Lewis Carroll’s works as Taishō nansensu and beyond (DeDisnification, Part 7A Addendum C/ Taishō, Part 5) — Lewis Carroll’s Alice books hold a unique place in Japanese culture. The appearance of these works coincided with a key moment in the modernity of the island nation. They went on to become central, not only to the canon of children’s literature, but literature writ large, as well as other…

Lewis Carroll’s Victorian grotesquery (DeDisnification, Part 7A Addendum B) — There is a rumor Queen Victoria had loved Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland so much she asked the author to dedicate his next work to her. That author was Lewis Carroll, actually the nom de plume of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, an Oxford lecturer on mathematics. His next book was An Elementary…

V&A’s Wonderland not so wonderful (DeDisnification, Part 7A Addendum A) — Back in October, my family and I were finally able to go to an exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) celebrating the “origins, adaptations and reinventions over 157 years” of Lewis Carroll’s Alice books. This show, titled “Alice: Curiouser and Curiouser”, had been set to open in spring…

I throw in with neither Team Tarantino nor Team Lee (Mythmaking in the martial arts, Part 5 Addendum B) — Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (OUaTiH) has been back in the news lately because of various high-profile comments about Bruce Lee’s portrayal therein. The first came from Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, whose arguments I’d sum up like this:¹ Lee taught him martial arts, discipline, and spiritualism, which allowed him to have…

Roman lucanicae and lararia (Pompeii and Pigs, Addendum) — I’ve always loved museums. Growing up in Chicago, I’d clamor to go to them. And we had some good ones, mainly owing to the World’s Fair of 1893 and some robber-baron noblesse oblige in the 1930s. When I was very young, the Museum of Science and Industry was my favorite…

Palindrome and film (The Mysterious Square, Addendum) — Something strange happened recently: views on this site spiked. Although spread across Medium and here, some of my more popular posts have a lot of views — the one on Icelandic magical staves, for example, has some 7,600. …

Native religion in rebellion (Defixiones, Part 9) — I’ve detailed in this series how magic spread from the Ancient Near East (ANE) right across Europe and eventually to Britain, at the farthest northeast edge of the Roman Empire. …

Mentalis restrictio in the US Constitution (Gladwellocalypse, Part 3 Addendum) As the new members of the executive branch were inaugurated in the US, I was struck by the language of the Vice Presidential oath of office — notably, it’s quite different from that of the President. Here’s how it runs:¹ I, [full name] do solemnly swear that I will support…

New film, new issues (DeDisnification, Part 2 Addendum B) — Against my better judgment, I watched the live-action remake of Mulan. It was visually stunning and had a ton of star power and flashy martial arts. Still, it did little to address the issues of the original film, managing instead to open new ones, and ultimately lacked depth. There are…