Posts about paula peril written by fanboytheatre.. ... The Adventures of Paula Peril is an original comic book series inspired by pulp detective stories, cliffhanger serials, and plucky teen sleuth mysteries.. ... September 19, 2010 Leave a Reply ...
The Paula Peril: The Serpent Cul
A most significant experience during Abel's adolescence is his vision of an eagle which carries a snake in its talons: "He had seen a strange thing, an eagle overhead with its talons closed upon a snake. It was an awful, holy sight, full of magic and meaning." Both eagle and snake have deeply religious meanings for the Indians of the Southwest. The snake is associated with the coming of water and is worshiped in ceremonies such as the famous snake dance of the Hopis. The eagle is believed to attain supernatural powers on its flights and is revered in the eagle dance. The appearance of the eagle and snake together is of particular religious importance, just as the plumed serpent is a major mythological figure.
It contextualises these stories alongside newspaper reports of encounters with serpents and develops a typology of snakes illustrating how snakes were used in popular literature. This will help us to further understand the various ways in which Victorians viewed these enigmatic yet fearful animals because younger readers, from a variety of social classes, would have received their understanding of animals from penny magazines and novelettes. They would not have bought the latest scientific paper on snakes published in journals such as the newly-founded Nature (established in 1869 and still going strong) or the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (founded in 1834 and likewise still flourishing).
This would not be the last time Reynolds used a serpent in his story to attack unwary travellers who ventured too far into the forests. A similar episode occurs in Mysteries of the Court of London (1849-56) and one of the protagonists in Wagner the Wehr-Wolf (1857) likewise encounters
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