With Halloween fast approaching, this time of year lends itself to all things mysterious, frightening, and downright weird. To put you in the spookiest of moods, here are some hair-raising titles from UTP.
If murders and mysteries are your thing:
- In The Lazier Murder, Robert J. Sharpe reconstructs a bungled robbery at a Prince Edward County farmhouse in December 1883, that resulted in Peter Lazier’s death, using archival and contemporary newspaper accounts.
- In 1895, two men were shot and killed in the office of the Montreal Cotton Company in Valleyfield, Quebec. A third victim, shot in the head, managed to survive. A young man, Valentine Shortis, was charged with the murders; his trial was the longest on record at that time in Canada. Martin Friedland vividly reconstructs one of the most dramatic criminal cases in Canadian history in The Case of Valentine Shortis.
- Why are ‘whodunnits’ so fascinating? In Mayhem and Murder, Heta Pyrhönen, investigates the detective genre through analysis of works by Conan Doyle and Chesterton to Borges and Rendell.
If monsters have you running scared, then these books are for you:
- Between 1550 and 1650, Europe was swept by a fascination with wondrous accounts of monsters and other marvels – of valiant men slaying dragons, women giving birth to animals, young girls growing penises, and all manner of fantastic phenomena. This fascination with the marvellous also extended to the worlds of science, medicine, philosophy, and religion, and many treatises from the period focused on discussions of monsters, demons, magic, and witchcraft. In Fairy-Tale Science Suzanne Magnanini looks at these ‘science fictions’ and explores the birth and evolution of the literary fairy tale in the context of early modern discourses on the monstrous.
- Bettina Bildhauer and Robert Mills explore literal and metaphorical monsters from the Middle Ages in The Monstrous Middle Ages.
- The Anglo-Saxons were haunted by the idea of monsters and the monstrous. In Pride and Prodigies, Andy Orchard traces the evolution of the Anglo-Saxon attitude towards monsters in Beowulf.
If witchcraft and magic enchant you:
- Elliot Rose’s 1962 book A Razor for a Goat is a classic study and excellent survey of the literature and history of witchcraft. Rose surveys witch-scares, fairy folklore, ‘ritual’ deaths, the Canon Episcopi, and goliards for evidence for witchcraft, and to make some suggestions about the reality behind the popular beliefs on witchcraft societies and Sabbats.
- Exorcism and demonic possession have been the topics of works by some of the most famous of writers, from Shakespeare to Cervantes. In Exorcism and Its Texts, Hilaire Kallendorf follows the representation of exorcism from the comic to the tragic drama, its paradigms and meanings.
- What was the place of magic in the medieval world? Sophie Page’s Magic in Medieval Manuscripts looks at representations of magic in Medieval manuscripts; these range from representations of the magician, wise-woman and witch, to charms against lightning, wax images for inciting love, and diagrams to find treasure. Whether expressions of piety, ambition, or daring, these rituals reveal a medieval fascination with the points of contact between this world and the celestial and infernal realms.
Other spooky reads:
- Imagine being disturbed on your wedding night by a group of loud neighbours, demanding treats or money, or pulling pranks. This custom, known as a charivari, is an English Canadian tradition has made some mysterious transformations over the decades of its performance. Read more about this trick-or-treat custom in Pauline Greenhill’s Make the Night Hideous.
- ‘Bluebeard’ is the tale of a sadistic husband who murders his wives and locks away their bodies. In Bluebeard Gothic, Heta Pyrhönen links this tale with Jane Eyre, tracing the parallels between horrifying fairy tale and Gothic romance.
Hope these titles get your spine tingling! Happy Halloween!
