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result(s) for
"Flight Folklore."
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The flying canoe
11-year old Baptiste, spending the winter at a logging camp, gets a chance to go back home by riding \"la chasse-galerie\" (the devil's canoe) through the sky.
Book
The Witch in Flight
In a speech, American Folklore Society (AFS) president Kay Turner reflects her role as president of the AFS. She says that being a president yields gifts galore, especially the opportunity to collaborate with the Board, staff, and membership to bring the Society forward into the future. She thanks all of you for electing her to the honor and privilege of serving the AFS. Additionally, she thanks you for two special perks: the Presidential Suite and its 2 years' worth of hotel swank, and the Presidential Address, a chance this evening to share certain concerns in a test flight of some material that she hopes will add pages to her current book and performance project What a Witch!
Journal Article
All God's Children Had Wings: The Flying African in History, Literature, and Lore
This article investigates stories of human flight in the folklore of enslaved men and women throughout the plantation Americas, and especially along the coastal regions of Georgia and South Carolina where examples abound of Africans taking flight and returning to an African homeland, more than an ocean away. The ubiquity of these stories and their persistence even after the era of slavery reveal a lasting search for a sanctuary away from the horrors of plantation life and racial oppression. This tradition of flight posed a serious threat not only to slavery, which demanded ultimate control over the Black body, but also to evangelical religion and Enlightenment rationalism that conspired to support slavery in the first place. The flying African embodies a kind of resistance par excellence by asserting that enslaved men and women were not ultimately bound to chain or shackle, but were instead free to challenge the constraints of slavery and the very limits of human capability. In addition, this article interrogates stories of flying Africans as a way of addressing some of the vexed epistemological problems that these stories raise for scholars.
Journal Article
THE CURRENT MIGRANT AND REFUGEE CRISIS IN EUROPE: REFUGEE RECEPTION CENTERS IN SOUTH-EAST BULGARIA
In this paper, we analyzed the current refugee crisis in Europe by discussing its main characteristics within the European context. A comparison between the different routes in Western, Central, and Eastern Mediterranean, the Western Balkans, and in general in South-Eastern Europe was done. As the main research problem, we focused on Bulgaria as an entry gate for the arriving immigrants and we presented the most recent statistics related to the illegal entries in the country. Among our objectives was the analysis of the current problems at the reception centers in the South-Eastern part of Bulgaria. An important part of our methodology consisted of direct interviews performed with the local and immigrant population at the center of Harmanli. The key results of our analysis showed that despite the attempts on the part of the officials for successful integration of the immigrants, there were still important needs for improvement. In conclusion, we suggested that the use of good practices from other countries with experience in migration policies might contribute to better integration and improvement of the mutual respect between local and migrant populations.
Journal Article
From Escape to Ascension: The Effects of Aviation Technology on the Flying African Myth
Besides these possibilities for reinterpreting suicide aboard slave ships as cross-Atlantic flight, the sea's significance to this myth is further revealed in the Southern United States and Caribbean by commonly shared beliefs about the effects of salt on magical flight. Ultimately, it is more than coincidental that these transformations coincide with developments in aviation technology, for the struggles of black American aviators are taken as a central theme in many versions throughout this period. [...]many of the sentiments expressed by black pilots during the Golden Age of Aviation mirror the dual desire for escape and ascension represented by this myth.
Journal Article
The Witches' Flying and the Spanish Inquisitors, or How to Explain (Away) the Impossible 1
The first part of this paper presents four old Spanish explanations of the witches' flying: (1) that (with the Devil's help) they actually did fly; (2) that the experience of flying was the result of narcotic stimulation; (3) that their flying was pure imagination—methodologically demonstrated in the investigations of the Spanish inquisitor Alonso de Salazar Frías; and (4) that they fly by means of the soul. The latter, although strongly rejected by the Church, remained the most popular opinion. The second part discusses the flying of the Sicilian donni difori [\"women from outside\"] of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. These were cunning women who served as mediators between the local community and the fairy world. On their nightly excursions \"in spirit\" they would enter the houses with the fairies, who bestowed their blessing on the homes. Or they would join the fairies in a sort of \"white sabbath\" where everything was reflective of beauty and delight. In the last part, the author describes his encounter with a contemporary Sicilian \"night-goer\" who claimed to be able to travel \"in spirit.\" In the concluding discussion, the author asserts that none of the rationalistic approaches used so far leads to a full understanding of the phenomenon. In his reconstruction of the Sicilian fairy cult, the author leaves open the possibility of out-of-the-body experiences and collective dreaming (rêve a deux) being potential explanations for the phenomenon.
Journal Article
Motifs in \The Arabian Nights\ and in Ancient and Medieval European Literature: A Comparison
This paper is a contribution to the ongoing debate about the origins of parallel motifs in The Arabian Nights and in ancient and medieval popular and learned literature about exotic lands of the East. This preliminary survey focuses on seven related motifs: the magnetic mountain, the congealed sea, flying griffins, automata and genies, the mysterious walled city, the living island, and the underground river. This paper is intended as a contribution toward a motif-Index of The Arabian Nights in order to facilitate further comparative study of the motifs involved.
Journal Article
The Translation of the Unseen Self: Fortunatus, Mercury and the Wishing-Hat
This article examines the popular early German prose text Fortunatus both as folktale and as mercantile myth, concentrating on the hitherto critically neglected Wishing-Hat, which is regarded in this essay as a descendant of the Petasus of Mercury. In the original Fortunatus text dating from 1509, there are many points of contact centred in the Hat, such as its appearance, the themes of speed, secrecy, invisibility, theft, and commerce, between Fortunatus and Mercury. The manner in which these themes were developed in subsequent German revisions of Fortunatus and in seventeenth-century English translations and adaptations of the text is discussed. From embodiment of knowledge to a signifier of multipresence, from being a representation of travel to an accessory to raptorial attack, the uses and meanings of the Wishing-Hat are seen to be many and varied.
Journal Article