Strange Creatures Research Articles

Contingency versus inevitability: a review and reinterpretation of Stephen Jay Gould’s book “Wonderful Life—The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History”

In 1989, Stephen Jay Gould published his Wonderful Life: “High in the Canadian Rockies is a small limestone quarry formed 530 million years ago called the Burgess Shale. It holds the remains of an ancient sea where dozens of strange creatures lived a forgotten corner of evolution preserved in awesome detail. In this book Stephen Jay Gould explores what the Burgess Shale tells us about evolution and the nature of history”. Gould, based upon a reinterpretation of the famous fossils from the Burgess Shale, proposed a conclusion that was revolutionary at the time, because it was centred on the notion of contingency in the course of biological evolution. The very last paragraph displayed in particular the following sentences: “This response does not cite a single law of nature; it embodies no statement about predictable evolutionary pathways, no calculation of probabilities based on general rules of anatomy or ecology. I do not think that any ‘higher’ answer can be given, and I cannot imagine that any resolution could be more fascinating.” In this essay, I intend to criticise Gould’s conclusions and to provide a new reinterpretation of the history of life, based not on contingency but on the inevitability of evolution.

한국 아포칼립스 콘텐츠의 스토리텔링 분석

Korean dramas have recently been expanding into various subjects such as zombies and time slips, etc. and it is easy to watch Korean-style apocalypse content based on zombies and viruses, which have not received much attention in Korea. Such OTT content is receiving a positive response not only in Asia but also in Western society. In this study, the storytelling of <Kingdom> and <Sweet Home> was analyzed focusing on the cultural dimension so as to analyze the success factors of Korean OTT content, which has been popular globally.
 As a result, it was confirmed that Korean apocalypse content focuses on universal problems faced by human groups such as individualism, collectivism, class, and equality. Korean apocalypse content reveals a critical view of individualistic values by depicting the protagonist and antagonist as the opposition between collectivism and individualism and emphasizes the value of good and punishment by punishing those in power who desire wealth and power. In addition, the destruction of the human world is depicted as being caused by desire through the setting that an unknown virus spreads through human desire. In the end, in order to save the world, it is important to have a strong mind and a good heart that would value others more than oneself. In this way, Korean apocalypse content has been well-received by the public by incorporating oriental values into materials that have been neglected in the Korean video content genre, such as zombies and strange creatures, and it can be recognized that it is also receiving favorable reviews as a new apocalypse genre in Western culture.

The Gift of Writers in Animating the Past to the Present as Tales of Remembrance: A Comparative Study of Salman Rushdie’s Victory City and Amitav Ghosh’s Jungle Nama

The research focuses on how fantasy is manifested as part of storytelling. Salman Rushdie’s Victory City (2023) and Amitav Ghosh’s Jungle Nama (2021) adopt ancient myths and histories that serve as remembrance tales. Both Rushdie and Ghosh evince a common interest in exploring social issues in their writings through an allegorical form. Rushdie’s Victory City is about the history of the Vijayanagar Empire, one of the most distinguished empires of medieval India (14th century to 16th century). Rushdie submitted his final edits of Victory City before the attack in New York City (Chautauqua) for his controversial novel The Satanic Verses. In the month of August 2022, he was stabbed in public by a youngster. He tweets that there is no freedom for authors to express themselves through writing. So, the research focuses on how fantasy serves as a tool for authors to express their views. His Victory City made him overcome all the negative criticism that he had encountered during the attack. Ghosh’s Jungle Nama also adopts the history of Sundarbans’ Forest goddess, Bon Bibi. Ghosh through his narration blends the myth and history of Bon Bibi who have been worshipped for centuries by the people of Sundarbans. Blending the real and imaginary in both fictions greatly challenges the differentiation between authenticity and fantasy. The supernatural phenomena in these narratives transport the reader from reality as a kind of escapism. During this, the characters in the fiction recall the past events and visions of the future in their present, and these aspects are also explored in the analysis. Victory City and Jungle Nama encounter the experience of mysticism in their narration which embarks on a voyage of difficulties and hindrances in the unreal world. Both these speculative fiction explore the concepts of fantasy and mystery so the theory of Magical Realism is applied to the strange creatures, other worlds, evils, demons, and demi-gods that exist in the fanciful setting which is also discussed.

Sonic Figurations for the Anthropocene: A Musical Bestiary in the Compositions of Liza Lim

AbstractThis article presents a musical bestiary, a collection of creatures found in the work of the composer Liza Lim. It is a thought experiment, meant to unsettle current ways of thinking about music and its relationship with the world. Centring our discussion on sonic figurations rather than on a composer’s works, we experiment with alternative musical ontologies and consider their lessons for understanding the role of contemporary art in a time of ecological breakdown. Thinking of Lim’s musical creations in terms of strange beasts inhabiting the Anthropocene draws out a range of themes – including uncanny ventriloquism, performer-instrument symbiosis, theatricalization and the everyday, musical mourning and witnessing – that might help make sense of the sensory and conceptual derangements of our time. The prose style and nonlinear format are likewise experimental, intended as provocations that we might read and write otherwise about music in the Anthropocene.

Wizkit: An Adventure Overdue by Tanya J. Scott

Reviewed by: Wizkit: An Adventure Overdue by Tanya J. Scott Danica Ronquillo Scott, Tanya J. Wizkit: An Adventure Overdue; written and illus. by Tanya J. Scott. Atheneum, 2023 [144p] Trade ed. ISBN 9781665900836 $20.99 Paper ed. ISBN 9781665900829 $12.99 E-book ed. ISBN 9781665900843 $9.99 Reviewed from digital galleys R Gr. 4-6 Wizkit is a one-eyed cat and wizard apprentice who loves lounging around the house and using magic to do household chores, even though her Teacher Magus advises, “You cannot rely on it as an easy solution to everything. Some things you must do yourself.” When the two of them find Book, a talking library book that is long overdue, Teacher Magus assigns Wizkit the task of returning Book to the library to gain experience one cannot find indoors. Despite Wizkit’s reluctance to go outside, she realizes that her time journeying and forming new friendships with Book and other strange creatures can be a wild and fun adventure. Scott has illustrated a wholesome and quirky graphic novel debut, with simplistic layouts expanding the enchanting settings with warm vibrant colors, text to textless panels smoothly moving the narrative to introduce new characters, and humorous and sarcastic dialogue between the overly optimistic Book and the cynical cautious Wizkit. When coming across peculiar side characters, like a river shrine dragon, talking rocks and mice, and a three-headed bird with their own set of problems, Wizkit finds her true magic by courageously providing words of wisdom to them based on her new lessons and experiences. Young readers will be encouraged to step outside their comfort zone and learn that “Sometimes you can do a lot, without even knowing you could . . . and that’s how you find out you can do it.” Early character and background sketch designs are included. Copyright © 2023 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

Margery Kempe: A Mixed Life

Margery Kempe: A Mixed Life

Understanding Colloquial Expressions in Mechanics’ Jargon: Case Study of Colloquial English and Jordanian Mechanics Jargons

Jargon is the language of specialized terms used by a group or profession. It is common shorthand among experts or technicians and used sensibly can be a quick and efficient way of communicating. Most jargon consists of unfamiliar terms, abstract words, non-existent words, acronyms and abbreviations, with an occasional euphemism thrown in for good measure. Every profession, trade and organization has its own specialized terms. This study aims at understanding the colloquial mechanics’ jargon in both English and Jordanian cultures in order to figure out why jargon and more specifically colloquial jargon is a strange creature. The researcher would like to focus on metaphor’s role in creating this jargon as Lakoff and Johnson (1980) reveal that metaphors are part of our everyday speech. In fact, we all complain about jargon, yet everyone writes it and no one ever admits using it. The reason? Jargon or even colloquial jargon can be the worst form of communication—and the best. The terms and the colloquial jargon and their translations into English and Arabic used in this research have been extracted from different glossaries and specialized car websites.

Fabricated Hadiths and Mythological Narratives -A Comparative Approach-

Hadis/Sünnet malzemesi farklı açılardan çalışmalara konu edilmektedir. Bunların bir veçhesini de kültür odaklı etütler oluşturmaktadır. Teknik hadisçiliği gözetmekle beraber, onun dışında bir noktaya odaklanan bu yaklaşımlar, hadisin içtimaî etkisini irdelemektedir. Bu çalışma, uydurma hadislerdeki mitolojik unsurları mezkûr yöntemle ele almayı amaçlamaktadır. Kur’an ve sahih sünnet/hadis, bu çalışmanın sınırları dışında tutulmuştur. Uydurma hadisler ve mitoloji meselesi ilk bakışta bir kapalılık arz etmekle birlikte, mevzuat kitaplarına bakıldığı zaman kıssacılar ve zındıkların kullandığı anlatı metotlarından birinin esâtîru’l-evvelîn/geçmiş kavimlerin hikâyeleri olduğu görülmektedir. Bu durum ise adı geçen iki grup üzerindeki mitik etkiyi sorgulama ihtiyacı doğurmaktadır. Bunun için makalede, hayvanlar, garip varlıklar ve devlerle alakalı uydurma rivayetler tetkik edilerek mitolojik ögelerle mukayesesi yapılmıştır. Araştırmanın merkezinde yer alan uydurma rivayetler: İbn Kayyım el-Cevziyye’nin (öl. 751/1350) el-Menâru’l-münîf’i; İbn Arrâk el-Kinânî’nin (öl. 963/1556) Tenzîhü’ş-şerî‘ati’l-merfû‘a ‘ani’l-ehâdîsi’ş-şenî‘ati’l-mevzû‘a’sı ve Aliyyü’l-Kârî’nin (ö. 1014/1605) el-Mevzûâtü’s-suğrâ olarak da bilinen el-Masnû‘ fî mâ‘rifeti’l-hadîsi’l-mevzû‘ isimli kitaplardan tespit edilmiştir. Mitolojik unsurların tespiti içinse farklı eserler kullanılmıştır. Makalenin başlangıcında araştırmanın yöntemi beyan edilmiş olup bu kısım benzer araştırmalar için de bir metot önerisi niteliği taşımaktadır. Çalışmada kullanılan metodun özünü, merkeze tevhid inancını ve İslâm’ı koyarak diğer kültürel birikim ve inanışları bu merkezden hareketle değerlendirmek oluşturmaktadır. Zira İslâm, Hz. Âdem’den başlayıp Peygamberler silsilesiyle devam eden bir inanç sisteminin ortak adı olması hasebiyle tüm ideolojik ve fikrî birikimlerden zamansal olarak öncedir. Bu sebeple asıl odur, diğerleri ise ya ona benzeyen ya da onun tahrifiyle oluşan unsurlardır. Hadis-kültür ilişkisi bağlamında vurgulanması gereken hususlardan biri budur. Diğer yandan insanların yaşadığı sosyal çevresi, zamanı, mekânı ve düşünceleri birbirlerinden farklı olsa da fıtratlarındaki mevcut özellikler sebebiyle benzeşen yanlarının olduğu söylenebilir. Bu hakikat, bize kutsalla alakalı anlatılar bağlamında bir fikir vermesi adına kâfidir. Bu durumda uydurma rivayetlerle insan ürünü mitolojiler arasında ortak unsurların bulunması gayet tabiidir. Nitekim yaptığımız araştırmada mevzu hadislerde mitik unsurların olduğu müşahede edilmiştir. Araştırma boyunca birbirlerinden çok farklı coğrafyalarda yaşayan milletlerin mitolojilerinde ve uydurma hadislerde benzeşen ve ayrışan unsurlar görülmüştür. Anlatılar içerisindeki benzeşmeleri insan unsuruyla açıklamak mümkündür. Zira nerede olursa olsun insan zaaf ve kemal yönleriyle benzeşmektedir. Ayrışmaları ise coğrafya ve kültür unsuruyla izah etmek imkân dâhilindedir. Nitekim farklı ortamlarda bulunan insanların farklı yaşayış biçimlerine sahip olacağı, kendi coğrafyalarının merkezinde yer alan varlıkları merkeze alarak bir kültürel birikim oluşturacağı izahtan varestedir. Bu durumda çölde yaşayan bir Arap’ın hayatının merkezinde devenin yer alması ve bu hayvan merkezli inanışlar türetmesi ne kadar doğalsa Antik Yunan gibi denize komşu bir coğrafyanın vatandaşının da deniz varlıklarını merkeze alan inanışlar ve mitler türetmesi oldukça doğaldır. Bu durumda vaddâ‘ların ve uydurdukları rivayetlerin tahlili için yaşadıkları coğrafyayı ve kültürü irdelemek önemli bir husustur. Bunu gerçekleştirmek için de disiplinler arası çalışmalara önem verilmesi gerekmektedir. Binaenaleyh coğrafyacıların eserlerinden hareketle uydurmacıların nispet edildiği kabile ve beldelerin incelemesini yapmak, mevzuat eserlerinde yer alan uydurmaları anlama ve anlamlandırma noktasında önemli bir işleve sahip olacaktır. Tüm bunlardan hareketle şunları söylemek mümkündür: Coğrafyalar ve inançlar başkalaşsa da tarihi bizzat yaşayarak oluşturan insan cinsi her hâlükârda benzerlikler taşımaktadır. Bu sebeple kültürlerarası etkileşim olması, inanış benzerlikleri, korku ve sevince vesile olan durumların birbirini anımsatması tabii bir durumdur. Bunları tetkik etmek insanı ve toplumu anlama ve anlamlandırma noktasında hadis ve kültür araştırmacılarına istifade edilebilir bir malzeme sunmaktadır.

NicholasMcDowellPoet of Revolution: The Making of John MiltonPrinceton, NJ: Princeton UP, 2020. xvi + 485pp. ISBN 13: 9780691154695. $35.00 (cloth).

NicholasMcDowellPoet of Revolution: The Making of John MiltonPrinceton, NJ: Princeton UP, 2020. xvi + 485pp. ISBN 13: 9780691154695. $35.00 (cloth).

The Morning Star by Karl Ove Knausgaard

Reviewed by: The Morning Star by Karl Ove Knausgaard Phillip Garland Karl Ove Knausgaard The Morning Star Trans. Martin Aitken. New York. Penguin. 2021. 666 pages. “FIRSTLY THERE WAS no plot, and secondly there was no sequence of events, and no coherence, everything came at you higgledy-piggledy.” So Karl Ove Knausgaard [End Page 64] describes in the fifth volume of My Struggle some of his painstaking efforts to complete his first novel, 1998’s Out of the World. After publishing another novel six years later and then abandoning the form altogether, one can sense in these words Knausgaard’s discomfort with the demands of fiction: plot, character development, readers’ expectations. His response to such constraints was ultimately made manifest in the completion of his massive autobiographical My Struggle series. Since that project’s completion, Knausgaard has written a series of similarly autobiographical books loosely related to the four seasons, collaborated with Fredrik Ekelund to document the 2014 World Cup, and published a remarkable piece of criticism on the work and life of Edvard Munch. These efforts have been marked by an approach largely similar to the one seen in My Struggle: intense self-scrutiny, crystalline imagery, and a proclivity for the spontaneous. The Morning Star, Knausgaard’s long-awaited return to fiction, finds the author operating in a familiar thematic vein by exploring notions of family life, the boundary of death, and the nature of belief and reality, while doing so in a wholly new context: the end of the world. A new star suddenly appears in the Norwegian sky, heralding strange visions, the dead returning to life, and the arrival of an ominous winged creature. These strange events are experienced not by the singular narrator of Knausgaard’s autofiction but instead by a small collection of narrators, which allows Knausgaard to portray how a singular world-changing event can draw out varying shades of human drama, for despite the apocalyptic focus of the novel (which runs a seemingly purposeful 666 pages), its primary concern is what an apocalypse reveals about the inner lives of its characters. Kathrine, a priest, is frightened by the continued reappearance of a man whose funeral she has recently performed; however, it is her realization that she may no longer love her husband, and her response to that realization, that truly haunts her. Likewise, it is Turid who has perhaps the closest encounter with this strange creature, but foremost on her mind throughout the nightmarish events she endures is the well-being of her depressed son. Martin Aitken’s translation retains the evocative language of his earlier contributions that were characterized by starkly beautiful descriptions of nature and the warm realism of domestic life. Throughout The Morning Star, Knausgaard rarely loses sight of the mundane and the personal amidst all the biblical-scale upheaval. One character certainly runs counter to this. Portrayed as both a scholar and a dilettante, Egil is a difficult character to read on account of the considerable number of pages allotted to his story. Is he meant to be taken seriously or is Knausgaard poking fun at himself? It can be hard to know at points. It is his lengthy essay on death that concludes the novel and bears the marks of Knausgaard at his most heady and unrestrained, recalling especially the last volume of My Struggle wherein Knausgaard shifts from his spare, naturalistic, and disciplined persona into the dry and garrulous academic devoting hundreds of pages to an analysis of Paul Celan’s poetry and the life of Adolf Hitler. It made for difficult reading then as Egil’s pages do now, tucked in as they are among characters that not only have far more at stake but are also enlivened by their more proximal exposure to the events of the apocalypse. It is only when Egil turns to his own life and recalls the events of one strange train journey, the most direct and powerful passage in the entire novel, that his value as narrator begins to reveal itself and you understand why Knausgaard chose his voice to be the concluding one of this book, the first of a planned series that should put both the author and...

Стильова своєрідність творчості Олеся Ульяненка

Based on hermeneutic and body-mimetic methods, the article makes an attempt to clarify and verify the content of the stylistic originality of Oles Ulianenko’s literary works, one of the most talented and controversial modern Ukrainian writers. It is determined that the concept of «style» can be characterized as a phenomenon that neither exists by itself nor is equal to itself, therefore it is always about a certain interaction of the artist with the era, as well as the artist with the text, also, the text – with the reader, and the reader – with the artist, etc. In such a context, the anthropologizing of the concept of «style» becomes quite obvious, which almost perfectly fits into the principles of the body-mimetic method to analyze artistic works. It is noted that the plot basis of the majority of the artist's works is the numerous deaths of the characters, which are frequently not only victims of violence or tragic circumstances, but at the same time also cause the death of others. In connection with everything mentioned above, the conclusions have been drawn, according to which, firstly, for Oles Ulianenko, the style is a desperately persistent attempt to understand something that is basically impossible to understand. Secondly, this attempt itself acquires considerable weight, because it is, by default, extremely productive, and its productivity is actually based on unreachability and infinity, which alone are capable of denying the finiteness of this strange creature, namely a man, whose mysterious fate has haunted literature for ages. Thirdly, by means of style, literature sets the task of providing the «spiritualization of sensuality», which is «called love», and which «constitutes a great triumph», since «the second triumph is our spiritualization of enmity» (J. Derrida). On the other hand, the style of Oles Ulianenko can be defined as one of the postmodern type, which, due to the double coding inherent in this style, can be perceived either as an example of mass culture aimed at the naturalistic depiction of corporal and social horrors or as a basis for ethical preaching warnings against the threats of temptation, debauchery, and immorality, as well as a sample of extremely deep intellectual and philosophical prose, which exclusively through its corporal-spiritual artistic articulation tries to overcome contradictions that are fundamentally impossible to overcome, besides, to reach such truth that cannot be reached by anyone under no circumstances.

Chinese Folklore for the English Public: Herbert A. Giles’s 1880 Translation of Pu Songling’s Classical Tales

Chinese Folklore for the English Public: Herbert A. Giles’s 1880 Translation of Pu Songling’s Classical Tales

This Strange Creature: Plato and Conversion Experiences

In Plato’s corpus, the Greek word ἐξαίφνης appears precisely thirty-six times. Translated generally as “all of a sudden” or “the instant” in his Parmenides, ἐξαίφνης emerges in some of the most significant passages of Plato’s dialogues. Put simply, ἐξαίφνης connotes illumination of the highest realities and philosophical conversion experience. In addition to providing a review of Plato’s conception and use of ἐξαίφνης in Parmenides, Republic, Symposium, and the Seventh Letter, our paper brings an ancillary link to light. Namely, the appearance of ἐξαίφνης as a mark for conversion experiences in the New Testament’s Acts of the Apostles and Plotinus’s Enneads. We reveal how the same pattern and employment of ἐξαίφνης established by Plato emerge in both Acts and the Enneads. This pattern suggests a prolonged period of thinking and training, followed by a flash of understanding. Thus ἐξαίφνης, as evidenced by our survey of its strange instantiation in Plato’s dialogues and then subsequently in Acts and the Enneads, becomes a sign for enlightenment, assimilation with the divine, and conversion experience.

A Journey into Artworks: Storytelling in Augmented Reality and Mixed Reality

The paper aims to show Augmented Reality (AR) and Mixed Reality (MR) artworks are increasingly taking the form of walking tours across the city. These installations in urban space transform the viewer into an experiencer. Indeed such artworks consist in perceptual environments, which give new menanings to known places thanks to virtual objects. They can elicit a strong sense of presence into the visitor, who is free to build different paths related to the artwork both in time and space, using her own mobile devices. AR an MR artworks use immersive, multimedia, and interactive storytelling, which modifies everyday context affordances. The actual environment results from the intertwining of the physical and the digital. Artists like Keiichi Matsuda, in HYPER-REALITY (2016), and Magali Barbe, in Strange Beasts (2017), have imagined the most dystopian and alarming aspects that could emerge from new virtual technologies. However, AR and MR artworks reveal potentialities impossible to obtain through any other medium. The article will discuss some relevant examples such as the [AR]T project (2019), organized by the New Museum of New York and Apple, Actual Reality (2019) by Hito Steyerl and MNEMOSCOPIO (2020), by Emilio Vavarella.

Using geosciences and mythology to locate Prospero's island

Abstract. The Tempest, the last work entirely attributed to William Shakespeare, has been subject to many studies and interpretations, ranging from adventure and Shakespeare's biography to colonialism and the cultural revolution, and is studied in this paper in the context of naturally occurring hazards. The play tells the story of a magician, Prospero, and his daughter who are shipwrecked on an unknown island where they encounter strange creatures and beings. But is it a fantastic island or was the author inspired by real places? Literary scholars proposed several hypotheses through the years, based on historical sources. Here, we analyse the play in the light of geosciences and mythology supporting the hypothesis that the playwright was inspired by the Mediterranean. Our goal is not to identify the island but rather to examine the various geographical and philosophical–political factors that may have influenced Shakespeare's literary creation. Nevertheless, some verses in the play suggest volcanism, placing the island in the Sicilian sea. This underlines once again how deep the playwright's knowledge of Italy was. It also suggests that this part of the Mediterranean was known, at the time of Shakespeare, as the theatre of phenomena originated in the volcanism of the area. One implication is that he could have used historical sources, still unknown and precious, to reconstruct geological events that occurred off the Sicilian coast.

Reading Walter Benjamin with a Disability Lens

The article reads Walter Benjamin against the grain to find Enlightenment and post Enlightenment constructions of disability within his texts. Benjamin’s keen criticism of bourgeois humanism and its attendants, capital, progress narratives, individualism, and hierarchies can be seen most clearly through an examination of the strange creatures who inhabit the borders of his thought. The argument is that positioning these as figures of disability sheds further light on Benjamin’s ethical and political concerns after World War I. Primarily focusing on the mute figures that appear in The Mummerehlen and The Storyteller: Reflections on the Work of Nikolai Leskóv, the article puts these two texts in dialogue with one another to argue that Benjamin saw a radical disruptiveness in non-normative and not-quite-human corporeality.

The hole truth.

Now that black holes can be studied directly, scientists wonder whether they really are the strange beasts Albert Einstein's theory predicts.

Strange Creatures by Phoebe North

Strange Creatures by Phoebe North

Strange Beasts of China by Yan GeJeremy Tiang

Strange Beasts of China by Yan GeJeremy Tiang

The demons and devils that haunt scientists’ imaginations

Strange beasts stalk a history of thought experiments. Strange beasts stalk a history of thought experiments.