{"id":14418,"date":"2026-10-21T12:19:35","date_gmt":"2026-10-21T18:19:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=14418"},"modified":"2026-10-21T12:19:38","modified_gmt":"2026-10-21T18:19:38","slug":"a-new-entry-in-fairy-studies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=14418","title":{"rendered":"A New Entry in Fairy Studies"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

English religious (and Fairy) historian Francis Young reviews a new book Perilous Enchantment: The True History of Faeries <\/a><\/em> by Sarah Clegg.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Read it on his Substack: “Perilous disenchantment?<\/a>“<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In so doing, he gives a history of Anglo-American “Fairy Studies” over the last fifty years, including his own Twilight of the Godlings<\/a> <\/em> which straddles Fairy studies and (historica)l Pagan studies, and which is currently in my To Be Read stack. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n
\n

Perilous Enchantment<\/strong><\/em> has a number of strengths. As a non-specialist, the author is able to offer an overview that few scholars could manage \u2013 we are always doomed to get bogged down in our own specialisations (like the constant gravitational pull of the Baltic region in my own work, for example). Clegg\u2019s visits to various fairy-associated sites (and not always predictable ones, either) ground the narrative and lend it atmosphere. Her knowledge of and feel for the medieval Romance tradition is excellent<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

For the less-positive remarks, you can read the whole review<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And you will get some idea of what you need to be reading in Fairy studies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Feel free to share this post using the buttons provided!<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

English religious (and Fairy) historian Francis Young reviews a new book Perilous Enchantment: The True History of Faeries by Sarah Clegg. Read it on his Substack: “Perilous disenchantment?“ In so doing, he gives a history of Anglo-American “Fairy Studies” over the last fifty years, including his own Twilight of the Godlings which straddles Fairy studies […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_seo_schema_type":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[82,4,12],"class_list":["post-14418","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-fairies","tag-scholarship","tag-writing"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-3Ky","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":12680,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=12680","url_meta":{"origin":14418,"position":0},"title":"Ronald Hutton’s Goddess Book Available for Pre-order","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"January 27, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"From the publisher, Yale University Press: In this riveting account, renowned scholar Ronald Hutton explores the history of deity-like figures in Christian Europe. Drawing on anthropology, archaeology, literature, and history, Hutton shows how hags, witches, the fairy queen, and the Green Man all came to be, and how they changed\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"England\"","block_context":{"text":"England","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=england"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/queens-of-the-wild.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":6874,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=6874","url_meta":{"origin":14418,"position":1},"title":"A New Investigation of Fairy Encounters","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 16, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"This request for help with a compilation of contemporary Fairy encounters and lore comes from Simon Young of the re-launched Fairy Investigation Society. The FIS was founded in 1927, died in the early 1990s, and in late 2014 it came back to life. The survey (\u2018the fairy census\u2019) is split\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"fairies\"","block_context":{"text":"fairies","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=fairies"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":603,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=603","url_meta":{"origin":14418,"position":2},"title":"Fairies, the Dead, and Book-Blogging","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"January 27, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Spring semester has started, and teaching does cut into blogging time. And my reading list (for myself) is huge: all the books that I ordered at AAR-SBL (and elsewhere) started arriving in December. I just finished At the Bottom of the Garden: A Dark History of Fairies, Hobgoblins, and Other\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"fairies\"","block_context":{"text":"fairies","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=fairies"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11767,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=11767","url_meta":{"origin":14418,"position":3},"title":"A Quick Video Introduction to Fairy Studies","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"September 1, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"? Early in the twentieth century, the famous physicist Ernest Rutherford (1871\u20131937), \"the father of nuclear physics,\"\u00a0 is supposed to have remarked snarkily that all science was either physics or \"stamp-collecting.\" ((Variations on the saying include \"That which is not measurable is not science. That which is not physics is\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"fairies\"","block_context":{"text":"fairies","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=fairies"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":495,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=495","url_meta":{"origin":14418,"position":4},"title":"The Fairy Faith in Nova Scotia","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"August 22, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"The Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries is one of the background books to the Pagan revival, sort of like Rudyard Kipling's Puck of Pook's Hill. Graham Harvey and I included some of the Kipling in The Paganism Reader; perhaps we should have included Evans-Wentz too, although I admit to always\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"fairies\"","block_context":{"text":"fairies","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=fairies"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10490,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=10490","url_meta":{"origin":14418,"position":5},"title":"Are Fairies Indigenous to North America?","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"May 8, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"Regular commenter Pitch 313 added this to my post titled \"Bejaysus, It's the Eco-Fairies.\" A few items for context: a.) My family immigrated to Northern California shortly after the Gold Rush, and that\u2019s where I grew up; b.) it was apparent to me that Fairy beings of European character were\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Alaska\"","block_context":{"text":"Alaska","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=alaska"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/fairy-writing.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14418","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14418"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14418\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14422,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14418\/revisions\/14422"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}