Well, yesterday some of you people protested when I wrote that the brawn is probably something no one would cook, and I’m glad because I kind of like the stuff, but you have forced me to double down with another traditional Tudor Christmas dish: the boar head. Wynkyn de Worde, most likely a pseudonym, was […]
The Shadow Bride is a poem by J.R.R. Tolkien included in the little-known poetry collection The Adventures of Tom Bombadil. We take a look at it today on my Patreon, alongside some possible inspiration.
A rather intriguing artistical tradition from Japan, the Kusôzu is a series of illustrations, usually watercolours, illustrating in vivid detail the anatomical process of decomposition of the human body. Yes. You read it right. It’s today’s feature on my Patreon.
I’m sure you know the Mexican pan de muerto, but we have something similar in Northern Italy and I thought I’d give you the recipe today. Since I’m not much of a cook, it’s free to read to minimize my responsibility in any collateral damage.
In our latest October, 15th post on the basic plots of fiction we took a look at what Christopher Booker calls Dark Figures, especially in relation to the “Overcoming the Monster” trope. Today I thought we might take a closer look at an aspect I only hinted at the end of the previous article: the […]
Today we take a look at a painting preserved at the National Museum of Scotland: it shows a merry scene of women dancing in a dark room. Most of them are old and conform to the idea we might have of the grotesque witch, but the central figure dressed in white is strikingly younger, possibly […]
The Dream of Akinosuke is a beautiful and heart-breaking oneiric folktale retold by Lafcadio Hearn in his Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things, written during his life in Japan and published in 1904. We take a look at it today on my Patreon.
Famed Italian author Italo Calvino, an author some intellectuals fiercely insist he never wrote fantasy or science fiction way beyond the point of the ridiculous, collected and translated 200 folktales from around the Country and published them in a vastly underrated book. Among them, some tales will sound familiar and were already presented by Giambattista […]
Well, if you celebrate Halloween in the mundane sense you’re certainly carving up pumpkins and call them Jack-o’-lanterns, but do you know why? I thought the story of Stingy Jack was well-known to everybody, but I recently discovered I was wrong. We take a look at it today on my Patreon.
Object Of The Day: Memento Mori Ring Today on my Patreon we take a look at an XVII Century ring, preserved at the Ashmolean Museum: it presents a turnable facet: on one side, a woman’s face is painted in great detail, with rosy cheeks and red lips. On the other side, by flipping it, you […]