Fantastic Creatures Research Articles

Interspecies systemic chimeras

Inter-species chimeras are both fantastic and monstrous creatures from Greek or Egyptian mythology, and a long-established research tool. Recent advances in the field of pluripotent stem cells have made it possible to extend the repertoire of inter-species chimeras to "systemic" chimeras, in which the mixing of cells from both species involves all organs including the germline. These chimeric embryos and fetuses open up new research avenues and potential medical applications. We will review the latest advances in the field. We will discuss the concepts of developmental complementation and developmental equivalence. We will discuss the methodological hurdles to be unlocked, as well as the biological and ethical limits of these new technologies.

Способы номинации персонажей в сказах П.П. Бажова

This article discusses a question of nomination characters in the tales of P.P. Bazhov. Character’s names in tales are studied from the point of view of etymology, symbolism and mythology. The aim of the research is to analyze the semantics of the character’s names in Bazhov’s tales. The hypothesis of the study is the following statement: symbolic and mythological conceptions about the named character, together with the context and meaning of the lexemes that make up the name, form the semantics of the name of one or another character. The analysis was based on the texts of Bazhov’s tales, included in collection works of the writer in 3 books (“The Mistress of the Copper Mountain”, “The Malachite Box”, “The Stone flowe”, “The Mountain master”, “A Fragile twig”, “Zhelezko’s covers”, “Two lizards”, “Sochen’s gems”, “Grass trap”, “Old mountains gift”, "Ivanko Krylatko", "Ognevushka-Poskakushka", "Blue snake", etc.). The article identifies the features of the onomastic space of P.P. Bazhov's tales. This article considers ways to designate characters in tales, which are studied in the framework of onomastics. In this study, it was used a descriptive method (when generalizing theoretical knowledge on the subject under study), a method of component analysis (in interpretation of the semantics of a character’s name), a comparative method (when comparing characters to identify their common characteristics), and a classification method (in the classification of the names of the characters). Character’s names of Bazhov’s tales were divided on two groups and several subgroups depending on the character's belonging to the world of people or to the world of fantastic creatures. The results of the research can be used to further study the specifics of nomination characters in the tales of P.P. Bazhov.

Agitated Boundaries: Non-Human Creatures and Supernaturalism in Colin Cotterill’s Siri Paiboun Crime Series

This article is a study of animals and supernaturalism in the Siri Paiboun crime series, featuring Siri Paiboun, the national coroner of the newly established Lao People’s Democratic Republic. Mainly informed by critical theories of animal studies , the article contends that the animal offers a critical intervention of crime fiction studies. Animals in the series are not just tools or companions to humans, but active agents that, along with preternatural happenings, operate to collapse the distinction between human and non-human animals. Categorised into speaking and gazing animals, fantastic animals, and real and symbolic animals, these animals serve to blur the demarcation line between subjects and objects, physical and spiritual forms, and animals and colonised subjects, respectively. Eventually, the trans-species traffic, witnessed by some of the human characters, results in the de-centring of the anthropomorphic definition of crime. Under supernatural circumstances, animals in this crime series function as a constant reminder that they can suffer like humans, and crime against animals should thus be punishable by law as crime against humans. Keywords: crime fiction; animal studies; supernaturalism; Colin Cotterill; Siri Paiboun

The Anti-giraffe

The other day someone asked me how I would summarize the moment we are living in. My answer was that we are experiencing a total loss of perspective compensated only by an outstanding agility. Our incapacity to determine relations of cause and effect according to point of view is rewarded by a suppleness of form in responding to quick-shifting scenarios. The now-this-now-that sway of motion associated with the swift resolve of governmental leaders, market impulses, or media warfare is turning us into agile athletes whose intent is no longer to predict where things are going but to adapt as new situations erupt.It is no wonder that calls for supra-agility come precisely when, due to a global pandemic, our breathing is being intensely regimented. If the virus includes all those who breathe as potentially infected, such inclusion also masks the violent exclusions it produces. The virus affects people and countries in differential ways, intensifying the partitions between the elderly and the young, between those who are locked in and those who are locked out, between the worker who saves lives and those who are willing to sacrifice life to the mad autocrat.I try to imagine what creature could rise above the disconcerting dizziness of our time. I picture the slow semblance of a giraffe’s lanky-bodied neck famously heralded by the utopian socialist Charles Fourier as “the hieroglyph of truth” in his meditations on the future. Yet what the giraffe gains in vistas, as it browses on branches eighteen feet above the ground, it loses in its odd gait, unagreeable to burdens it may be called on to bear. The giraffe’s harmonious powers may be surpassed only by what Fourier nourished in his imagination as a creature who, more outstandingly, will remind us of what we do not yet conceive as realizable, as our indispensable burden.Created at the turn of the eighteenth to the nineteenth century, Fourier’s blissful new world was an effort to conceive an alternative societal organization, as civilization had reached a state of paralysis under the weight of its own contradictions. Fourier’s critique of economic liberalism, his ideas of a breathing-in-common at the Phalanx, and his fantastic animals and botanizing of hope were the vital force of possible interventions out of the impasse, his desperate appeal to imagination against stuckness, his way of designifying a world undergoing deep structural transformations—a world, in sum, where neither giraffe (perspective) nor reindeer (agility) seemed to harmonize but instead called for a narrative of counteractualization: the anti-giraffe.Perhaps today we find ourselves at a similar temporal threshold when breathing will allow us to see not only what our moment is but also what it is not.

HORSE BRIDLE DECORATIONS FROM TOVSTA MOHYLA KURGAN: SEARCHING FOR REGULARITIES

The paper is devoted to the analysis of horse bridles from Tovsta Mohyla kurgan of the 4th century BC. The barrow was excavated by the expedition of Ukrainian Institute of Archaeology headed by Boris Mozolevsky in the Dnepropetrovsk oblast, Ukraine, in 1971. In this kurgan the burial of noble warrior and two horse graves with skeletons of 6 horses were found. The horses had bridles decorated with images of various animals and fantastic creatures. One bridle was decorated with the images of mythological characters: the serpentine goddess (Rankenfrau, probable Scythian goddess Api) and two Scythian gods who were portrayed as the Greek gods Hercules and Dionysus. All bridles have analogies in other Scythian assemblages of the 4th century BC. It has been suggested that the reproduction of certain images is associated with ideas about the path of the deceased to the Ancestor’s World. The bridles were decorated with images of fantastic animals and were a kind of mask. According to the Scythian beliefs such a bridle-mask helped to endow the horse with special properties so that it could overcome obstacles on the way to the Ancestor’s World. Probably, the serpentine goddess (Rankenfrau) was the mistress of this Ancestor’s World. On the way to the Ancestor’s World the noble warrior was accompanied by his assistant, marked by archaeologists as «groom No. 3». Such a scene is depicted in the crypt of Anfesterii from Panticapaeum on the Bosporus (modern Kerch, Crimea). It depicts the arrival of the deceased on horseback, accompanied by assistant, to the goddess, mistress of the Ancestor’s World. Further research on this topic will extend our understanding of the Scythian ideas about the Beyond.

Iranian Religious Elements in Chinese Medieval Art: Remarks on “Zoroastrian Protective Spirits”

This article aims at discussing the possible origin and meaning of winged fantastic creatures, which appear quite often in the 6th century A.D. Sogdian funerary monuments in China and specifically on the Shi Jun 史君 one (580 A.D.). It cannot be ruled out that composite creatures like the one on the Shi Jun funerary monument originated from the Greek ketos and hippocampus that were introduced into Persia, Central Asia and northwestern India after the conquest of the Persian Empire by Alexander the Great. The impact of Chinese cultural elements on this little investigated group of funerary monuments contributed to create a long forgotten unique and still enigmatic artistic production that scholars called “Sino-Sogdian”.

CHARACTER STRUCTURE OF MANSI FOLKLORE: FOREST MAN MISKHUM

Mansi folklore is the richest material for research in the field of folklore, linguistics, ethnography and other sciences. Comprehension of folklore genres and images opens new boundaries for the study of representations reflected in codes and symbols. The characters of folklore are people, animals, elements, fantastic (mythical) creatures. In this article we will focus on one character - Miskhum. In Mansi folklore, he is presented as a forest man, whose main function is to help forest dwellers, hunters, disadvantaged orphans. Miskhum belongs to a local group of characters living in the forest. Extensive information about him is contained in fairy tales, stories and myths. The aim of the study is to conduct a systematic analysis of the image of Miskhum on the material of folklore texts and folk ideas. The research materials were field material of the author, as well as the texts of Mansi fairy tales published in various folklore collections, in periodicals. This work adds to the scientific knowledge about the Mansi folklore. For the first time, on the basis of folklore, linguistic and literary data, the image of a forest man is subjected to system analysis, and its functionality is revealed. The anthropomorphism of the image, its desire for socialization, distinguishes the folklore image from the mythological. Possession of the ability to metamorphosis, the desire to provide assistance, to bestow people with magical objects and abilities, all these qualities allowed Miskhum to be elevated to the rank of higher beings. In the traditional views of individual local groups, the Mansi Miskhum is exalted to the status of a patron spirit. The complex of prohibitions, ritual actions, the system of amulets existing in the Mansi determine the boundaries and degree of human interaction with Miskhum. The material opens up possible prospects for continuing research into the character and plot structure of Mansi folklore.

La iconografía de Trifonte en el gótico final en los reinos de León y Castilla

The three-faces man, a very common subject in gothic works of art from the late fifteenth century, combines the interest in pure ornamentation with a simbolism that is based on the relation profane-religious iconography, in the field of the discoveries of new Lands and the representation of fantastic creatures.

Growing Up in “a new sort of country”

In the second half of the nineteenth century, Margaret Collier Galletti di Cadilhac (1846-1928), a little-known writer, published Prince Peerless: A Fairy Folk Story Book (1886), a collection of fairy tales that demands scholarly attention as a valuable experiment with imagining permeable national cultural borders. Collier’s writing appealed to the Victorian readership because it represented unfamiliar Italian geopolitics she understood well as a British resident in Italy. This article, for the first time, opens the door to her Anglo-Italian nursery to examine the ways in which her multilingual and multicultural family stimulated Prince Peerless, a Christmas book beautifully illustrated by John Collier (1850-1934), the author’s younger brother. It explores how, through fantasy, she moves beyond factual and practical experience of negotiating Anglo-Italian dynamics and speculates on the potential of growing up multinational. In her tales, fairies, elves, and gnomes are an effective vehicle in representing linguistic, cultural, and sociohistorical diversity. Her fantastic creatures are an essential interlocutor for children to grow up understanding the value, as well as the challenge, of being other, of cultural differences, interaction, and negotiation. This article studies how Prince Peerless charts new geographies of encounters between children, or young adults, and magical creatures. In the fairy tale, I argue, Margaret Collier finds a subjunctive form to explore how childhood experiences of visiting fairylands can shape one’s cultural models of identity and transcend national borders by configuring identities that go beyond sociocultural expectations defined by nation states and assert a multilingual and multilayered identity.

ГОСУДАРСТВЕННЫЕ СИМВОЛЫ НА ЯПОНСКИХ ОТКРЫТКАХ ПЕРИОДА МЭЙДЗИ

The article discusses the ways of representing of state symbols in the postcards of Japan during Meiji period (1868–1912). On the basis of their visual design the ways of constructing the image of the new government are considered. After the “Meiji restoration”, the state symbols were adopted (based on the old ka-mon family emblems): the national flag, the emperor’s seal, orders and medals. The post service belonged to the state, which allowed the images to show not only the actual state symbols but also in what situations it should be used and how it should be perceived. These tasks were implemented by artistic means. The different types of symbols on postcards were distributed unevenly. The most diverse subjects are related to the national and army flags. It depicted not only war but also the everyday “peaceful” life. The documentary photo, the decorative drawings of emblems, the real peoples and fantastic animals were used for the decoration. Through the positive emotions were transmitted (pride, joy, interest, etc.). Japan is represented there as the modern, internally cohesive state with the irresistible military power, fully supported by the population, with state symbols that preserve continuity with the past.

Od „śmierdzącego dudka” po banialuki. Obraz ptaków w literaturze renesansu i baroku – rekonesans

Birds function in Polish literature of Renaissance and Baroque in three paradigms. Mostly they appear as creatures gifted with a symbolic (allegoric) meaning, seen through the prism of the tradition reaching to Aristotle’s Zoology, Physiologist, and later symbological compendia. The second category is describing birds as food or pests (especially in hunting and agricultural literature). Apart from this ‘practical’ paradigm, there is also a third one: birds as a source of an aesthetic thrill, fascination with them includes both lyricism and a ludic element. The first two categories fit into a more general utilitarian paradigm. Handbooks, treaties, sermons, fairy tales, paroemias and animal epigrams showcase birds almost exclusivelyas tools of moral, religious and conventional reflection, or as objects to be obtained and consumed. Interestingly, the symbological activity of the creators does not cease in the Renaissance and Baroque periods, the representatives of avifauna are burdened with new meanings, while the fantastic creatures slowly disappear from the creators’ fields of view. In the third group of works distinguished here, one can notice the phenomenon of the emancipation of birds as objects of interest just as they are, although their voice is heard mostly in the digressions scattered throughout the big epic works. The autonomy of birds in the literature of Renaissance and Baroque is not linear, the way of perceiving them is determined by the individual sensitivity of the authors, the most prominent of whom are Hieronim Morsztyn (early 17th century) and an anonymous translator of the Italian Adon (2nd half of the 17th century).

La fauna especular de Jorge Luis Borges

The purpose of this essay is to analyze “Fauna of Mirrors” by Jorge Luis Borges, in the context of his poetics: mirrors, fantastic animal, and dreams. Borges (re) creates the myth of the Fish of the mirrors and the legend of the tiger of the mirrors, of doubtful existence. Taking advantage of the epistemological distance with China, Borges founds his own sinology, his own myth, and his own legend. For Borges, copying, repetition, real or apocryphal quotes, glosses, translation, interpretation and rewriting are but another form of literary creation. Partially, the writers and texts cited by Borges to assemble his text are apocryphal: it is the case of Father Zallinger and the sinologist Herbert Allen Giles who, although of real existence, are attributed false and incomplete references. In the text, animals of mirrors manifest themselves as products of the Yellow Emperor's dream, as the repressed unconscious, upon which Chinese civilization and culture are founded.

Lessons for Today from an Early Outreach Effort in Oceanography: The 1884 Exposition of the Travailleur and the Talisman as Presented by the Press

AbstractThe campaigns of the Travailleur and the Talisman (1880–1883) were the first French expeditions to explore the deep sea. In early 1884, the campaign participants mounted a temporary exhibition in the Paris Natural History Museum displaying specimens collected and the equipment used. The exhibition included not only fantastic creatures but also “hands‐on” items, such as water samplers and sounders that could be touched, and microscopes to examine sediment samples. It was an enormous success with the public. The success was probably partly due to the fact the main organizer, Alphonse Milne Edwards, was somewhat of a media figure of the time. Complaints that the exhibition space was too small for all the objects exhibited and the crowds attracted were explained by a claim that it was conceived to show expedition results to funding agencies and the scientific community; the crowds were unexpected. However, a review of the press coverage suggests that the organizers used the media very skillfully to promote it. Here the Exposition of the Travailleur and Talisman is presented as described through the press coverage to underline lessons for outreach today from this effort 136 yr ago.

Fantastic Primeval Beings and Their Roles in Reconstructions of Indigenous Colonial Cosmologies from the Eastern Andes of Colombia

Abstract This article addresses the roles of fantastic primeval beings in foundational aboriginal narratives collected in writing by Spanish friars during campaigns of conversion in the Eastern Andes of Colombia during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries CE. This article argues that fantastic creatures are not mere fiction or propaganda. On the contrary, these characters constitute key cultural referents that play essential roles in shaping and bringing into existence society and cosmos in indigenous cosmologies during the colonial period. Foremost, these characters are rendered as necessary to deliver the colonial world into existence.

Taya Caves, a Buddhist marvel hidden in underground Japan: stone properties, deterioration, and environmental setting

The Buddhist sacred site of Taya Caves is a gem hidden underground in Yokohama, Japan. The caves were excavated and sculpted into bare rock by Shingon Buddhist monks from the Kamakura until the Edo period (thirteenth–nineteenth century), and dedicated to ascetic training, rituals, and pilgrimage. They are a maze of halls and galleries decorated with hundreds of rock-cut reliefs, picturing deities and masters of Buddhism, temples and shrines, real and fantastic animals, vegetal motifs, mandalas, zodiac signs, family crests, etc. The history and rock art of Taya Caves and the urge to preserve their cultural value led to this first-ever scientific investigation, dealing with the stone properties, deterioration, and environmental setting. Textural, mineralogical, geochemical, and petrophysical investigations were combined with a microclimate monitoring and chemical analyses of groundwater and rainwater. The caves are excavated into a clay-rich fossiliferous siltstone, extremely soft and porous and highly susceptible to water-driven weathering. Water represents a constant in Taya Caves, either flowing, dripping, and stagnant; or rising from the subsoil; or related to the extremely high relative humidity. Crusts and efflorescences represent important indicators of mineral dissolution and mobilization. The crusts are made of gypsum, crystallized from the dissolution of calcareous bioclasts and oxidation of pyrite, with minor calcite. The efflorescences are composed of chlorides, phosphates, sulfates, and carbonates, possibly deriving from agrochemicals and the surface vegetation cover. The salt weathering is strictly related to the microenvironmental variables and physico-chemical properties of the phases and waters involved. Rock-water interaction is particularly damaging even considering just the physical mechanisms. The stone is strongly sensitive to water absorption, hygroscopic adsorption, and slaking: the stresses generated by in-pore water and air movement and the swelling clay minerals may lead to rapid disintegration, especially during cyclic processes. This research is expected to raise concerns about the safeguard of Taya Caves and support future monitoring and conservation plans, and to foster a wider promotion and valorization of this heritage site.

Sangue e fígado: a persistência das imagens simbólicas sobre a lepra a partir do mito do Papa-Figo

Este artigo volta-se para os processos simbólicos que, frente à iminência do adoecimento e da morte, fazem emergir no imaginário poderosas narrativas que se dinamizam em mitos. Elege, para isso, as imagens simbólicas sobre a lepra que circundam o mito do Papa-Figo – criatura fantástica, ele é representado por ricos e poderosos que, contaminados, fariam de tudo para recuperar sua saúde; inclusive consumir vísceras de crianças sequestradas. Em um percurso sincrônico e diacrônico, relacionamos relatos históricos e folclóricos com narrativas contemporâneas: vídeos de exploração à casa da 'viúva Papa-Figo'. Nesta leitura simbólica, exploramos a recorrência dos símbolos de sangue, fígado, poço, poder, dinheiro e de um Outro misterioso, mostrando que o medo da doença e suas consequências físicas e sociais nos movimentam arquetipicamente, despertando relações ancestrais que nos conectam com o plano da experiência humana.

THE HUMAN-HEADED BIRD FIGURE IN PAINTING FROM THE BRONZE AGE TO EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY.

The avian humanoids always seemed like fantastical creatures that mediate between heaven and earth by having human and avian features together. They mostly referred to the souls lingering between the living and the divine. There are many types of them, and this paper is specifically concerned about the human-headed bird imagery; and how it is depicted in different ways and what are their symbolic meanings in many cultures. This specific imagery appeared in many different mythologies along history; such as the ‘Ba’ in the Ancient Egyptian, ‘Sirens’ and ‘Harpies’ in the Greek and the Byzantium, the ‘Humayun’ in the Mesopotamian and perhaps in the Islamic too; and eventually, the ‘Alkonost’, the ‘Sirin’, and the ‘Gamayun’ in the Slavic mythology. An analytical comparative study of this imagery in different mythologies and in the paintings by different artists, such as P. Rubens, J. Pasch, V. Vasnetsov, and M. Vrubel; will be followed.

Bidlo, Oliver; Chen, Fanfan; Honegger, Thomas; Weinreich, Frank (Hg.): Fantastic Animals, Animals in the Fan-tastic. fastitocalon. Studies in Fantasticism Ancient to Modern VI , 1 & 2 (2016)

Review of Fantastic Animals, Animals in the Fantastic edited by Oliver Bidlo, Fanfan Chen, Thomas Honegger and Frank Weinreich.Publisher’s note: This article was originally published as part of issue 8.1. This has been updated to note that this article is part of issue 7.2.

Nasca Pottery Production: Retrospect and Prospect

Nasca polychrome pottery is renowned for the variety of vessel shapes painted in vivid colors with fantastic creatures from Nasca cosmology. But for all its fame and riveting aesthetic qualities, the actual production of Nasca pottery is little explored. In recent years the principal contributions have come from characterization studies of paste and mineral paints, along with fresh perspectives on the social context. This article reviews the work to date and points out areas where new research is needed. The archaeological context is presented first, followed by consideration of ecological factors, potting tools, vessel construction methods, firing features, and the place of polychrome pottery in Nasca society.

Paleoanthropological study of a skull from a burial at the Chemurchek sanctuary Hulagash (Bayan-Ulgii aimag, Mongolia)

Recent studies show that, in the 3rd millennium BC, the highlands in the basin of the upper reaches of the Khovd (Kobdo) River constituted a ritual zone, which was of particular importance for the population inhabiting the western foothills of the Mongolian Altai Mountains. Its cultural singularity was due to the so-called Chemurchek cultural phenomenon — a set of characteristics of West European origin, which appeared there no later than 2700–2600 BC. Three large-scale ritual complexes-‘shrines’ attributed to this period were discovered in the area of Lake Dayan Nuur. Excavations conducted by the expedition of A.A. Kovalev and Ch. Munkhbayar revealed that these structures constituted fences consisting of vertical stone slabs, decorated all-over on the outside with the images of fantastic anthropomorphic creatures and animals. The excavation of Hulagash 1 (one of these sanctu-aries), radiocarbon dated to the middle of the 3rd millennium BC, revealed a single grave in the centre of the structure, synchronous with the time when the complex was used. The grave belonged to a man of advanced age, whose body was wrapped in a wide piece of cloth. The significance of this man being buried in the centre of the ritual site remains unclear. This person could have been sacrificed during construction or, conversely, he could have had a special status. Craniometrical measurement and dentological investigation of the scull from the Chemurchek sanctuary Hulagash were conducted; its graphic reconstruction was performed. Its anthropological type shows a significant Mongoloid component. Intergroup comparison revealed its significant morphological dif-ferences from markedly Caucasoid groups, including the Afanasievo culture of South Siberia and Central Asia. This excludes the morphogenetic continuity of the Chemurchek phenomenon from the antecedent Afanasievo popula-tion. The individual from Hulagash bears the greatest anthropological similarity to the Neolithic-Eneolithic and Early Bronze Age populations of the Circumbaikal region (Serovo and Glazkovo cultures) and the Barnaul-Biysk Ob area (Itkul and Firsovo XI burial grounds dating back to the pre-Bronze Age; Early Bronze Age burial grounds of the Elunino culture). This is obviously a manifestation of a shared anthropological substrate, since the anthropological component of the Baikal type (which the population of the Elunino culture included) was recorded in the Neolithic-Eneolithic materials from the northern foothills of the Altai Mountains. Remarkable morphological similarities between the individual from Hulagash and the bearers of the Elunino archaeological culture reinforce the assumption that there is a cultural affinity between the Chemurchek and Elunino populations of the Early Bronze Age.