pang on the history and development of Chinese opera in the United States--were added along the way to expand the purview of the subject as well as to demonstrate the range and adaptability of Asian modes of drama. Whether read individually or in conjunction with one another the work presented here initiates a project rich in implications for contemporary audiences both expert and novice. Early Asian drama, subject to change, and adaptable to the surrounding sociopolitical environment whatever that environment might be, was at the same time able to retain distinctively traditional characteristics: skills and performance techniques, instrumental and vocal music, dance, gesture, costume, masking, and script markings to name a few. From folk drama to more formalized presentations, these plays engage their respective audiences and encourage both imaginative and physical interaction in the symbolic world they engender. Whether high art or low, whether artfully stylized or profoundly parochial, the symbolic meanings of colors and shapes, of gestures and props, of masks and movement, transport their audiences to an otherworld, one jarringly unusual yet at the same time comfortingly familiar. It is in the realm of the symbolic, these plays seem to suggest, that certain truths about human existence can be expressed most openly even when those truths are represented as frequently by visual juxtapositions, percussive instrumentation, and nonverbal modes of communication as they are by verbal expression. Despite the most obvious differences between Asian drama and its Western counterpart, the many points of convergence and familiarity of themes--for example, the loss of a loved one, the disenfranchisement or alienation of self or community--suggest the presence of an underlying effort to address the circumstances and conditions of human experience from the most fundamental of family interactions to the place of humanity in the larger scheme of things. In the essay that launches the collection Dongchoon Lee maps out the operations of such themes in Korean drama. Entitled "Medieval Korean Drama: The Pongsan Mask Dance" Lee's focus on mask dance, a form he calls a "composite art" demonstrates how dance, music, and symbolic meaning converge in carnivalesque fashion to defuse the frustrations of the "common people. …