Legend of Spring-Heeled Jack (eBook)

Victorian Urban Folklore and Popular Cultures

Karl Bell (Autor)

eBook Download: PDF

2012
265 Seiten
Boydell & Brewer Ltd (Verlag)
978-1-78204-039-2 (ISBN)

Infos

An intriguing study of a unique and unsettling cultural phenomenon in Victorian England.WINNER of the 2013 Katharine Briggs Award NEW LOWER PRICE This book uses the nineteenth-century legend of Spring-Heeled Jack to analyse and challenge current notions of Victorian popular cultures. Starting as oral rumours, this supposedly supernatural entity moved from rural folklore to metropolitan press sensation, co-existing in literary and theatrical forms before finally degenerating into a nursery lore bogeyman to frighten children. A mercurial and unfixed cultural phenomenon, Spring-Heeled Jack found purchase in both older folkloric traditions and emerging forms of entertainment. Through this intriguing study of a unique and unsettling figure, Karl Bell complicates our appreciation of the differences, interactions and similarities between various types of popular culture between 1837 and 1904. The book draws upon a rich variety of primary source material including folklorist accounts, street ballads, several series of "e;penny dreadful"e; stories (and illustrations), journals, magazines, newspapers, comics, court accounts, autobiographies and published reminiscences. The Legend of Spring-Heeled Jack is impressively researched social history and provides a fascinating insight into Victorian cultures. It will appeal to anyone with an interest in nineteenth-century English social and cultural history, folklore or literature.Karl Bell is Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Portsmouth.

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 18.10.2012
• Verlagsort: Woodbridge
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Geschichte / Politik ► Neuzeit bis 1918
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie
• Schlagworte: 19th century • Anthropology • Cultural geography • Cultural History • Cultural Studies • Folklore • Folkloric tradition • Gothic • Legend • Literary Studies • Penny Dreadful • popular culture • Social History • Street ballads • Victorian • Victorian culture
• ISBN-10: 1-78204-039-0 / 1782040390
• ISBN-13: 978-1-78204-039-2 / 9781782040392