{"id":256,"date":"2004-09-05T22:35:00","date_gmt":"2004-09-05T22:35:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=256"},"modified":"2004-09-05T22:35:00","modified_gmt":"2004-09-05T22:35:00","slug":"256","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=256","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

More literary paganism<\/strong><\/p>\n

Two more novels that carry the lingering strand of Victorian or Edwardian literary “paganism” forward into the 1930s and 1940s are Forrest Reid’s<\/a> Uncle Stephen<\/em> (1931) and Jocelyn Brooke’s The Scapegoat<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Uncle Stephen<\/em> was the last of a trilogy, but it was written first and can stand alone. Reid then provided the earlier history of his protagonist, Tom Barber, in two more books: The Retreat<\/em> (1936) and Young Tom<\/em> (1944), written in reverse-chronological order. In Nick Freeman’s<\/a> words, they “offered a celebration of youth and sexual freedom alongside rhapsodic natural descriptions and the putting aside of quotidian responsibility,” together with various supernatural elements.<\/p>\n

I describe the Tom Barber novels as “Kennth Grahame (talking animals) meets Henry James (supernatural elements, lots of interiority) meets Mary Renault (evocations of Classical Paganism, much unconsummated homoerotic longing).”<\/p>\n

As for The Scapegoat<\/em> (1948), it’s hard to improve on Peter Cameron’s line in the afterword to the 1988 edition: “almost unbelievably subversive and kinky.”<\/p>\n

Earlier entries here<\/a>, here<\/a>, and here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

You know who you are<\/strong><\/p>\n

Dear blogger and\/or Web designer:<\/p>\n

Making the text on your Web page white on a black background does not thereby make your site “witchy,” or “alternative,” or “goth”; nor does white-on-black text honor the Dark Side, the Dark Mother, or the Dark Wombat<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Instead, it just cuts readability by about 70 percent. Even with my nice new LCD screen, it is excruciating, especially if I have been reading other pages before yours. Learn from the masters<\/a>. Repeat after me: Dark Text, Lighter Background. There. That still leaves you more than one color combination to work with.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

More literary paganism Two more novels that carry the lingering strand of Victorian or Edwardian literary “paganism” forward into the 1930s and 1940s are Forrest Reid’s Uncle Stephen (1931) and Jocelyn Brooke’s The Scapegoat. Uncle Stephen was the last of a trilogy, but it was written first and can stand alone. Reid then provided the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-256","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s6xQTg-256","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":12202,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=12202","url_meta":{"origin":256,"position":0},"title":"Invoking Gods and Elves","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 24, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"I am thinking of starting a series called \"What You Can Do with a Master's Degree,\" such as be a lecturer or start your own online school. There was a time, pre-television, when well-known authors went on lecture tours, city to city, speaking to local literary societies, school groups, and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"England\"","block_context":{"text":"England","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=england"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6549,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=6549","url_meta":{"origin":256,"position":1},"title":"Literary British Paganism and an Unusual Thor’s Hammer","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"June 30, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"\u00b6 Ethan Doyle White reviews Ronald Hutton's Pagan Britain and Marion Gibson's Imagining the Pagan Past (free PDF download). The first I have, but the second might actually be more valuable to anyone studying contemporary Paganism, for it looks not at \"not at paganism [sic] itself, but instead explores how\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"archaeology\"","block_context":{"text":"archaeology","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=archaeology"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.pasthorizonspr.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/hammertop.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":12142,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=12142","url_meta":{"origin":256,"position":2},"title":"Great Review for Calico’s “Being Viking”","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"March 31, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"I was happy to see Being Vking: Heathenism in Contemporary America get a good review in Reading Religion, which is the American Academy of Religion's online book-review site. Michael Strmiska (currently teaching in Latvia) writes, Being Viking deserves great praise and wide readership as an extremely detailed and well-researched historical\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/viking-200x300.png?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":727,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=727","url_meta":{"origin":256,"position":3},"title":"Gallimaufry","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"September 30, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"An occasional blog stew.--Yvonne Aburrow, writer, blogger, and Web developer, has created a Pagan theologies wiki, with this entry on \"conversion\" as understood in Paganism and some parallel academic theory.--Oral traditions--literary, religious, folkloric, and other--are the focus of the Journal of Oral Tradition, now online with downloadable PDF files of\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":12955,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=12955","url_meta":{"origin":256,"position":4},"title":"Witchcraft, Paganism, and Detective Fiction","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"June 27, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"Jen Bloofield's Witchcraft and Paganism in Midcentury Women's Detective Fiction\u00a0is avallable as a free PDF download from Cambridge University Press through 7 July 2022, if I understand correctly. Paperback copies are US $20. From the publisher: Witchcraft and paganism exert an insistent pressure from the margins of midcentury British detective\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Britain\"","block_context":{"text":"Britain","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=britain"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11548,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=11548","url_meta":{"origin":256,"position":5},"title":"Interview with an American Pagan Studies Scholar in Latvia","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"June 20, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"Long-time Pagan studies scholar Michael Strimska has been in Latvia the last few months on a Fulbright, teaching at Riga Stradii\u0161 University. He edited the volume Modern Paganism in World Cultures: Comparative Perspectives\u00a0 and guest-edited a recent\u00a0 issue of The Pomegranate devoted to Paganism and politics. The university has published\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Europe\"","block_context":{"text":"Europe","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=europe"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256","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=256"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=256"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=256"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=256"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}