bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Solomon Ibn Gabirol
Authors: Goldstein David
Published: February 2021

This chapter addresses the poetry of Solomon Ibn Gabirol. Solomon was born in Malaga in 1021 or 1022, and lived the greater part of his life in Saragossa. From his early years, he was crippled by disease, and his illness is a constant theme of his poetry. He was compelled to live by his writing, and found a sympathetic patron in Yekutiel ben Isaac ibn Hasan, who was executed in 1039. Perhaps as a result of his indisposition, and his consequent sense of inferiority, he was not an easy companion, and he left Saragossa, to die, perhaps in Valencia, between 1053 and 1058. He devoted much of his life to the pursuit of philosophy or ‘wisdom’, in which he found consolation for his physical cares; he was an adherent of the Neoplatonic school. His absorption in the ‘new’ philosophy, however, contributed to his personal unpopularity in the Jewish community of Saragossa. Meanwhile, Solomon’s fame as a poet rests mainly on his liturgical poems, which are masterpieces of concision and delicacy. It was he who introduced into the Hebrew poetic canon the poem addressed to the ‘soul’, by which he generally meant man’s intellectual aspiration to discover God.
Joseph Ibn Zabara
Authors: Goldstein David
Published: February 2021

This chapter focuses on the poetry of Joseph Ibn Zabara. Joseph ben Meir Ibn Zabara was born in Barcelona in 1140. He appears to have lived there for most of his life, following the profession of physician. His main work, Sefer Sha’ashuim (The Book of Delights), is the first major Hebrew imitation of the Arabic makam literature, i.e. a romantic collection of stories attached to a main theme. His book is in rhymed prose interspersed with short poems, and contains popular fables as well as long dissertations on medical and anatomical details. The chapter then presents Joseph’s poem The Doctor. The date of his death is not known.
Introduction
Authors: Fishbane Michael , Weinberg Joanna
Published: February 2021

This chapter summarizes the four fundamental historical periods of development. The first period roughly covers the first to fifth centuries where certain foundational elements of literary genre, translation, displacement, and diffusion are considered. The next period takes up the fifth to eleventh centuries and focuses on the deepening and thickening of the midrashic enterprise as it expands into liturgy, theological polemics, narrative elaborations, and cultural performance. The third period includes the development of intense lexical annotation of midrashic texts and traditions, their acute scholastic examination, assorted uses of midrashic teachings for cultural pedagogy, and creative uses of Midrash to deepen the sense of history and time. The last period considers some of the early modern and modern traditions of Midrash and its transformations.
Midrash in a Lexical Key
Authors: Weinberg Joanna
Published: February 2021

This chapter discusses how Jews began to produce dictionaries of their own canonical texts. Particularly significant is the recent discovery of a number of leaves of the ‘lost’ dictionary of Hai Gaon, entitled Kitab al-hawi, which lists words belonging to the main corpora of the author's religious tradition: Scripture, Targum, Talmud, and Midrash. Not long after Hai Gaon penned his dictionary, another lexicon—Nathan ben Yehiel's Sefer he'arukh—was produced. One feature alone links the Arukh, written in Rome at the beginning of the twelfth century, with Hai's dictionary—the citation of rabbinic writings, including the main works of classical Midrash. Nathan, like Hai, harvested the entries for his dictionary from all extant sources and traditions without imposing a hierarchy of reading on his readers.
Rashi’s Choice
Authors: Marcus Ivan G.
Published: February 2021

This chapter focuses on the master exegete Rashi of Troyes. Although many have written supercommentaries, essays, and even books about Rashi as a biblical or talmudic exegete, until recently few have looked at him as an original medieval Jewish thinker, let alone as a historical source reflective of northern European Jewish mentalité. And yet, no medieval Jew shaped the collective identity of Ashkenazi and even Sephardi Jewry more than this remarkable figure, whose genealogy is obscure but who is often compared and contrasted to his Sephardi analogue, Maimonides, whose genealogy was long and distinguished. Could Rashi have been so widely accepted as 'the' interpreter of biblical-talmudic Judaism for all times had he himself not been a person of his own time as well as a refashioner of it? Rashi proposed Jewish core values to his readers, especially in his Pentateuch (Humash) commentary. He did not write a treatise but wrote biblical commentaries in the form of a selective editing of rabbinic lore. Even when he did not interpret narrative biblical irregularities, he wrote what can be called ‘rewritten Midrash’.
Between Words and Actions
Authors: Wodziński Marcin
Published: February 2021

This chapter covers the investigation in 1823–4, which revealed the discrepancies between the government's official policy towards hasidim. It analyzes the subsequent investigation that started at the end of 1824 and continued into 1825 that fully revealed the nature and destructive consequences of unresolved contradictions. The chapter also describes the seeds of the failure of the government's policy concerning Hasidism, such as anti-Jewish fears and prejudices, and disdain and paternalism regarding Jewish society as a whole and “fanatical hasidim” in particular. These prejudices were evident as early as 1824, at the high point of the great investigation, and they ultimately contributed to the complete disintegration of the political strategy. It also talks about the less visible factors that played a part in shaping the policy towards Hasidism, which included growing ignorance on the part of the bureaucrats involved, coupled with incompetence, natural inertia, and their own self-interest.
Haskalah and Government Policy towards Hasidism
Authors: Wodziński Marcin
Published: February 2021

This chapter analyzes the influence of the Haskalah on government policy towards hasidim, and the political involvement of Hasidism and adherents of the Haskalah alike. It focuses on Polish maskilim, which engaged in political activism for the same reasons as other east European maskilim. The chapter shows that, throughout eastern Europe, the development of the Haskalah as a movement with its own institutions, networks, and so forth was connected to a certain rapprochement with government circles. The maskilim eagerly sought such a rapprochement since they believed that it would achieve the objective of reforms in Jewish society that would genuinely improve the condition of the Jews in terms of their legal status, economic standing, and access to culture. It also explains how an enlightened government would readily collaborate with the maskilim, since it shared their belief in the need to reform Jewish society and how government support would help them to achieve their objectives in a way that they could not do on their own.
Abraham Dweck Hakohen (Khalousi): The Last Ḥakham Bashi Born in Aleppo
Authors: Harel Yaron
Published: February 2021

This chapter details the transformations that took place in the Jewish community of Aleppo during the final decade of the nineteenth century and the controversy over the removal of Rabbi Abraham Dweck Hakohen from his office as ḥakham bashi. Socio-economic transformations in late nineteenth-century Aleppo, including the emergence of a prosperous and educated middle class and the decline of the class of wealthy householders upon which the institution of the rabbinate had relied for many generations, created an urgent need for a comprehensive reorganization of community leadership and institutions. The ascent of new forces within society, the distress of the weaker classes, and the decline in influence of those families who had constituted the old leadership all led to unrest throughout the Jewish public and a widespread desire for participation in running the affairs of the community. In practice, then, the deposing of the ḥakham bashi served a clear goal: to limit the power of the individual holding that office and to transfer some of it into the hands of the steering committee. This being so, the removal from office of Rabbi Abraham Dweck Hakohen can be seen as representing a revolution in the order of communal leadership, not merely the result of intrigue and conspiracy based upon personal hostility.
Sa’adyah the Philosopher
Authors: Brody Robert
Published: February 2021

This chapter cites classical Rabbinic Judaism, which is grounded in a comprehensive system of halakhah that determines behavioural norms in every aspect of life and sets community boundaries. It outlines few basic principles of faith that were presumably shared by all the tana'im and amora'im, such as the belief in a God who revealed himself to the children of Israel and charged them to keep the Torah's commandments. It also discusses the impetus to theological speculation that came from a time when both Christians and Muslims were making a concerted effort to systematize their religious principles. The chapter recounts the proliferation of cults within Christianity and Islam and the controversies that raged among adherents about the tenets of their faith. It mentions how Muslims were exposed to Greek philosophy for the first time during the eighth and ninth centuries, when many Greek works were translated into Arabic.
Sa’adyah, the Man of Halakhah
Authors: Brody Robert
Published: February 2021

This chapter examines the variety of genres and structures that Sa'adyah Gaon employed, including their talmudic and halakhic contents. It reveals how Sa'adyah incorporated halakhic and aggadic elements drawn from the Talmud and midrash in different genres, particularly in his piyutim and biblical commentaries. It also talks about the writing of responsa, which was the only literary activity in which the Babylonian geonim before Sa'adyah's time engaged in. The chapter reviews many of Sa'adyah's responsa that were originally written in Arabic and Hebrew translation. It describes Sa'adyah's responsa, in which he conducts a systematic analysis of principles in order to arrive at a practical solution for the specific case under discussion.
Afterword
Authors: Brody Robert
Published: February 2021

SA’ADYAH GAON was so multifaceted that it would be impossible for any one person to do him justice or to evaluate the full extent and variety of his life’s work. Nevertheless, it is my hope that the reader will come to the end of this book with at least some understanding, however incomplete, of the man and his achievements. A number of factors undoubtedly combined to promote Sa’adyah’s unique literary endeavour: his extraordinary intellect and forceful personality; his deep knowledge of Jewish traditions, Palestinian and Babylonian alike; and the crisis of the Babylonian academies, which made it possible for someone like him, having been raised far from geonic circles, to be appointed head of the Sura academy. We must also remember his sense of personal mission and his faith that the Creator had chosen him to lead and nurture the Jewish people in his generation. This feeling led him to redefine the role of the gaon, and the new conception powerfully affected the geonim who succeeded him....
Commentary on the Talmud
Authors: Grossman Avraham
Published: February 2021

This chapter studies Rashi's commentary on the Talmud. Rashi's most important literary creation, the work that gained him his greatest fame through the ages, is his commentary on the Babylonian Talmud, one of the finest Hebrew works ever written. Other sages preceded him in writing commentaries on various talmudic tractates or even on the entire Talmud, but none of them matched Rashi's interpretative achievements, and their ongoing influence on the study of Talmud was relatively minor. Rashi's commentary displaced nearly all those written in Ashkenaz before his time, and many of those other commentaries were simply forgotten. The chapter identifies the scope of the commentary, as well as the qualities that made Rashi's commentary the preferred one. It also assesses to what degree Rashi is linked to other interpretative traditions, especially to earlier commentaries written in Ashkenaz.
Values
Authors: Grossman Avraham
Published: February 2021

This chapter explains how no subject was treated by Rashi more extensively and lovingly than Torah study and its practitioners. The subject occupies a central place in the Bible itself and in rabbinic Midrash, and that no doubt had a bearing on Rashi's approach to it. But his devotion to the subject cannot be detached from his intellectual world or from the pedagogical goals he set for himself in writing his commentaries. The highest of those goals was to educate people to love the Torah and its study. Although Rashi did not try to provide detailed rationales for the existence and purpose of specific commandments, he referred several times to the basic idea that the commandments had been given to the Jewish people because of their merit and that their purpose was to enhance the sanctity of the nation and its connection to God. The chapter then considers Rashi's teachings on prayer, truth and humility, human dignity, and peace and factionalism.
Between Innovation and Conservatism
Authors: Grossman Avraham
Published: February 2021

This chapter explores the innovations that Rashi introduced. There is a degree of innovation in the attention Rashi devoted to interpreting the Bible and liturgical poems, in the breadth of his interpretative effort, and in the very transformation of the interpretative genre into the central intellectual activity within the Jewish society of his time—at first in France and Germany and ultimately beyond them. However, Rashi's four most important innovations are in the area of education. First is the openness and willingness to accept Torah teachings from all the Jewish centres in Europe and the Muslim lands, including Babylonia, the Land of Israel, Italy, Germany, Provence, and Spain. Second is critical analysis, while the third is Rashi's encouragement of literary production by students while they were still students. Fourth is his attitude to custom. In his willingness to abrogate some customs, Rashi took an independent path at odds with those of his contemporary Ashkenazi sages. The chapter then considers how Rashi attained his historic status.
Introduction
Authors: Ben-Shalom Ram
Published: February 2021

This introductory chapter considers the extent of Jewish engagement with the historiography of the non-Jewish world—particularly the Christian world—during the Middle Ages. It focuses on the Jews of the Iberian peninsula and ‘Provincia’ (southern France) between the twelfth and the fifteenth centuries. The chapter briefly demonstrates that these Jews had some knowledge of Christian history and were not indifferent to it. In fact, certain circles of learned Jews regarded the history of other peoples as part of a general culture in which they too shared; hence, there were historical events that they related to and used for didactic and intellectual purposes. From here, the chapter considers whether this consciousness of a shared history extended to shared values. It also looked at what historical concepts Jewish society absorbed or otherwise shared with Christians.
Rome: Images and Influence
Authors: Ben-Shalom Ram
Published: February 2021

This chapter examines the presence of Rome in medieval Jewish life. Both the Jews and the Christians at the time were familiar with—if not deeply interested in—the Roman empire. In fact, there is evidence of Jews' everyday contact with ancient Rome. Considerable segments of Roman history were included in books about the Second Temple period. There were also books dedicated to Rome, as well as additional historical information found in chronicles. Rome was also mentioned in works outside the genres of historiography and travel literature—in ethical books and biblical commentaries, for instance. Before discussing the images of Rome in these books, the chapter first considers Rome's image in the talmudic and midrashic literature. Here, the images, symbolism, and vocabulary of the Talmud determined the content of the collective memory of medieval Jews.
The Depiction of R. Shimon bar Yohai and Moses in Zoharic Literature
Authors: Huss Boaz
Published: February 2021

This chapter examines the strategy of the Zohar to present itself to readers through a juxtaposition of the figures of R. Shimon bar Yohai and Moses. By means of this contrast, the compilers of the work sought to create a canonical literature which was not only comparable to the Torah of Moses but was, they claimed, superior to it. The context for the comparison between R. Shimon and Moses, and for the portrayal of the rabbinic sage as greater than the biblical prophet, is the struggle between competing schools of kabbalah on the Iberian peninsula in the thirteenth century. The dominant school of kabbalah at the time was that of the followers of Nahmanides and R. Solomon ben Adret (Rashba). This competition was the framework in which the zoharic texts were created and in which their distribution and reception began.
The Authority of the Zohar
Authors: Huss Boaz
Published: February 2021

This chapter assesses the various manifestations of the Zohar's increasing authority and the historical and social contexts that finally led to its recognition by most Jewish communities in the early modern period. Declarations concerning the exalted status of the Zohar's protagonists, mainly of R. Shimon bar Yohai, are found in the zoharic literature itself. The choice of R. Shimon for the leading role, his comparison to Moses, and the proclamation of his superiority granted the secrets he conveyed paramount importance. The chapter explains that the purpose of the proclamations made by the kabbalists outside the Nahmanidean circle regarding the importance of the Zohar was to subvert the Catalan school. It then examines how the perception of the Zohar as a sacred and authoritative work increased the cultural power of the elite circles of the Spanish exile and advanced Sephardi cultural dominance in their new settlements and beyond.
The Recanonization of the Zohar in the Modern Era
Authors: Huss Boaz
Published: February 2021

This chapter reflects on the re-evaluation of the Zohar at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Under the influence of Jewish national and neo-Romantic trends, the book regained somewhat its old status, although the scholars who called for its recanonization insisted on its purely historical importance, denying its sacredness or divine authority. Rather, they emphasized its unique literary value and the central role it had played in Jewish national history. Many groups now engage in the study, commentary, and dissemination of the Zohar and compete for control of the cultural capital it represents. The application of new methods of study and circulation has also expanded its accessibility. All of these changes mark the beginning of a new chapter in the history of the Zohar.
Introduction
Authors: Walden Victoria Grace
Published: February 2021

This chapter provides an overview of Hammer Films. When Enrique Carreras and Will Hinds (stage name: Will Hammer) formed the distribution company Exclusive Films in 1935, they had no plans to become horror film producers. After a wartime hiatus, in 1947 they re-established their small independent production company Hammer Films, bringing their sons James Carreras and Anthony Hinds on board. In the immediate post-war period, it was inconceivable to consider a slate of horror films. In these early years, Hammer adapted renowned radio plays, mostly crime dramas, for the screen, tapping into pre-established markets. In 1951, Hammer moved into a large Gothic house in Bray, Berkshire, to save on production costs. With the introduction of the new X certificate, and the popularity of their science-fiction films, they soon turned to Gothic literature for inspiration.
Making Movies at Hammer
Authors: Walden Victoria Grace
Published: February 2021

This chapter discusses how the production history of Hammer Films is illustrative of the complexities of the British film industry, which has often struggled to compete with Hollywood. Though Hammer had a difficult start, it flourished into an internationally renowned horror brand. However, even the success of Hammer's horrors wore thin eventually. Its demise as a film production house in the 1970s, short-lived shift to television in the 1980s, and rebirth in the 2000s expresses the turbulent nature of British film production. The history of Hammer's production practices also raises interesting questions about what constitutes a 'British film industry', for like many studios its success has relied heavily on American backing and distribution.
Terence Fisher Through the Auteur Lens
Authors: Walden Victoria Grace
Published: February 2021

This chapter focuses on Terence Fisher, Hammer Films' most celebrated director. Fisher directed twenty-eight Hammer films between 1952 and 1974 and vehemently refused to be considered an auteur for his work at the studio. Despite his distaste for the idea, and the disputed relevance of auteur theory, auteurism offers a useful framework for interrogating the impact of this particular director within a studio which was renowned for its collaborative family-like team. The foregrounding of moral ambiguity and the human condition, and panache for suspenseful editing distinguish Fisher's work from that of many of Hammer's other directors. While some of his techniques were adopted in later films, Fisher was much responsible for creating this specific, colourful style of Gothic film-making. While Fisher worked as part of a close-knit collaborative, his style was clearly recognised by Anthony Hinds as appropriate for the Hammer brand and his involvement with the studio identifies him as one of the most important directors in the history of British horror.
Introduction
Authors: Simmons Amy
Published: February 2021

This introductory chapter provides an overview of Antichrist (2009). Written and directed by Lars von Trier, Antichrist tells a story of parental loss, mourning, and despair that result from the tragic death of a child. The two main characters in the film are not specifically named; their distinction in the credits is only by their gender; ‘She’, a researcher into witchcraft and gynocide (Charlotte Gainsbourg), and ‘He’, a cognitive therapist (Willem Dafoe). The film is divided into four chapters — ‘Grief’, ‘Pain (Chaos Reigns)’, ‘Despair (Gynocide)’, and ‘The Three Beggars’ — book-ended by a prologue and an epilogue. Challenging his audience emotionally and psychologically, von Trier's oeuvre has focused predominantly on female characters suffering incredible social duress. In Antichrist, one encounters perhaps von Trier's bleakest vision and his darkest, angriest film to date, where accusations of misogyny were again a source of controversy, born of the black depression into which he had admittedly sunk. The chapter then presents a brief biography of von Trier, which gives a clear picture of von Trier's artistic motivations and offers an insight as to how the director capitalised on numerous factors to bring Antichrist to the screen.
Conclusion
Authors: Simmons Amy
Published: February 2021

This concluding chapter looks at the critical reception of Lars von Trier's Antichrist (2009). Despite the efforts of some to dismiss the film as a prank, Antichrist is an astonishing film of rage and hopelessness, and its disturbing extremes speak of broad and deeply felt moral, social, and, ultimately, political anxieties. Compared with von Trier's previous films, Antichrist feels like a calculated provocation, begging audiences to question, both intellectually and viscerally, the limits of faith or ethics or whatever it is that makes one draw a line between good and evil. Still, how one sees, understands, and reacts to the film depends to a very large extent on what attitudes, beliefs, and prejudices one brings to it. Antichrist is essentially a film about misogyny. By revealing (via extreme exaggeration) the structure of patriarchal domination, the film critiques the tendency of mainstream films that represent women as needing to be disciplined by a rational male figure. In this respect, Antichrist has a considerable amount of feminist value to offer, and it should be explored as a complex net of sometimes contradictory meanings that expose the representation of the female gender within cinema and the fears connected to it.
‘Be Me, For a Little While’
Authors: Billson Anne
Published: February 2021

This chapter discusses Tomas Alfredson's Let the Right One In as one of the best new horror films since the genre's last great creative flourishing in the 1970s. It highlights some of Let the Right One In's back story and compares it with other horror movies made in the 1990s or the 2000s, such as The Lost Boys (1987), Bram Stoker's Dracula (1993), and Blade (1998) as venerable classics of vampire cinema. It also describes Let the Right One In's Eli as a type of vampire that is very different to Twilight's (2008) Edward Cullen, the undead hero. The chapter reviews movie vampires that come in all shapes and styles, and the vampire myth that is both durable and flexible enough to embrace many different permutations. It cites a vampire that appeared in an episode of Doctor Who called Journey Into Terror in 1965.
Becoming a Vampire
Authors: Billson Anne
Published: February 2021

This chapter looks at vampire movies that became a metaphor for drug addiction in films like Martin, Near Dark and Abel Ferrara's The Addiction from 1995. It recounts how AIDS hit the headlines in the 1980s and sex was once again regarded as a dangerous pursuit after a couple of decades of unfettered sexual liberation. It also explains the vampire life-and-death cycle that offered a convenient way of dramatizing the idea of a virus transmissible through body fluids, leading to extreme physical changes and death. The chapter cites the scene in Tomas Alfredson's Let the Right One In when Virginia is bitten and says to Lacke that a kid has infected her somehow. It describes Lucy Westenra in Bram Stoker's Dracula as the first and one of the best-known transformation of human into vampire.
The Vampire’s Departure
Authors: Billson Anne
Published: February 2021

This chapter reviews traditional vampire films that can have only one ending, where the vampire is destroyed either by being staked through the heart, decapitated, exposed to daylight, or burned. It examines the interpretation of the ending of Tomas Alfredson's Let the Right One In as a non-traditional vampire film. It also discusses one of the first false endings in Let the Right One In, which has no dialogue, just the poignant music accompanying a montage, scored and edited in such a way that it seems final. The chapter covers the endings of Roman Polanski's films where the protagonist comes full circle and ends up where he or she started, sadder but none the wiser for the experiences. It recounts that the real ending of Let the Right One In can be interpreted as a new beginning as Oskar and Eli left on their way to a new life.
The Cult of Fight Club
Authors: Ramey Mark , Ramey Mark
Published: February 2021

This chapter examines why David Fincher's Fight Club (1999) is considered a cult film. Fight Club is a cult film because it is subversive, quotable, iconographic, generically challenging, about marginal characters, complex in terms of its narrative, intertextual, gory and violent; because it transgresses social laws and norms; creates a community of fans and finally, because it was an economic failure on its release. The strong first-person voice of Chuck Palahniuk's source novel is intentionally preserved in Jim Uhl's screen adaptation. The use of a second-person address, which, along with other techniques, breaks the fourth wall, further helps engage the audience in the story of everyman ‘Jack’. The film was mis-sold as a product for the male youth market. Instead, it is a generational film, with particular appeal to the Generation X experience, the generation sired by the ‘baby-boomers’. Indeed, Fight Club's cinematic legacy can be traced back to baby-boomer films. A new generation's quest for meaning and purpose is the unifying factor.
The Horror Film and the Studio System
Authors: Poole Benjamin
Published: February 2021

This chapter discusses the ambivalent relationship between horror and mainstream cinema. Despite horror's niche status, mass audiences are drawn to supernatural elements and themes of peril as a matter of course. However, it is relatively rare for the major studios to fund and distribute out-and-out horror films. This is not to say that the studio system has not colluded to generate financially successful horror and horror that was 'approved' by the industry through sanctioned awards. Nevertheless, it is instructive to note that horror, in general, exists mainly outside the mainstream, and is generally the province of independent production. The chapter then looks at Lionsgate and the marketing of SAW (2004) as a horror text. It also considers the type of horror in SAW, as well as the concept of 'torture porn'.
Audiences
Authors: Poole Benjamin
Published: February 2021

This chapter assesses the influence of horror upon its audience. Does continued exposure to images of violence and sustained threat influence and corrupt audiences? Interestingly, the SAW films, or at least their marketing campaigns, would seem to subscribe to the passive 'inoculation' audience theory. The 'inoculation' hypothesis, or 'drip drip' theory, argues that continued exposure to violent images desensitises the audience, necessitating more extreme imagery in order to receive the requisite shock gratification. Each SAW movie certainly attempts to outdo its predecessor in terms of imaginative gore. The series' marketing keys into this accumulative demand, in a sense postulating each film's Unique Selling Proposition (USP) as an increase in novel gore.
Legacy
Authors: Rose James
Published: February 2021

This chapter explores the legacy of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974). Without doubt, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is one of the most enduring of films of the horror genre, having attained a highly respected status from both fan and academic audiences. Its power to frighten and shock is not, in any way, diminished by its increasing age, nor is any of its visceral or brutal imagery dated in comparison to contemporary horror cinema. Chain Saw has many enduring legacies, including the crew's experience of its notorious production, the financial debacle following its release, and its subsequent censorship and, in some cases, outright banning. While these all have their place in the growing mythos of Chain Saw, the film's sustained impact upon the horror genre is perhaps best typified in the sustained plight of Sally Hardesty, for in her experiences a new character type was potentially born — the ‘Final Girl’.
Hannibal’s Precursors
Authors: Forshaw Barry
Published: February 2021

This chapter discusses the other serial killers in the cinema before Hannibal Lecter. In 1959, the writer Robert Bloch was inspired by the gruesome case of the Wisconsin mass murderer Ed Gein, with his keepsakes of bones and human skin. He transmuted elements of the Gein case into the phenomenally successful Psycho (published 1959), reconfiguring the real-life Gein as the chubby, unprepossessing mother's boy Norman Bates, who dispatches a variety of victims in gruesome fashion. Subsequently, Alfred Hitchcock's adaptation of the novel (1960) laid down the parameters for a variety of genres: the serial killer movie, the slasher film, and the modern big-budget horror film which utilises above-the-title stars rather than the journeyman actors who had populated such fare previously. But above all else, Hitchcock and his talented screenwriter Joseph Stefano created a template for the intelligent, richly developed, and charismatic fictional serial killer in their version of Norman Bates. Hitchcock's film was to influence a generation of film-makers and writers; among them Thomas Harris.
Legacy of the Lambs
Authors: Forshaw Barry
Published: February 2021

This chapter explores the legacy of The Silence of the Lambs. What is the most significant aspect of Thomas Harris's achievement, both on the page and on the screen? Certainly, there is the creation of a massively successful franchise which has proved itself to be both durable and renewable; the latest incarnation of Harris's signature character is a television series, Hannibal, with the British actor Hugh Dancy impressively nervous as Will Graham, and the Scandinavian Mads Mikkelsen as Harris's eponymous psychiatrist. What is perhaps most enduring about the legacy of The Silence of the Lambs and the writer's other books is the permanent change that malign screen characters have undergone since the appearance of Dr Lecter in the bowels of that psychiatric institution. Nowadays, most ambitious thrillers imbue their villains with a fierce intelligence and analytical intuitiveness. But even more important than this, Thomas Harris demonstrated that popular writing can boast the acumen, elegance, and masterly prose of the best literary fiction, and has inter alia raised the game of the whole genre of thriller writing. Similarly, Jonathan Demme's place in film history is assured thanks to his confident handling of the source material and its influence on horror cinema of the late twentieth century.
Introduction
Authors: Marriott James
Published: February 2021

This introductory chapter provides an overview of The Descent (Neil Marshall, 2005). By the end of the millennium, it was easy to think that horror was a spent force. But by the middle of the 2000s, things looked different. British critic Alan Jones coined the term the 'Splat Pack' to describe a group of directors — including Neil Marshall — who were making films that were throwbacks, indeed often explicit homages, to a 1970s US independent horror sensibility. The phrase caught on and the film industry paid attention: these movies were cheap to make and sold extremely well. However, the most commercially successful of them tended towards a cartoonish posturing. Fortunately, not all the films celebrated under the 'Splat Pack' rubric were so throwaway; some of the more intelligent, effective works even did well at the box office. To some viewers, The Descent marked a true return to form. The chapter then presents a brief background of Neil Marshall.
Going Underground
Authors: Marriott James
Published: February 2021

This chapter looks at caves in and out of horror films, and asks which of several millennia-worth of cave associations are mobilised in Neil Marshall's The Descent (2005). Firstly, and perhaps most importantly, caves are dark, providing the principal fear that The Descent plays on, perhaps the most primal fear of all. But darkness is only half the story. Cinematic underworlds are multivalent spaces, able equally to represent a social underground or a character's psyche, and all points in between. The characters in The Descent — indeed in any cave horror film — are oppressed by the crushing weight not only of several thousand tons of rock around them but also with the overloaded symbolic freight of the cave, and its several millennia-worth of mythic associations. Ultimately, the cave represents nature in its cycle of death and rebirth, but also represents the abyss, the void, and the limits of knowledge.
One Million Years Bc
Authors: Marriott James
Published: February 2021

This chapter examines what exactly the crawlers are, and compares them to cannibalistic cave-dwellers in everything from The Mole People (Virgil V. Vogel, 1956) to Ravenous (Antonia Bird, 1999). By refusing to foreclose any potential explanation through a privileging of one particular story, Neil Marshall's The Descent (2005) leaves its options open, and the viewer wondering. Marshall used theatrical actors for the crawlers, rather than CGI, making for painstaking and lengthy make-up work. Part of the rationale behind this is to differentiate the crawlers as individuals, to give them distinguishing features. Aside from their vampiric qualities, the crawlers represent what the cavers can only ever aspire to, an instinctual state of nature. In addition, the crawlers have been seen by some critics as embodiments of a monstrous patriarchy.
Return to the Source
Authors: Marriott James
Published: February 2021

This chapter analyses the womb imagery permeating Neil Marshall's The Descent (2005), and asks what is so scary about being born. Representations of the cave as womb have a long and distinguished heritage, aligning the cave with the intrauterine qualities of other terrible places: the basements, sewers, underground lairs, mine shafts, and tunnel systems where monsters dwell in horror films. The terrible place of horror can be considered to contain a '“uterine” threat', the threat of dissolution, loss of self, and reincorporation into the mother. Is this threat of reincorporation really enough to account for horror's insistent use of intrauterine imagery? Perhaps the womb represents death for us in ways other than a fear of or desire for non-differentiation: the sole certainty when we are born is that we will die; to be born is to be condemned to a certain death. Thinking about the womb further raises the fundamental, perhaps most uncomfortable metaphysical question: What happened to us before we were born? Where have we come from?
Conclusion
Authors: Marriott James
Published: February 2021

This chapter summarises the principle theories applied to the reading of Neil Marshall's The Descent (2005), placing them in the context of the genre's efficacy at addressing the compulsion to control and manage trauma. On the face of it, The Descent is not quite up to the standard of the horror classics it seeks to emulate. Arguably, the overly frenetic fight scenes and the uneven tone keep The Descent from being a true horror classic. So why should we pay it so much attention? The Descent is interesting historically as one of the most critically and commercially successful releases in the recent British horror boom. Trauma can be revisited and, this time, controlled, through art. While other films explore the trauma of birth through scenes of incubation, hosting, and pregnancy gone wrong, The Descent takes as its central motif a far more universal theme, that of the trauma of being born.
Introduction
Authors: Mitchell Neil
Published: February 2021

This introductory chapter provides an overview of Brian De Palma's tenth feature-length film, Carrie (1976), which was adapted for the screen by Lawrence D. Cohen from Stephen King's 1974 debut novel. Produced by Paul Monash and released by United Artists, the film starred Sissy Spacek in the title role alongside Piper Laurie as her mother, Margaret White. Carrie White is a richly complex character that engenders a range of contrasting emotions in the viewer. Much like the conflicted personality of its central character, Carrie is a film with more than one identity and stands out even within the dominant American horror films of the 1970s. The visual romanticism, lyricism, and moments of humour that De Palma used to counteract the movie's more horrifying moments has seen it cited in academic and critical circles as an influence on both the cycle of teen-oriented horror movies and the gross-out teen comedies that emerged in the late 1970s and early 1980s. This book details Carrie's journey from the page to the big screen, a journey that has seen it become a highly important part of its director's oeuvre and a classic of horror cinema.
Birth of a Monster
Authors: Mitchell Neil
Published: February 2021

This chapter discusses the surrounding forces, both individual and collective, which led to the writing and subsequent filming of Carrie (1976), giving a clear picture of its place within the popular culture of the era and offering an insight as to how Brian De Palma and his cast and crew capitalised on numerous factors to bring Carrie to the big screen. As with all movies that attain a lasting resonance and/or reverential status, there is no single defining attribute that led to Carrie's standing as a classic, but rather a convergence of diverse determining factors. Talent, happenstance, timing, and prevailing social, cultural, and political climates and mores are all equally influential elements that affect a movie's reception. In Carrie's case, these factors gestated in the fledgling career of horror novelist Stephen King, De Palma's ambitions (commercial and artistic), the climate of unrest in America in the early 1970s, and the wave of homegrown nihilistic horror movies that both commented on and reflected the country's troubled psyche at the time. Along with the ‘paranoid conspiracy’ thrillers and pointedly political movies of the time, the horror movies released in America in the 1970s were at the forefront of cinematic responses to a sustained period of cultural upheaval, social turbulence, and political disenchantment.
Influences & Adaptation
Authors: Conterio Martyn
Published: February 2021

This chapter describes Mario Bava's Black Sunday as a fairy tale with an occasional emphasis on the grim that is rife with both literary and cinematic references. It discusses Bava's use of visual quotations of American horror films that is quite remarkable because of the ban until the early 1950s. It cites how Bava was knowledgeable in art history that shows up in his debut. The chapter talks about torch-bearing peasants who appear in the film's opening and closing scenes of James Whale's Frankenstein in 1931 a one of the noticeable citations of the Universal horror-esque. It mentions Jean Cocteau's adaptation of La Belle et la Bête in 1946 from the story by Jeanne Marie Leprince de Beaumont as the strongest stylistic influence on Bava.
Introduction
Authors: Turner Peter
Published: February 2021

This introductory chapter provides an overview of The Blair Witch Project (1999). The Blair Witch Project, with its tiny budget and horror genre trappings, was the tenth biggest box office earner of 1999. Even with strong competition in the horror genre, the film managed to stand out from the rest. The Blair Witch Project was arguably a product of its time more than any other film of the 1990s. It signalled the approaching end of an era and spectacularly heralded the advent of digital filmmaking. Backed up by an internet marketing campaign, The Blair Witch Project became a glowing example of what could be achieved with cheap emerging technology, imagination, and a ‘less is more’ approach. By the year 2000, and due to the influx of digital video cameras, there were far more independent features being made than ever before. This book explores the aesthetics of The Blair Witch Project, how identification is encouraged in the film, and the way it successfully creates fear in contemporary audiences.
The Aesthetics of Artificial Authenticity
Authors: Turner Peter
Published: February 2021

This chapter discusses the visual style of The Blair Witch Project (1999). In notable opposition to the slasher cycle and the later ‘torture porn’ trend in modern horror, The Blair Witch Project takes a distinctively ‘less is more’ approach to visuals. It fails to reveal much that is horrific in the truest sense of excess that characterises much of the horror genre in film. The Blair Witch Project relies on the power of suggestion and the fear of what is unseen. While the film has a witch as the central antagonist and the dark and frightening woods as its primary location, it attempts to create a realistic atmosphere through its presentation, deceiving the viewer into thinking they are watching the actual found footage of three disappeared students. It is presented to the audience as a work of fact; not a traditional horror film, but a documentary chronicling real events that were filmed by someone involved in a terrible experience. The chapter then considers the mockumentary or mock-documentary approach of The Blair Witch Project.
4. Fear of the Dark: Witches, Women and the Woods
Authors: Turner Peter
Published: February 2021

This chapter explains that the The Blair Witch Project (1999) must be read as an old-fashioned but timeless ghost story in many ways. It is about people hunting for proof of the supernatural and at the same time being terrorised by something far beyond their understanding. There are clearly some deeply held fears that have been found in societies since storytelling began that are being recycled in The Blair Witch Project. But equally this film is taking the witches and lost-in-the-woods familiarity of fairytales like Hansel and Gretel and replaying them in a new and very modern way. The youths of the film are a generation shaped by technology, dependant on it and ultimately failed by it. The camera, and particularly Heather's dependence on it, brings about their downfall. The chapter then looks at the representation of women in The Blair Witch Project.
The Book: Adapting Shelley
Authors: Harmes Marcus K.
Published: February 2021

This chapter discusses some of the deviations of the film from Mary Shelley's novel. It discusses how it was necessary for Hammer to condense plot, characters, and dialogue in order to create cinematically suitable and satisfying alternatives to the original novel, creating succinctness and cinematic impact in place of wordiness. The chapter discusses the transgressions that were made on the story's setting. In the film, Frankenstein barely sets foot outside his own front door as opposed to the journey he took to several places in the book. The chapter also discusses the transgressions made on several characters such as Victor Frankenstein, the Creature, Justine, and Elizabeth among others. There were notable changes to the portrayal of Victor Frankenstein, and the Creature, both appearing more demented than described in the novel. Justine and Elizabeth meet different fates in the film. Victor's relationships with the two women were distinctly colder to what was noted in the novel. Some characters and whole storylines were completely omitted. The chapter also discusses changes that were made to the dialogue and how speech was made to be briefer as compared to their dialogue in the novel.
A Portrait of the Artist
Authors: Gillis David
Published: February 2021

This introductory chapter provides a background of Maimonides and his code of Jewish law, the Mishneh torah. Maimonides applied the highest literary art to the highest of tasks: to bequeath, as philosopher-statesman, a law that would regulate the life of the individual and of society and move people closer to the knowledge of God. The result of that art is a book to be read and experienced, not just consulted. The central feature of Mishneh torah as a work of art is the casting of the commandments of the law in the form of the cosmos. The microcosmic form suggests, in the first place, that studying Mishneh torah, like the study of the universe, can be a way to the knowledge and love of God. On the plane of ideas, this form embodies the relationship between the ‘small thing’ and the ‘great thing’, between halakhah, on the one hand, and physics and metaphysics on the other. It depicts philosophy as the matrix of halakhah, reflecting the view of the relationship between philosophy and religion in the Islamic philosophers.
Conclusion: Mishneh Torah as Parable
Authors: Gillis David
Published: February 2021

This chapter studies Mishneh torah as a great parable that is not explicitly identified as such. In the introduction to The Guide of the Perplexed, Maimonides chooses Jacob's dream of the ladder with the angels ascending and descending to illustrate the complex type of parable that is significant in all its details, as opposed to parables that are significant only in outline. He thus announces the centrality of this parable to his vision. In its later appearances in the Guide, it serves to concentrate that book's ideas in the realms of physics, metaphysics, and prophecy. Mishneh torah embodies all that Jacob's dream stands for in the Guide. Ultimately, the form of Mishneh torah in the literary sense is a parabolic representation of the form of the commandments in the technical, philosophical sense.