The Chapel Hill Rare Book Blog
The Meaning of Our Banner and the Mission of Our Blog
Category: Halloween
Recognizing Evil: The Devil and His Horns
"Angels are bright still," Shakespeare writes, "though the brightest fell." This moment in Macbeth, when Malcolm debates with himself whether he should trust Macduff, maps Malcolm's internal, political concerns onto a very real religious concern for Protestants in England: the outward appearance of evil. Malcolm believes that even though evil constantly attempts to look good, good must always appear to be good, too. Therein lies the problem: how does one distinguish between what appears to be good, and what actually is? How does one know whether they are working for something godly or for the Devil?
The western tradition still considers the figure of Satan as the multifarious and malevolent author of evil. In his seminal, multi-volume portrait of what the idea of "the Devil" evokes, Jeffrey Burton Russell suggests that the Devil isn't a finite figure; instead, he argues,
The Devil is the personification of the principle of evil. Some religions have viewed him as a being independent of the good Lord, others as being created by him. Either way, the Devil is not a mere demon, a petty and limited spirit, but the sentient personification of the force of evil itself, willing and directing evil (Devil 23).
Nevertheless, across religious and secular traditions, the Devil remains a symbol of rebellion, heresy, accusation, and turpitude. Cultural representations of the Devil in literature and its accompanying visuals continue to define, condense, and even localize the measureless potential for evil. The text and images in these books never stop attempting to confine the unconfinable.
Who or what, then, is the Devil? And how would we actually recognize him if he showed up?
The traditional iconography of Satan is re-presented here on the cover of crime fiction writer Arthur Lyons's exploration of Satanism. The book traces the history and rise of Satanic belief from sixth-century Persia to the doctrine of LaVeyan Satanism in the 20th century. BF1548 .L96 1971.
The Apocalypse long loomed over the religious life of Western Europe. From the rise of the early Church to the Protestant Reformation, Christian life anticipated the Second Coming, and it involved daily interactions with the divine, and the demonic, as a result. The general population understood the spirit world to be intimately tied to their own, and ecclesiastical authorities attempted to exert control over how their congregations perceived and interacted with that world. Canon scripture does not describe Satan, so early and medieval Christian artists had to develop an iconography that captured the Devil's evolving role as tempter, tyrant, and rebel angel. They had to visually embody evil. Within centuries, the Devil acquired his characteristic hooves and horns, icons drawn from the Greco-Roman Pan and Jewish seirim that Western Christian artists grafted onto the demonic. And ecclesiastical authorities made sure that that iconography accompanied the texts moving out of scriptoria.
Example of a medieval Hellmouth. The woodcut is part of a large decorative border surrounding contemplative prayers in a French Book of Hours (16th-century). It depicts demons dragging and prodding the naked souls of men and women into the jaws of a leonine monster. The adjacent woodcuts depict the breaking of the fourth seal in Revelation 6. ND3363.K4 C3 superv'd.
The early modern period further intensified the early and medieval Church's demonological iconography. The visual tradition remained in print, even during the far more iconoclastic Protestant Reformation. Protestants emphasized the written word over Catholic visualization and ceremony, but they proved themselves the masters of the accompanying image, too. Using well-established visual rhetoric, Protestants developed an effective way to deliver their anticlerical, reforming message. Even before Martin Luther distributed his Theses on Halloween 1517, critics of the Papacy lampooned it with demonic imagery. This provided Protestants a range of visual sources to capitalize on and modify. In their hands, the Catholic image of the Devil would become the Catholic hierarchy of offices itself. But in prose, the Protestants argued that the Devil was terrifyingly mutable and, therefore, far more difficult to recognize.
Pope Alexander VI is lampooned as a demon who declares, "Ego sum Papa" (I am the Pope). The woodcut originates from a Parisian handbill of the late 15th century and is reprinted here in M.M. Sheĭnman's Вера в дьявола в истории религии [Faith in the Devil in the History of Religion]. BT981 .S53.
Protestants believed that the Devil could easily trick Catholics without having to change his appearance. But for Protestants, who viewed themselves as true believers, the Devil could not so easily deceive them. While visual aids in books and pamphlets could represent the internalized evil of the Devil, Protestants understood the Devil's exterior was always trying to appear innocuous. Visual aids simply weren't enough to understand evil anymore.
Arthur Lyons's Satan Wants You, the Thielman Kerver Heures a lussaige de Rome, and M.M. Sheĭnman's Вера в дьявола в истории религии will be on display in the Fearrington Reading Room at Wilson Special Collections Library as part of RBC's Hallowzine event. Please join us on Thursday, October 31, from 3:00-4:30 pm for more spooky books, zine-making fun, and a book-themed costume contest with a generous prize for best costume!
Author Khristian SmithPosted on October 21, 2019 January 17, 2020 Categories Events, HalloweenLeave a comment on Recognizing Evil: The Devil and His Horns
'The Blood is the Life': Dracula and 19th-Century Transfusions
In Bram Stoker's genre-defining novel Dracula, after a series of sleepwalking episodes leaves Lucy Westenra mysteriously exsanguinated, her friend and jilted suitor, John Sewell, consults his former medical teacher, Abraham Van Helsing, to find a cure for Lucy's anemia. "She wants blood, and blood she must have or die" (123-24)–these words, muttered by Van Helsing as he tries to save his dying patient, catapult readers out of gothic vampire fiction and into 19th-century medical reality.
Front cover of the first edition (1897) PR6037.T617 D7 1897, superv'd
Transfusions in Stoker's time weren't completely uncommon. James Blundell, an English obstetrician, performed many of the first successful human-to-human transfusions in the early 19th century, but he often found that many of his patients "suffered fever, backache, headache and passed dark urine"–all signs of blood incompatibility. First published in 1897, Dracula predates physician Karl Landsteiner's discovery of blood type cross-matching by several years, and, like the contemporary science the novel immortalizes in its pages, it never mentions whether the four transfusions Lucy receives are compatible ones. Instead, Stoker tells his readers that it is male vitality that continues to rouse her: "You are a man and it is a man we want" (123).
Stoker owes a great deal to Blundell's language, whose report in an 1829 issue of the Lancet established the idea of transfusion as "life-giving": "…the patient expresses herself very strongly on the benefits resulting from the injection of the blood; her observations are equivalent to this—that she felt as if life were infused into her body."
Cover of Jennings' Transfusion (1883) WB 356 J54t 1883
British physician Charles Egerton Jennings also wrote on transfusion's "life-giving" properties. In his book Transfusion, a short work on the process's history and "modes of application," Jennings advocates for the continued use of and experimentation with transfusions. He saw their application as a vital component to contemporary medical treatment, especially obstetrics, and believed they were necessary to save at-risk parturient women. Complications during childbirth were common well into 19th-century Britain, and severe hemorrhages, while less frequent than in the past, were not unusual. Jennings's short treatise offers hopeful solutions to the country doctor, providing him with new tactics and a patent for new transfusion siphons that are ideally safer and easier to transport.
Jennings' "syphon for intra-venous injection and a modified form of canula". The siphon features a vessel that holds a saline solution that he believed could act as a blood supplement, as well as a bifurcated tube that can transport the solution as well as blood from a donor.
Today, we read Dracula and find the idea of transfusion probable, even banal. However, in 1897, when the novel was published, transfusion was an experimental process rife with dangerous complications. Air could easily find its way in transfusion equipment and cause fatal embolisms, blood could coagulate and clot siphons, and the equipment itself was often difficult to transport and rarely available for emergency transfusions in country homes outside the universities and hospitals of major cities, like London. That Van Helsing risks the operation reinforces his position as an eccentric and experimental physician, and highlights the novel's attention to the conflict between modern science and the folkloric horrors its theories cannot account for.
A first edition printing of Bram Stoker's Dracula and an early printing of Charles Egerton Jennings's Transfusion will be on display in the Fearrington Reading Room at Wilson Special Collections Library as part of RBC's Hallowzine event. Please join us on Thursday, October 31, from 3:00-4:30 pm for more spooky books, zine-making fun, and a book-themed costume contest with a generous prize for best costume!
Author Khristian SmithPosted on September 27, 2019 Categories Events, HalloweenLeave a comment on 'The Blood is the Life': Dracula and 19th-Century Transfusions
A Brief History of Zines
To prepare for the Wilson Special Collection Library's upcoming Hallowzine! event, I wanted to learn more about the history of zines to gain a better understanding of the historical and social contexts they evolved from. When I started my research, it seemed that without fail any website or article I found about zines would always begin by trying to answer one question: "What is a zine?" The answer is broad, and the content, style, and audience of zines vary widely, but there are several shared characteristics that make a zine:
Zines are self-published or published by a small, independent publisher. Self-publishing allows marginalized voices to express themselves beyond the constraints of mainstream media, and also lets authors take control of the process of publishing. Zines also present an alternative to the hierarchical and commodified world of mainstream media.
Zines are non-commercial, and are printed in small numbers, circulating only through specific networks. They are underground publications that tend to have niche audiences.
Zines provide a vehicle for ideas, expression, and art. They build connections between people and within groups, and provide modes of communication in addition to information dissemination.
There are exceptions to every rule, and though many have shared characteristics, there is no formal definition of a zine.
La Bollicienta, one Spanish artist's take on the story of Cinderella.
PN6777.A77 B65 2008
Zines were first created in the science fiction fandoms of the 1930s, taking their name from fanzine, which is short for "fan magazine." Long before the advent of the Internet, zines allowed fans to create networks, share ideas and analyses, and collaborate on writing and artwork.
The counterculture movements associated with the Beat generation of the 1950s and 1960s saw a growth of the underground press, which played an important role in connecting the people across the US. Although the underground press often involved significantly more people and resources in the production of materials, it provided a function that became a key part of zine culture in the 1980s and beyond: giving people a voice outside the scope of the mainstream media.
Art and literary magazines of the 1960s and 1970s were based on a similar need to circumvent the commercial art world, and were printed cheaply and spread through small, niche networks. Many of them combined art, politics, culture, and activism into a single eclectic publication, redefining what a magazine could be, and influencing the rise of activist artists' magazines that shaped the punk and feminist scenes later on.
Presence, a collaborative poetry magazine with various contributors from the Beat generation. F869.P737
The punk music scene of the 1980s expanded upon the self-published format by creating a wide of array of constantly evolving zines dedicated to the musical genre that were both fanzines and political tracts. Punk zines were more than just magazines–they represented the aesthetic and ideals of an entire subculture, a condensed version of this cultural revolt against authoritarianism.
Similarly subversive, the riot grrrl movement grew out of the punk subculture and developed a zine culture of its own, focusing on feminism, sex, and chaos. The Sallie Bingham collection at Duke University's Rubenstein Library has a large selection of zines by women and girls created during this period. The collection's website also provides a short description of the role of zines within the riot grrrl movement:
"In the 1990s, with the combination of the riot grrrl movement's reaction against sexism in punk culture, the rise of third wave feminism and girl culture, and an increased interest in the do-it-yourself lifestyle, the women's and grrrls' zine culture began to thrive. Feminist practice emphasizes the sharing of personal experience as a community-building tool, and zines proved to be the perfect medium for reaching out to young women across the country in order to form the 'revolution, girl style.'"
Examples of zines can be found at the Sloane Art Library as well as in the Rare Book Collection. Within the Rare Book Collection, zines comprise part of the Beats Collection, the Mexican Comic Collection, and the Latino Comic Collection. All three collections provide diverse examples of the genre.
The Mexican Comic Collection, a collection of comic books and other graphic material produced in Mexico by Mexican writers and artists, contains examples of self-published artist zines and fanzines from the contemporary comic and graphic novel scene.
La Punta, a collaborative fanzine created by several different artists.
PN6790.M482 M4
The Latino Comic Collection, a collection of comics and graphic material produced by contemporary US-born Latino artists and writers, also contains several examples of zines. Many of them are small, hand-drawn booklets, but others are more professionally produced.
Pizza Puffs, a zine made to share one of the artist's favorite recipes.
PN6726.L38
If you're interested in learning more about zines, check out the Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library's Sallie Bingham Collection at Duke University, which contains a robust collection of zines by women and girls. They also provide a resource page that is an excellent starting point for learning more about zines and their history.
And if you're interested in making zines, please join us on October 31st from 1:00 pm – 4:00pm for Hallowzine!, a zine-making event at Wilson Library where you can learn more about zines and apply your DIY skills to making one of your own. A variety of zines from the Sloane Art Library's collection will also be on display in Wilson Library during the event, so please stop by!
Author Laura Van LeuvenPosted on October 25, 2017 Categories Events, Halloween, UncategorizedLeave a comment on A Brief History of Zines
Carolina Kabuki Blue Halloween
Kuge-Bōrei, The Ghost of Abe-no-Nakamaro (a court noble) devised by Sawamura Sōjūrō, the Fourth (1784-1812) , plate no. 34 in Masaru Kobayashi, Kabuki kumadori gaikan 歌舞伎隈取概觀 (Kyoto: Guroria Sosaete, 1931)| PN2068 .K6
The RBC has just prioritized the cataloging of the books in Paul Green's library that relate to Japanese drama. The late Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and former UNC professor spent three weeks in Japan in 1951. There, Kabuki theater made a deep impression on him. An article on his visit in the November 7, 1951, issue of the Nippon Times quotes Green on Kabuki: "Japan's got the best acting and the best produced plays I have ever seen."
Green, a lover of books, brought back a number of rare and valuable volumes on Japanese theater. These were eventually gifted to the UNC Library. The plate reproduced above comes from a beautifully illustrated prewar volume on Kabuki makeup.
The color blue, associated in our part of the world with Carolina, was associated with spirits and demons in Kabuki theater. The frightening spectral face above sets a high standard for terrifying countenances, making it our staff pick for a Halloween post.
Green was reported to have wished to adapt elements of Kabuki staging to his outdoor dramas. He also had a keen interest in the expressive power of Kabuki makeup as demonstrated by his book collecting, including the volume featured above.
The Japanese books from Green's library promise to be a valuable resource for students of Asian theater at UNC.
Author Claudia FunkePosted on October 31, 2015 Categories Collections, Events, HalloweenTags Halloween, KabukiLeave a comment on Carolina Kabuki Blue Halloween
Archives Select Month September 2022 January 2020 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 February 2018 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 April 2017 March 2017 December 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 March 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 August 2012 June 2012 May 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 July 2011 April 2011
Acquisitions (41)
Travels (6)
American imprints
Beat movement
Bibliography Week
cabinets of curiosities
Christina Moody
Chronicles of Empire
Civil Wars
Expurgated books
Hanes Foundation
History of the Book
millionth volumes
publishers' bindings
Rooms of Wonder
Scientific Illustration
Stuart Collection
The Chapel Hill Rare Book Blog Proudly powered by WordPress