Fairies : a history / Francis Young.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Young, Francis (Francis Kendrick), author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Fairies--History.

Fairies.

Physical Description:

xi, 340 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Cambridge ; Hoboken : Polity Press, 2026.

Summary:

Many people think they know what fairies are, what a fairy looks like, and how a fairy is expected to behave. Francis Young's new history of fairies demonstrates that the truth about belief in fairies is far stranger than clichd images of tiny figures with wings and wands.Before the rise of the 'small winged fairy' in the nineteenth century, the category of fairies included a vast range of supernatural human-like creatures, from the elves of Scandinavia and the aos s of Ireland to the vilas of the Balkans and the fadas of Iberia. Young traces the ancient origins of belief in such creatures and how it adapted to the rise of Christianity and then flourished in medieval Europe, before being transformed - but not destroyed - by the upheavals of the Reformation, the Enlightenment, and even European colonial expansion, which made fairies a global phenomenon. He concludes this uniquely wide-ranging history by reflecting on the surprising ways in which fairy belief endures in our apparently disenchanted contemporary world.No one who reads this brilliant tour through the enchanted pathways of fairyland will ever look at the winged creatures of contemporary popular culture - or the woods at the bottom of their garden - in the same way again.

Contents:

Introduction : the fairy-haunted world

The hills are alive : sacred nature in ancient Europe

Between heaven and hell : monotheism and ambiguous spirits

Here be monsters : otherworld beings in the Middle Ages

Founding fairyland : the late Middle Ages

The reformation of fairyland : early modern fairies

Trying the spirits : fairies and the enchanted Enlightenment

Fairies go global

The coming (back) of the fairies : the nineteenth and twentieth centuries

Rewilding fairyland : fairies today

Conclusion.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Other Format:

ebook version :

ISBN:

9781509566778

1509566775

OCLC:

1534684616

Publisher Number:

CIPO000363895