Tag: Shakespeare

  • Fairies in Art and Illustration

    Fairies in Art and Illustration

    Much can be said about fairies but a few nuggets of info have stuck with me as I read about them. Also: Some of my favourite fairy art.

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  • Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet

    Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet

    Shakespeare wrote Romeo and Juliet in the 1590s. Like modern audiences, Shakespeare’s live audiences already knew the plot because he nicked it from The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet (already three decades old at the time). Obviously, when Shakespeare got his paws on plots he elevated them to greatness. But even before that, stories […]

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  • Zombie Terminology

    Zombie Terminology

    Why all the zombies in stories? Zombies have unlimited potential as metaphor. Historically, storytellers have used zombies to explore tensions between conservative and progressive values. The zombies themselves represent widespread cultural anxieties of their era. Some storytellers use zombie stories to reinforce the status quo while progressive storytellers use zombies to critique it. Watching the […]

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  • What does Gothic mean in literature?

    What does Gothic mean in literature?

    The Gothic is notoriously difficult to define. This is a type of story in constant flux. Each new literary period adds is own spin. “Gothic” is more like a skin layered upon other genres, most often: horror, romance, science fiction and fantasy. Where does one genre end and the gothic element begin?

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  • Adventureland Storytelling Techniques

    Adventureland Storytelling Techniques

    Adventureland is a 2009 coming-of-age movie written and directed by Greg MottolaIn. In the summer of 1987, a college graduate takes a ‘nowhere’ job at his local amusement park, only to find it’s the perfect course to get him prepared for the real world.

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  • Symbolism Of The Forest In Storytelling

    Symbolism Of The Forest In Storytelling

    Be it woods or forest, when a character enters the trees in fiction, beware! We learned this from fairytales, but is fear of the forest innate,  or taught to us via fiction?

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  • The Three Main Types Of Modern Myth Stories

    The Three Main Types Of Modern Myth Stories

    In everyday English, a myth is a story which is not true. In a myth, the surface level story is not true, but the symbols running through the story say something deeper about humankind. This is what makes it true.

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  • Islands and Symbolism in Literature

    Islands and Symbolism in Literature

    We see islands in the oldest literature we know, from Shakespeare’s The Tempest (Prospero’s Island) to Homer’s The Odyssey (Circe’s Island) to Jason and the Golden Fleece (Lemnos, Doilones, Cius etc). A well-known island from Greek mythology is Ogygia, considered ‘navel of the sea’. This island is mentioned in Homer’s Odyssey as the home of the nymph […]

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