تدريب Shadowing: The Origins of Folk Horror - تعلم التحدث بالإنجليزية عبر الفيديو

اختر وضع التدريب

كل وضع يفتح غرفة تدريب بملء الشاشة.

198 جمل

إذا كانت الجمل قصيرة أو طويلة جدًا، انقر على Edit لتعديلها.

recently i was doing some research on a book called the place called dagon

which was originally published in 1927 what interested me about the place called dagon is

that it revolves around an insular rural town.

And in this town, hiding behind closed doors, there's a sinister cult practicing witchcraft.

And as if this wasn't bad enough, this sinister cult is planning to conduct a human sacrifice in

honour of their dark gods to bring prosperity to their impoverished rural town.

If you think this plot sounds familiar, then you'd be right.

This has pretty much become a ubiquitous plot in horror films these days.

Think of films like The Wicker Man, or more recently Midsommar, and you'll be on the right track.

One of my favourite examples of this is the Edgar Wright film, Hot Fuzz.

This story trope, which I would like to call the town with a secret cult,

is a huge part of a particular subgenre of horror fiction and films called folk horror.

While there's no concrete definition of the subgenre, folk horror often involves rural settings where the horror elements come from pagan religions,

witchcraft, or elements of folklore.

In films in particular, the typical folk horror story is about a rural village where, behind the charade of everyday village life, lurks a dark secret.

It's often a sinister cult which demands a human sacrifice, usually for the purpose of bringing prosperity to a rural community.

But what interested me is that I thought that this was a relatively recent literary trope.

Except the place called Dagon has this trope in it, and that was published all the way back in 1927.

So how old is the trope of the town with the secret cult, and where did it come from?

I decided to take a look at the first stories which contained this trope, and came up with some pretty interesting results.

At the start of The Place Called Dagon, there is an introduction, written by a man named Larry Creasy, who's an expert on Herbert S.

Gorman's work, and this introduction gives a bit of history about Gorman's work and also his inspirations for the novel.

In the introduction, Creasy lists Nathaniel Hawthorne as being a big inspiration for Gorman.

In particular, a short story by Hawthorne called Young Goodman Brown, which was published in 1835.

In Hawthorne's story, Young Goodman Brown, the titular character ventures into the nearby forest at night on an errand, and while in the forest,

the young man stumbles upon a black mass being observed by the entire population of the town which he lives in.

The story is essentially an allegory about Christian faith, and so it isn't written in the style of a mystery,

like the trope of the town with a secret cult usually is, but this story does contain a lot of the essential elements of the trope.

There's a rural town, wherein there's a secret witch cult not known about even to some of the inhabitants of the town.

It's easy to see how Gorman might have extrapolated on the

plot of young Goodman Brown to come up with a more mystery -based thriller plot for his book, The Place Called Dagon.

And there are good reasons to suspect that this is probably the case.

Herbert S.

Goleman actually wrote a biography of Nathaniel Hawthorne, so Goleman would have been very familiar, not only with Hawthorne's work, but also with his family history,

which is an interesting clue as to where Hawthorne might have gotten his idea for young Goodman Brown.

Nathaniel Hawthorne was a native of the town of Salem, a town infamously known to most of the world for the witch trials that were held there.

One of Nathaniel Hawthorne's ancestors, John Hawthorne, was actually one of the judges who presided over the witch trials in Salem.

So we can see that Hawthorne was probably drawing on history for the plot of Young Goodman Brown.

While Young Goodman Brown does have many of the common motifs of folk horror, such as a secret cult in a small rural town,

it also doesn't share many of the ideas of other folk horror stories, such as the European setting, the theme of the modern way of life versus the ancient way of life,

and of course, human sacrifice.

Young Goodman Brown was the the earliest example of the folk horror trope of the town with a secret cult

that I could find.

but I still wasn't entirely satisfied with Young Goodman Brown as being the original source of this folk horror trope.

More importantly, the witches and heathens in Young Goodman Brown

and the place called Dagon seem to draw very much from Puritan values and exist within the Christian worldview,

while the dreaded heathens in The Wicker Man and other examples of folk horror have their own alternative worldview and gods.

A quote from Young Goodman Brown demonstrates this.

My faith is gone, he cried, after one stupefied moment.

There is no good on earth, and sin is but a name.

Come, devil, for thee is the world given.

In Young Goodman Brown, the horror comes from the idea that Christians have turned away from God and are worshipping the devil,

which is not surprising since the inspiration for the story is probably the witch trials at Salem.

The witches in Young Goodman Brown are essentially anti -Christians.

And please note that I'm using the term anti -Christians very loosely here.

What I mean when I say anti -Christians is that in the Puritan value system,

a person must work hard in this life and forego pleasure to receive everlasting joy in the afterlife.

But the witches in folklore invert this system them.

They trade their eternal souls for immediate pleasure, and that is the extent of the magic and religion in Young Goodman Brown.

In the more European type of folk horror, such as the Wicker Man, the themes of religion extend beyond the Christian worldview,

they have completely denounced the Christian God as either being non -existent or as being less powerful than other gods,

such as in The Wicker Man where the villagers decide

that their Christian god can't bring them a rich harvest

and instead Lord Sama 'al offers them an alternative religion which can deliver these results.

in the last century the islanders was town like our neighbors today they were scratching a bare subsistence from sheep

and sea then in 1868 my grandfather bought this barren island

began to change things the best way of accomplishing this

so it seemed to him was to rouse the people from

their apathy by giving them back their joyous old gods and that as a result of this worship So,

the main themes of the most famous example of folk horror, the wicker man, don't really fit with the origin of Nathaniel Hawthorne and the Salem Witch Trials,

or even with European Witch Trials, which are limited to being mainly concerned with a Christian worldview.

I have to say though, there are other examples of American folk horror, stories such as The Lottery by Shirley Jackson,

which involve human sacrifice in exchange for a good harvest.

But regardless, this only points to another source of this inspiration.

The fact that Shirley Jackson of all people drew on this idea is a really big clue

and I'll come back to that later.

But I didn't want to stop there.

I wanted to find out other possible sources for folk horror.

And particularly I wanted to find out where the idea of alternative religions to Christianity came into the picture.

And usually the best place to start

when you want to find the source of a literary trope

is to start with the most famous example of it and work backwards.

In this case, I think the most famous example is The Wicker Man film from 1973.

The Wicker Man was based on a book called Ritual by David Pinner, published in 1967.

When I looked up interviews with David Pinner, Pinner had this to say about his inspiration.

I was interested in witchcraft and Dennis Wheatley's books, and that combination resulted in Ritual.

Dennis Wheatley was an early 20th century author who wrote a prodigious amount of adventure and thriller novels,

but most importantly for us is that a few of his books dealt with the occult and Satanism, things which, despite him being a devout Christian,

he was a bit of an expert on.

One of his most famous novels in particular is called The Devil Rides Out, and it's about a cult of devil worshippers led by a charismatic figure.

The presence of a charismatic leader is an important aspect of the trope of A Town with a Secret Cult

and we can see the origin of that here, but this is where the trail went dead.

The Devil Rides Out was published in 1934 and we already know

that The Place Called Dagon was published in 1927

and already had the trope of a town with a secret cult in it

and also had the trope of a charismatic leader in it.

In fact, while David Pinner cites Dennis Wheatley as a source of inspiration for Ritual and therefore The Wicker Man,

The Devil Rides Out doesn't really have many of the tropes of folk horror in it, and for that matter neither does Ritual.

I actually read Ritual as part of the research for this video

100

and I was quite surprised what the book was actually like.

101

It's really a bizarre fever dream of a book, and while it definitely does have a lot of the aspects of folk horror,

102

its plot is not as clearly defined and typical as later entries into the folk horror genre are.

103

What Ritual does have is the thematic opposition between Christianity and other religions.

104

The protagonist in Ritual is, like in The Wicker Man,

105

a puritanical Christian police officer who expresses outrage and disgust at the irreligiosity of the villages and their occult practices.

106

So we see here a seed of the juxtaposition between the old

107

and new religion that would become a staple of folk horror in works like The Wicker Man.

108

But I was at a loss, so I wanted to go back to the drawing board.

109

It seems to me like this idea of the town with a secret cult maybe just sprang out of the cultural zeitgeist.

110

After all, a town with a mystery is not exactly that difficult to come up with, so maybe there wasn't really an original source for this idea.

111

The witches in Dagon are descendants from Salem, a town notable for its witch trials,

112

which at the time people believed exposed a secret cult of witches in the town, so perhaps that really is the source of the trope of the town with a secret cult.

113

It certainly inspired Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herbert S.

114

Gorman, and those are the two earliest examples of this particular trope that I could find.

115

But it also seems that folk horror isn't really an American genre.

116

The modern country of America as we know it is, after all, a colony, and its history only goes back a few hundred years.

117

And before that, the continent of North America was occupied by Native Americans, and Native American culture doesn't tend to be a big staple of folk horror,

118

although it certainly plays a part.

119

So the idea of a sinister ancient cult worshipping old gods, like the old gods that are mentioned in the place called Dagon, doesn't seem to fit this setting,

120

because they clearly have pagan inspirations.

121

On top of that, The Wicker Man and The Devil Rides Out are very British

122

and it's pretty unlikely that these works would have been drawing on American history like the Salem Witch Trials.

123

Of course there were witch trials in Europe a lot earlier than America, but I still think this doesn't quite fit.

124

So I kept searching.

125

Since all this research began with a book that inspired the famous horror author, H .P.

126

Lovecraft, I decided to go and see whether H .P.

127

Lovecraft had anything to say on the matter.

128

Lovecraft actually wrote an essay called Supernatural Horror in Literature, which was all about the supernatural horror genre,

129

and this essay had a selection of Lovecraft's thoughts thoughts about the genre.

130

Maybe that would help me in unraveling the mystery.

131

The essay was written in the mid -1920s and then added to into the early 1930s,

132

so it's a valuable resource of the history of supernatural horror from the perspective of somebody in the 1920s.

133

In the essay there's a section called The Dawn of the Horror Tale, and in that section Lovecraft writes this.

134

Much of the power of Western horror lore was undoubtedly due to the hidden

135

but often suspected presence of a hidden cult of nocturnal worshippers,

136

whose strange customs were stealthily handed down amongst peasants for thousands of years despite the outward reign of the Druidic,

137

Greco -Roman and Christian faiths in the regions involved.

138

The Salem Affair forms the chief American example.

139

So this is really fascinating.

140

Lovecraft seems to be very familiar with this trope already in the 1920s.

141

And not only that, but Lovecraft also identifies Salem as a source for this,

142

and points to the idea that these secret cults could be handed down for thousands of years.

143

So Lovecraft is identifying two sources for this kind of story.

144

First, in the American context, Salem seems to form a lot of the inspiration for this kind of story, and we've already explored this and found it to be a bit of a dead end.

145

But Lovecraft also identifies that in other regions, different folklore and history might be responsible.

146

While I was looking at Lovecraft's essay, I recalled Lovecraft mentioning a book called The Witch Cult in

147

Western Europe by a Miss Murray in a few of his stories, like The Call of Cthulhu.

148

So I decided to check out this book and see what I could find.

149

Now, this is where it gets really interesting.

150

The Witch Cult in Western Europe is a book written by Margaret Murray, who was an anthropologist in the late 19th century and early 20th century.

151

This book was published in 1921 on, and presents a really interesting hypothesis, commonly referred to as the witch cult hypothesis.

152

To quote the book itself, the hypothesis is roughly this.

153

Underlying the Christian religion was a cult practiced by many classes of the community,

154

chiefly, however, by the more ignorant or those in the less thickly inhabited parts of the country.

155

It can be traced back to pre -Christian times and appears to be the ancient religion of Western Europe.

156

Basically, Murray was arguing that there was originally an ancient pre -Christian religion in Western Europe, and when Christianity was spreading throughout Europe,

157

a lot of people publicly adopted Christianity but secretly still practiced their original religion behind closed doors,

158

especially in more remote areas where church organizations held less sway.

159

Now that sounds more like it.

160

We have all the elements of folk horror, an ancient sinister religion, and remote villages and it's european centric

161

so this is starting to look a little bit more like

162

the inspiration for the trope of a town with a secret cult in addition to this margaret murray was proposing

163

that the witch cult was worshiping the horned god a deity

164

which was being mistakenly conflated with the christian devil

165

but was in fact a completely different pagan deity the witch

166

cult in western europe is a pretty obscure book these days

167

and margaret murray's theory was reaching a bit too far and tend to generalise too much.

168

The Witch Cult hypothesis was increasingly criticised in the 1960s and early 1970s, which is why the book isn't well known today.

169

In fact, I would have never found out about it if not for Lovecraft's references to it in The Call of Cthulhu.

170

Regardless of its present obscurity, the Witch Cult in Western Europe received a fair bit of attention in academic circles at the time it was published,

171

enough at least that lovecraft came into contact with it

172

but also interesting is that the witch cult hypothesis was being criticized by academics in the 1960s

173

and 70s about the same time that david pinner was writing ritual

174

so all this stuff about witch cults was definitely in the air at the time

175

and david pinner said that he was interested in witchcraft

176

so maybe murray's novel was a bit of an inspiration for him there are a few clues

177

that this might have been the case early on in David Pinner's novel Ritual, a priest refers to witchcraft as the quote, old religion.

178

The term old religion, in reference to a witch cult, is something that Margaret Murray popularised,

179

so it seems that David Pinner is using the same terminology that Murray used.

180

It's not definite proof, since this might have been common terminology used in anthropology surrounding witchcraft,

181

but it's a clue, and since it's in the early part of the novel, it's low -hanging fruit when it comes to illusions of literary inspiration.

182

In addition, The Lottery by Shirley Jackson is another piece of literature, and although Jackson was American,

183

it shares the same human sacrifice to bring a bountiful harvest trope.

184

I've done a previous video specifically about Shirley Jackson and witchcraft, so I happen to know that as a young woman,

185

Jackson was obsessed with the idea of witchcraft and even wrote a book about the witch trials at Salem.

186

More importantly she was also reading anthropological texts about witchcraft.

187

I think it's fairly likely

188

that Jackson may have come into contact with the witch cult in Western Europe at some point

189

and even if she didn't she was reading other anthropological texts about witchcraft

190

so it's easy to see how she could have come to

191

the idea of a small town with a hidden cult practicing human sacrifice anyway i feel

192

that the witch cult in western europe is kind of like a missing piece of the puzzle

193

when it comes to the origin of the remote village with a secret cult trope

194

because it contains the seed of a major horror trope a religion

195

which is practiced in secret in remote rural places i'm not saying

196

that it's the holy grail that explains the entire origin of folk horror

197

but we can see where the ideas about paganism

198

and secret religions were starting to come into the societal consciousness business and into horror literature.

تنزيل التطبيق

كل ما تحتاجه للتحدث بطلاقة

تقييم النطق بالذكاء الاصطناعيتقييم كل جملة

تدريب IPAأتقن كل صوت

المفرداتابنِ رصيدك من الكلمات

لعبة المفرداتتعلّم أثناء اللعب

امسح رمز QR

Download on theApp Store Get it onGoogle Play

FOR YOU

فيديو موصى به

187 جمل

المفردات وملاحظات التحدث لهذا الدرس

يحتوي هذا الفيديو على 198 جملة و3118 كلمة للتدرب على الترديد. مدة الكلام 19:32. يتكلم المتحدث بسرعة طبيعية، نحو 160 كلمة في الدقيقة، قريبة من المحادثة اليومية. 75% فقط من الكلمات ضمن أكثر 3,000 كلمة شيوعًا في الإنجليزية، فالمفردات صعبة نسبيًا.

أهم المفردات في هذا الفيديو

15 كلمة من الفيديو تستحق التعلّم، مع النطق والمعنى:

الكلمة	النطق	المعنى
horror اسم	/ˈhɒɹ.ə/	رُعْب, خَوْف
inspiration اسم	/ˌɪn.spɪˈɹeɪ.ʃən/	إِلْهَام, وَحْي
ritual اسم	/ˈɹɪt͡ʃ.u.əl/	شَعِيرَة, مَرَاسِم
devil اسم	/ˈdɛvəl/	شَيْطَان, إِبْلِيس
sacrifice اسم	/ˈsæk.ɹɪ.faɪs/	تَضْحِيَة, قُرْبَان
essay اسم	/ˈɛs.eɪ/	مَقَالَة, بَحْث
hypothesis اسم	/haɪˈpɒθɪsɪs/	فَرْضِيَّة
sinister صفة	/ˈsɪ.nɪ.stəɹ/	شَرِير
mystery اسم	/ˈmɪs.t(ə.)ɹi/	سِرّ
remote صفة	/ɹəˈməʊt̞/	بَعِيد
genre اسم	/ˈ(d)ʒɑnɹə/	نَوْع فَنِّيّ, نَوْع أَدَبِيّ
literary صفة	/ˈlɪt.(ə.)ɹə.ɹi/	أَدَبِيّ
worship اسم	/ˈwɝ.ʃɪp/	عِبَادَة
harvest اسم	/ˈhɑɹ.vəst/	حِصَاد
supernatural صفة	/ˌsu.pəɹˈnæ.tʃə.ɹəl/	خَارِق, مِيتَافِيزِيقِيّ

الأفعال المركبة التي ستسمعها

الكلمة	المعنى
come up with فعل	جَاءَ بِـ, أَتَى بِـ

نطق يحتاج إلى انتباه

يستخدم المتحدث 22 من الصيغ المختصرة، مثل doesn't, isn't, wasn't. انطقها بصيغتها القصيرة كما تسمعها.

أصوات “th”: hypothesis /haɪˈpɒθɪsɪs/, thriller /ˈθɹɪ.lə/, grandfather /ˈɡɹæn(d)ˌfɑðɚ/, anthropology /ˌænθɹəˈpɑləd͡ʒi/, anthropological /æn.θɹə.pəˈlɑd͡ʒikəl/
أصوات “sh” و“zh”: inspiration /ˌɪn.spɪˈɹeɪ.ʃən/, genre /ˈ(d)ʒɑnɹə/, worship /ˈwɝ.ʃɪp/, essentially /ɪˈsɛnʃəli/, fiction /ˈfɪkʃən/
الكلمات الطويلة — انتبه لموضع النبر: inspiration /ˌɪn.spɪˈɹeɪ.ʃən/, hypothesis /haɪˈpɒθɪsɪs/, literary /ˈlɪt.(ə.)ɹə.ɹi/, importantly /ɪmˈpɔɹ.tənt.li/, supernatural /ˌsu.pəɹˈnæ.tʃə.ɹəl/

كيف تتدرب بهذا الفيديو

استمع إلى الفيديو كاملًا مرة واحدة دون أن تتكلم، ودوّن الكلمات التي لا تعرفها.
ابدأ بسرعة 0.75×، وردّد جملة جملة، ثم عُد إلى السرعة العادية عندما يصبح الأمر سهلًا.
سجّل صوتك وقارنه بالأصل، مع الانتباه إلى كلمات مثل horror, inspiration, ritual.

القواعد في هذا الفيديو

أكثر التراكيب التي يستخدمها المتحدث، مع العبارات نفسها من الفيديو:

التركيب	في الفيديو
المبني للمجهول be + اسم المفعول — التركيز على ما يحدث لا على من يفعله	was originally published · was published · being observed
المضارع التام have/has + اسم المفعول — حدث ماضٍ ما زال له أثر الآن	have turned · have completely denounced · we've already explored
جمل الوصل who / which + جملة — معلومة إضافية عن شخص أو شيء	Brown, which was · religion which can · Trials, which are

ما هي تقنية التظليل الصوتي؟

التظليل الصوتي (Shadowing) تقنية تعلم لغة مدعومة علمياً، طُورت أصلاً لتدريب المترجمين الفوريين المحترفين. الطريقة بسيطة لكنها قوية: تستمع لصوت إنجليزي أصلي وتكرره فوراً بصوت عالٍ — كظل يتبع المتحدث بتأخير 1-2 ثانية. تُظهر الأبحاث تحسناً كبيراً في دقة النطق والتنغيم والإيقاع وربط الأصوات والاستماع والطلاقة.

تقنية الشادوينغ: اقرأ الدليل الكامل خطوة بخطوة →

تدريب Shadowing: The Origins of Folk Horror - تعلم التحدث بالإنجليزية عبر الفيديو

اختر وضع التدريب

تنزيل التطبيق

Hellraiser, Bataille and Limit Experiences

Yorkshire Is Hiding Something Nobody Talks About

The Man Who Went Too Far by E. F. Benson | Pagan Folk Horror Audiobook

A Short History of Fairy Tales

Cicada 3301: An Internet Mystery

I study demonic possession dreams. Here’s what we’ve found. | Patrick McNamara

An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump

The 7 Poems that Haunt Me the Most

Are We Living Inside an Alien Control System?

4 Key Lessons from Women Who Run With The Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estés

How to Cure a Zombie

Every monster you fear is really you