Bodies: Sex, Violence, Disease, And Death In Contemporary Legend
Editorial Reviews
Book Description
Because they are so often told as news, contemporary legends force us to reevaluate life as we know it. They confront us with macabre, fantastic, horrific, or hilarious characters and events that seem to come straight out of myths and folktales, but are presented as present day events. The difficulty is that it is not at all easy to decide whether these often disturbing stories should be treated as reliable or dismissed as fantasy.
The legends explored in this book are some of the most bizarre, gruesome, and politically sensitive stories in the contemporary legend canon. If we believe them we must conclude that our bodies are in constant danger of destruction or defilement. At any moment our corpus may be invaded by noxious creatures, or deliberately infected with deadly disease, or raided to provide donor organs for sick foreigners. Even children's bodies are not safe from predators, and those we love most may seek to destroy us. These are "winter's tales," the stuff of nightmares. But they are potent and important.
In this book Gillian Bennett traces the cultural history of six well-known legends that have been current in Europe and America from medieval times to the present day and have appeared in broadsides, ballads, myths, ancient and modern legends, novels, plays, films, television shows, and in stories told in the oral tradition. The book shows that contemporary legends are not just silly tales which can be dismissed as trivial and "untrue." Good stories though they are and embellished with fantastic details, they reveal much about the concerns and fears of everyday life and demonstrate the limits of knowledge and power in the modern world.
From the Publisher
This examination of the most gruesome tales in contemporary urban legend
--- Offers a fascinating cultural study of contemporary legends and their roots in traditional folk tales
--- Taps the appeal of a fascinating aspect of current folklore studies—contemporary and urban legends of third world children kidnapped for organ theft, of frogs growing inside people, of dreaded diseases being deliberately transmitted
--- Offers the latest work from a well-known British folklorist prominent in the field
Bodies: Sex, Violence, Disease, And Death In Contemporary Legend
Bodies: Sex, Violence, Disease, And Death In Contemporary Legend,Gillian Bennett,University Press of Mississippi,1578067898,Body, Human,Folklore,Folklore & Mythology,Legends,Media Studies,Popular Culture - General,Social Science,Sociology
Bodies: Sex, Violence, Disease, And Death In Contemporary Legend
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