Cinder Girl Paganism

The essay titled “Workers Revolt: The Great Cat Massacre of the Rue Saint-Séverin” by Robert Darnton discusses a massacre of cats that, according to the worker Nicolas Contat, took place in Paris in the first half of the 1700s. Contat’s writes about two apprentices, Jerome and Léveille. They had poor living conditions, were given food scraps to eat, and they had to deal with the master and their superiors. On top of all this, during the night stray cats would howl, keeping them awake. One day Léveille decided to crawl along the roof until he got near the master’s bedroom and began to howl with the cats. The aster and his wife became convinced that they were being bewitched and ordered the apprentices to get rid of the cats. They chased cats of rooftops, hit them with iron bars, and trapped them in sacks. They also performed mock trials where the rest of the workshop would join in and hang the cats with a noose. Although to us this seems like a horrific act of violence, the workers turned it into a celebration. These different views of the same event exist because of the different societies. The hatred these workers had for the bourgeois, popular celebrations, and the things that cats symbolized all contributed to the humor of the cat massacre. We must first understand these to be able to understand the cat massacre.

In Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and the Lais of Marie de France, the authors use animals as metaphors for human actions, and as characters. By analyzing the use of these animals, we are able to explore the meaning the authors were trying to communicate through specific scenes. The Book of Beasts, a translation by T.H. White (1984 ed.), provides a medieval standpoint when analyzing the use of animals in the Lais and in Gawain.

In Tatar’s article, An Introduction to Fairy Tales, she draws us in by describing childhood books as “sacred objects.” She takes a quote from Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. describing how the stories give lessons about what a child subconsciously knows - “that human nature is not innately good, that conflict is real, that life is harsh before it is happy - and thereby reassure them about their own fears and their own sense of self,” (Tatar 306). She describes how many adults long for the simplicity of enjoying those stories in their childhoods, only to realize that they outgrew them, and instead have been introduced to reality. The original stories were more for adults rather than for children. Nowadays, stories have been adapted to be more suitable for children. Fairy tales may allow a kid to wonder due to their charm, but they also can

In Jack Zipes’s paper The Cultural Evolution of Storytelling and Fairy Tales: Human Communication and Memetics, Zipes explores the origins of fairy tales, and how they evolved to be what they are today. Through linking biology and literature, Zipes has been able to solidify fairy tales as not just stories, but as a psychological gene that gets passed on. Zipes then took this alongside a set of criteria derived from historical analyses of literature to clarify what a fairy tale is and isn’t. In the context of the literary work A Tiny Feast by Chris Adrian, the usage of Zipes’s criteria clarify that this story is in fact a fairy tale.

Nature is an image brought up many times, in both physical and human aspects.  The storms made by the witches, consisting of heavy

The extent to which the Lais of Marie de France can be categorized as fairy tales is dependent on the definition of “fairy tale.” Using various scholars’ definitions of “fairy tale” and conceptions of the fairy tale genre, criteria for “fairy tales” arises. Then, close-readings of three lais, “Guigemar”, “Lanval” and “Yonec”, are used as a mechanism for meeting or failing the criteria. This methodology is then evaluated and problematized. The criterion for fairy tales includes origin, form, content, style, and meaning. Etymologically, the word ‘fairy tale’ has disputed origins. Supposedly, it comes from the French “contes des fees” or “tales about fairies”, popular in French courts and salons in the seventeenth century. However, Jack Zipes argues that “conte féerique” actually translates to “fairy tales” and refers to narrative form, rather than content.

The power of the imagination is one of the most under-appreciated capabilities that human kind has. Though it is broadly under-estimated, it is essential to exercise the imagination consciously and unconsciously in order to achieve in-depth understandings of the creative world. After analyzing the individual components that make up fairy tales and the gothic, it becomes evident that these two genres are unified into one blended genre full of interplay on innovation and underlying meanings. Both fairy tales and the gothic genre have similar imaginative aspects, symbols and motifs that interact in unison.

As a child, I was told fairytales such as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs every night before I went to sleep. Fairytales are an adventurous way to expand a child’s imagination and open their eyes to experience a new perspective. Modernizations of fairytales typically relate to a specific audience, such as adolescence, and put a contemporary spin on the old-aged tale. Instead of using whimsical themes heavily centered in nature, the contemporary poems connect with the reader in a more realistic everyday scenario. Also, many modernizations are written in poetic form to help reconstruct a flow in the piece and to develop or sometimes completely change the meaning from that of the original fairytale. Comparing Grimm’s Fairytale Snow White

When he, his wife and a servant escaped from the house, all of his worldly possessions burned in front of his very own eyes. The following day, he visited the ruins and saw that one wall did not cave in. On the wall, he saw a great imprint of a gigantic cat with a rope around its neck. This brought the narrator to believe that during the fire, someone threw the cat inside one of the houses windows when the house was on fire. Since the cellar was made of concrete, it was not destroyed and they decided to live there. After some time, they find another cat with a splotch of white on his chest. They decide to adopt him and bring him home. This cat followed the narrator everywhere and everywhere. This eventually angered the narrator again. When he was in the cellar with his wife the cat made him trip and he was about to kill the cat with a fatal blow with an axe, until his wife stepped in the middle and the axe slammed into her skull, oozing of blood and killing her instantly. He decides to put her body in one of the walls of the cellar, like the monks of the middle ages did. For the next three days he does not see the cat. So he ends up thinking that he is finally a free man. When the police arrive on the 4th day, they check all the nooks and crannies in the room, and they do not see any evidence of a murder. When they are about to leave though, the narrator starts to brag about how well his house is constructed. When he taps the part of the wall where

There is nothing more precious and heartwarming than the innocence of a child. The majority of parents in society want to shield children from the bad in life which is appreciated. Within human nature exists desires of inappropriate behavior; envy, deceit, selfishness, revenge, violence, assault and murder. The most well-known fairy tales depict virtue and the evil in life. Even more important, the form and structure of fairy tales suggest images to the child by which he can structure his daydreams and with them give a better direction to his life. (Bettelheim).

The story of Cinderella is a classic tale known around the world and interpreted in many different ways. Almost every culture has their own version of the wonderful; however, emotionally abused girl and her desire to attend the royal ball. Although the story’s versions have many similarities, Charles Perrault and the Grimm Brothers have created numerous differences in the way they authored it. Aschenputtel depicts magic within nature; for example, she planted a tree with a branch and her tears, this tree fulfills her wishes. The young girl speaks to nearby animals; this is also a form of magic.

Pagans believe that nature is only replete if it includes mankind within it. Pagan traditions do not have harmony on how to understand humans or the meaning of life, just for each to find their own purpose. They do however, believe that humanity is part of nature, not greater or inferior to the other things in

While The Natural contains many attributes from each perspective, the analysis can best be related to structuralism and semiology. Joseph Campbell mentions a good point while discussing the function of mythology by saying that, “one of the functions of mythology is to guide human spirit by providing common or universal symbols that offset that darker nature of humans” (Wood & Pincus, 22). The Natural most certainly follows this function with the underlying network of symbolic meaning along with its many symbols. Each of the metaphors discussed by Wood and Pincus can relate to the points previously mentioned in the structuralism/semiology section and their analysis includes some aspects not previously noted that would further contribute to the underlying structure, such as the ‘universal

However, few realize that there are many communal ideas imbedded in the plots that often go unrecognized. Fairy tales, more often than not, highlight a multitude of social aspects which might seem inappropriate for children. Constantly evolving, fairy tales, as indicated by Yolen and Zipes, illustrate the sexist views of the dominating class, the societal beliefs as they change throughout history as well as the community’s values especially during crisis.

Firstly, the extents of this argument, as well as the views Pagans hold, should be explained plainly and defined thoroughly in order to provide the necessary background information and foreknowledge this analysis requires. Overall, there are many ways to practice Paganism, but one detail of this religion remains true for all: nature is sacred and must be mystical because nature is connected to the spiritual realm of the gods. Jolly, in her essay Father God and Mother Earth: Nature-Mysticism in the Anglo-Saxon World, says, “nature communicated God’s messages to humans, and humans had the ability to command nature” (230, 37). Thusly,