Btw I went searching for your post about PhD research and grief after someone posted it on Instagram on some random crappy spam account. Id be super interested in reading your work but im sure its tied to your real name. Any recommendations for other related works?
Finally getting round to actually answering asks XD
This is the link to my thesis etheses.whiterose.ac.uk:37578
I can definitely suggest some other reading on the topic. I suppose it depends on exactly what you're interested in.
In terms of intro to Victorian Funerals:
Curl is a good starter, though not my favourite
Curl, J. S. (2000). The Victorian Celebration of Death. Stroud: Sutton
Litten is a better book, imo, but might be harder to get hold of
Litten, J. (1991). The English Way of Death: The common funeral since 1450. London: Robert Hale
Taylor is the most comprehensive author on mourning dress
Taylor, L. (2009) Mourning Dress (Routledge Revivals): A Costume and Social History. London: Routledge.
Harold Mytum (who is just the best guy) does a lot on burial and memorialisation. One of his latest books of edited essays is
Mytum, H., and Burgess, L. (2018). Death Across Oceans: Archaeology of Coffins and Vaults in Britain, America, and Australia. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution.
Sarah Tarlow is also a big name in post-medieval death studies
Tarlow, S. (1999). Bereavement and commemoration: An archaeology of mortality. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.
Tarlow, S. (2011). Ritual, Belief and the Dead in Early Modern Britain and Ireland. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
In terms of historical grief:
Julie-Marie Strange is an amazing researcher. She's done a lot of work on 19th-20th century grief amongst the working class
Strange, J.-M. (2002). ‘‘She cried a very little’: Death, grief and mourning in working-class culture, c. 1880-1914’, Social History, 27 (2), 143–161. Available at: doi:10.1080/03071020210128373
Strange, J.-M. (2003). Only a Pauper Whom Nobody Owns: Reassessing the Pauper Grave c. 1880-1914. Past & Present, 178, 148–175. Available at: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3600760
Pat Jalland is also a major figure in Victorian grief studies.
Jalland, P. (1996). Death in the Victorian Family. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Helen Frisby does folklore and death and grief
Frisby, H. (2015). ‘Drawing the pillow, laying out and port wine: the moral economy of death, dying and bereavement in England, c.1840–1930’, Mortality, 20 (2), 103–127. Available at: doi:10.1080/13576275.2014.954240
If you're more interested in psychologies of grief
Stroebe and Schut, and Klass et al. are really foundational theories of modern grief psychology.
Stroebe, M. and Schut, H. (1999). ‘The dual process model of coping with bereavement: rationale and description’, Death Studies, 23 (3), 197–224. Available at: doi:10.1080/074811899201046
Klass, D., Silverman, P. R. and Nickman, S. L. (1996) Continuing Bonds: New Understandings of Grief. London: Routledge
Robert Neimeyer is my favourite grief psychologist. He's written hundreds of articles.
Neimeyer, R.A., Klass, D. and Dennis, M.R. (2014) ‘A social constructionist account of grief: loss and the narration of meaning’, Death studies, 38(6–10), pp. 485–498.
Neimeyer, R.A. (2014) ‘The narrative arc of tragic loss: Grief and the reconstruction of meaning’, International Journal of Existential Psychology
If you're interested in works about grief and material culture/objects
Gibson has done a lot of theory
Gibson, M. (2004). ‘Melancholy objects’, Mortality, 9 (4), 285–299. Available at: doi:10.1080/13576270412331329812
Gibson, M. (2008). Objects Of The Dead: Mourning And Memory In Everyday Life. Melbourne: Melbourne University Publishing.
Gibson, M. (2010). Death and the Transformation of Objects and Their Value. Thesis Eleven, 103 (1), 54–64. Available at: doi:10.1177/0725513610388988
Stallybrass, Parrott and Barney and Yoshimura have some great case studies
Stallybrass, P. (1993). ‘Worn worlds: clothes, mourning, and the life of things’, The Yale Review, 81 (2), 35–50.
Parrott, F. (2011) ‘Death, Memory and Collecting: Creating the Conditions for Ancestralisation in South London Households’, in S. Byrne et al. (eds) Unpacking the Collection: Networks of Material and Social Agency in the Museum. New York, NY: Springer New York, pp. 289–305.
Parrott, F.R. (2010) ‘Bringing Home the Dead: Photographs, Family Imaginaries and Moral Remains’, in M. Bille, F. Hastrup, and T.F. Soerensen (eds) An Anthropology of Absence: Materializations of Transcendence and Loss. New York, NY: Springer New York, pp. 131–146.
Barney, K. A. and Yoshimura, C. G. (2021). ‘“Cleaning Out the Closet:” Communicated Narrative Sense-Making of Bereavement’, Journal of Family Communication, 21 (4), 255–271. Available at: doi:10.1080/15267431.2021.1943399
Feel free to ask for more specific recommendations! This was fun!
Alright everybody, I did it. Until we get to hear the official version from Cornelia herself, here’s my attempt at a translation. If you spot any errors please tell me, I’m just one small fan and I’ve never done anything like this before. Enjoy! And please share your thoughts!!
Chapter 1: The Ways of Evil
Rain. Rain, every day. And the cold! Orpheus was surprised the ink didn’t freeze solid. Every morning Ironstone complained about pain is his joints and whined as he sharpened Orpheus’ quills… although this was likely just another attempt to get out of work. Who had ever heard of rheumatism in glass limbs?
Tyrola. The name had sounded so promising when he’d stumbled over the border, starving and frozen half to death. But the whole kingdom was as miserable as its weather. The king’s castle barely deserved to be called a castle and “king” was a flattering title for the idiot who ruled over Tyrola. His subjects secretly called him Sigismund, the Insane. Most of them ate nothing but dry bread and foul smelling cheese and survived the freezing temperatures by hiding away and getting drunk in their dark huts.
Luckily, there were at least a few people who had managed to prosper. Orpheus had spent the last year or so teaching the daughters of a cloth merchant who had the ambitious plan of marrying them off to some prince. The youngest stuck out her tongue in concentration whenever she tried to write her own name.
Oh, it was so unfair! And such a waste of his talents! But at least he was sure that Fenoglio’s words had no power between the dark mountains where Orpheus had found refuge. The creatures that roamed Tyrola’s woods and canyons proved it: Mandl, Muggestutze, Nörggele… Hairy goblins whose names no one dared to speak aloud. Man-eating spiders and goats. The old man hadn’t written a single word about any of them. Orpheus would know. He still knew the Inkweaver’s book that had brought him to this godforsaken place by heart. Every single word.
No. These mountains did not belong to Fenoglio - even though the old man would have surely disagreed. After all, the vain fool still believed himself to be the creator of this entire world. The day would come when he, Orpheus, would show him how wrong he was. Oh yes, he would. But unfortunately his own words also struggled to come alive between the mountains.
He’d been writing nonstop since his arrival. But anything he read to life was so pale and weak it seemed as if the icy wind had blown away a few crucial letters.
Bruneck… Tyrola’s capital city would have fit easily into the Adderhead’s main hall, city walls and all. Orpheus resided in two embarrassingly shabby chambers. And at the market strolling players, travelling merchants and soldiers talked about how much more exciting life was in Ombra: The Black Prince was negotiating a peace treaty with the widow of the Adderhead… Violante had been renamed “Her Kindliness” because she’d sold her jewels to feed the poor… She had definitely spent too much time with that noble fool Mortimer! There were no news stories of the Bluejay, it seemed the shining hero had actually retired. But every strolling player talked of the Fire-Dancer and his beautiful wife who danced with the flames, or his student Farid who was breaking the hearts of every girl in Fenoglio’s Inkworld with his silly spark tricks.
Sometimes Orpheus felt so sick from all the stories that he spent hours throwing up into one of the buckets his ugly landlady put outside for her goats. All the talk of Ombra’s golden days! Of glass flowers that bloomed at the city wall (glass flowers! Fenoglio’s ideas weren’t getting any better with old age). It was said that nightingales with silver feathers were singing in Ombra’s trees, and that a giant was protecting the city gate alongside his son. At Ombra‘s market, merchants had apparently started to sell flying carpets.
Oh yes, Fenoglio was clearly filling books with his stupid ideas. Meanwhile he, Orpheus, could hardly bend his frozen fingers around his quill and the ink was tough as tar as it flowed onto stained parchment.
Was it any wonder that his words had lost their power?
Just what had gotten into him when he decided to turn left from the Castle in the Lake?
The sky was blue for once as Orpheus left to meet a new student. But the first puddle he stepped into filled his shoe with watery goat dung.
Oh, Orpheus! What has become of you? All that wealth… lost! All the power! All the fame! Gambled away!
He’d spent yet another sleepless night imagining who to take revenge on first. The bookbinder? Fenoglio? Or should he start with Dustfinger… Yes, the name of the Fire-Dancer was still the most hurtful thorn in Orpheus’ freezing side. He just couldn’t forget the disgust he’d seen in the eyes of his childhood hero. Like a maggot Orpheus had felt, a maggot crawling out of rotting flesh…
Yes, he would take his revenge on Dustfinger first.
Oh yes. The prospect of revenge was the only thing that let Orpheus endure the stupidity of his students and the arrogance of their rich fathers. Revenge, so horrible that the pain Dustfinger had caused him would feel like an insect bite in comparison. He had to find a way… and tried his best to push the fact that he’d been looking for said way for almost five years now out of his mind.
This morning he was on his way to the house of a master baker by the name of Alois Haberkorn. His bread tasted horrible but being business-minded and careful with money had earned him enough wealth even the king himself was rumored to borrow money from him. And he needed a teacher for his fourteen year old daughter Severina.
The young servant who opened the door glared at the glass man on Orpheus‘ shoulder before silently showing him to the room where his new student was waiting. The masks that lined the walls were a common sight in the city. Orpheus didn’t like the carved grimaces but they were said to keep malicious mountain ghosts away. A desk, a bench, an oven - the master baker wasted no money on the furnishings of his home.
Severina Haberkorn stood bolt upright in the middle of the room. She wore her ash blond hair braided and pinned out of her face, as was customary in the region. Her plump body showed first signs of womanhood.
“Sit down.”
With a sigh, Orpheus opened one of the books he used for his lessons. He’d stolen them from a cloth merchant whose daughter he taught as well. As expected, the man hadn’t noticed the theft. Most rich people in this town thought of books as pure decoration and never felt the slightest bit compelled to open them. Admittedly, Ombra was no different when it came to that.
Ombra… No, Orpheus!
Severina sat down silently and reached for the quill next to the inkpot. She tried her best not to stare at the glass man.
”Here’s how my method works,” Orpheus explained as he sat Ironstone down on the table. “Should you get distracted and misspell something, the glass man will walk over the fresh ink. Should you dawdle or forget whole words, he will spill ink over your parchment.”
A sinister smile spread over Ironstones face and he took position next to the ink pot.
These methods may have been questionable from a pedagogical standpoint but they made the lessons at least slightly entertaining for both Orpheus and Ironstone.
Severina misspelt a lot of words. For the sake of every Night-Mare… she was even dumber than the other girls Orpheus taught. They all used words as if they were little drawers to put meaning and sense into like rotting old bread. It was unbearable. Every day left nothing but footprints of dead words and Orpheus heard the amateurish scratching of their quills even in his dreams.
He didn’t find the strip of parchment until many hours later, as he was about to end the day with a bottle of cheap wine. It had admittedly surprised him when Severina had barely reacted to Ironstone’s sabotage of her awkward writing. The glass man had walked over her letters at least a dozen times. But Orpheus had not entertained any suspicion, despite the fact that he knew from experience how the prospect of revenge granted patience.
The sneaky baker’s daughter had hidden the strip of parchment inside one of the books. He had put them down on the table next to her. It was definitely her handwriting, though it looked as if she had put slightly more effort into writing these lines.
Drops of blood and nettle poison
Grant my words terrible powers
Pain shall make the glass man squirm
Like a miserable worm
Lo and behold! That was very bad poetry but the baker’s daughter evidently believed in the power of words.
Orpheus looked around. Pain shall make the glass man squirm… Ironstone was nowhere to be seen but that didn’t mean much. The glass man spent most of his evenings searching for peers in Bruneck’s narrow streets. Orpheus had told him a thousand times that glass men were nothing but one the Inkweaver’s pipe dreams and thus didn’t exist in this part of the world.
Perhaps Rudolph had seen Ironstone. Orpheus had hired the servant even though he couldn’t really afford to. He was about to call for him when he heard a glassy wheeze behind the sugar pot.
Ironstone’s legs kicked helplessly and his boots scraped notches into the table. How many nights had Orpheus spent sitting at that table, trying in vain to read words into life…?
Fascinated, he stared down at the writhing glass man.
Yes. He really was squirming like a worm.
Oh, that was fantastic.
It was absolutely wonderful!
Ironstone was still squirming, grimacing with pain and helpless anger when Orpheus ordered Rudolph to bring him his coat. Any grapevine snail would have managed to finish the task quicker. Well, as soon as the words were obeying him again, that would change. Everything would change!
Outside the sky was still clear. A pale moon was hanging over the wood shingle roofs and the streets were empty save for a gypsy woman. She reached for Orpheus’ hand to read him the future and Orpheus shoved her away. He would write the future himself!
The same servant opened him the door. He listened to Orpheus’ explanation for the late visit with visible displeasure but he let him in. Severina Haberkorn wasn’t stupid enough to believe that Orpheus had come for forgotten homework. He could see in her face that she knew immediately why her teacher would ask for her so late at night.
“Make it stop!“ he snapped. “Right now!”
Why waste time with pleasantries?
“I need the glass man alive- but I want to know how you do it.“
Severina glanced at the door that Orpheus had closed behind him. He wasn’t sure if she was hoping to see her parents there or dreading it. Her stoic face was hard to read. She held out her hand. Orpheus hesitated but eventually pulled the strip of parchment out of his pocket and handed it to her.
She spat on the written words and gave the strip back to him.
“That’s it?“
A nod.
“What else can you do?“
“I can make boys fall in love with me. “
“And?”
She bit her lip and glared at him.
“I made my nose smaller.“
Hell, this country was more dangerous than he’d thought if fourteen year old girls were capable of writing themselves new noses or creating pain like what was plaguing the glass man.
“Who read the words? You have to read them out loud to make them come true. Did you do that yourself or did someone help you?”
Severina frowned.
“Read them out loud? “ she replied, voice infuriatingly condescending. “Nonsense. No one’s supposed to hear.”
Was she lying to him?
No, she was too stupid for smooth lies… But words that had power without a silvertongue? Orpheus felt a little sting of disappointment. He had always been very proud of his silky voice. Then again, silent magic would render the talents of the bookbinder and his daughter useless as well. The thought was exciting.
„Who showed you how to do this?“
Blood and nettle poison… There was no way she had come up with that by herself.
“It wouldn’t work for you.” Severina seemed thrilled to share this bit of information. “The words obey only women.”
This just kept getting stranger. Orpheus looked at the parchment in his hand. The words had dissolved in her spit. They were almost completely gone.
“Let me worry about that!“ he snapped at the uppity little goose. “I won’t ask again. Who showed you?”
His new student shook her head.
“If you talk about them, you die.“
Them? He threatened to show the parchment to her parents but Severina Haberkorn stayed silent. She was afraid. As far as Orpheus knew neither Fenoglio’s name nor his own had ever incited such fear. He felt a shiver on his cold skin.
He grabbed the baker’s daughter by her braids to make her spill the truth but she screamed so loud that her mother stormed into the room. He managed to scoop up the parchment shreds before her shrill voice, along with her sobbing daughter, alerted the servant. The idiot was clearly delighted to grab Orpheus by his collar and shove him out the door onto the muddy street.
Orpheus held what was left of the parchment in his fist. Ink that dissolved in spit… Blood… Nettle poison… His head was spinning as he stumbled up to his little chamber. It seemed like the words the little toad had used to curse his glass man required a bit more effort than Fenoglio’s to be effective. But effective they were, no question about it. And they needed neither silvertongues nor inkweaver.
They…
Ironstone slept next to the ink pot when Orpheus stepped into his drafty writing chamber but he was alive. Rudolph was rolling dumplings in the kitchen. It was always dumplings, made with potatoes, plums, onions… Should he ever escape this place, Orpheus would never eat another goddamn dumpling in his life.
“Where do I go to find magic words?“
The man ducked his head like a chicken afraid of the approaching axe.
But when Orpheus pulled one of his hard-earned coins out of his pocket, Rudolph’s brown eyes widened until they were as round as the coin itself. Rudolph Pircher had four children to feed. The youngest had made him a widower. He had needed work so desperately, even Orpheus had been able to afford the pittance he was paying the other man.
“You really shouldn’t visit them,” Rudolph mumbled without taking his eyes off the coin.
“Visit whom? Spit it out before I decide to keep my money. You children look very hungry.”
The fingers dug deeper into the dough.
“Witches.”
Rudolph pronounced the word as if it could burn his lips. It might just do that. Witches… Fenoglio hadn’t written anything about witches. They didn’t appear in his book. And yet they existed in these mountains?
Orpheus could have hugged his servant. Oh, this world was big. It seemed to be way bigger than the pathetic Inkworld in which the old man liked to play king. Why did he ever complain about these mountains? They would deliver him the words for his revenge. New, dark words. Words that tasted like nettle poison and blood. Like dark magic and cold misty nights. There was so much to learn.
“Excellent. Forget the damn dumplings and look at me. Where can I find a witch?“
He could already feel the new words stirring inside him. He heard them whisper, no, they cawed like ravens, barked like rabid dogs, howled like hungry wolves.
Rudolph closed his hand around the coin.
“The woods, they’re always in the woods. But not all of them are good.”
“Forget about the good ones.“ Orpheus felt his heart hammer in his chest, faster and faster as if it wanted to set the beat to his revenge.
“Where can I find an evil one? The worst one of all.”
a uniting emotion throughout any and all academics? that feeling when you finish citing your sources, and you just sorta stare at what you created and realise that, huh, maybe it isn’t too bad after all.
Hey everyone it is my moms bday today so I'm a little busy. How is everyone doing today? I have been testing my anxiety trait and also working a lot from home.
If anyone wants to work from home, I can give you the website I use. You apply for jobs and people hire you. It is all sorts of jobs too, I've been doing the writing section.
I don't get anything for referring you fyi. I just know there are some people on here who are homebound and need the money. Oh and don't tall to anyone off the website, as you won't be protected anymore from scams that way.
Also my mom did this too and now has a full time work from home job that she gets paid a lot of money for. It is pretty cool.
I set up my website and deleted my old one. My new one is blogging but itll be primarily for getting work. I think I will post about parenting, mental health, and chronic illness. It is on wordpress so if you'd like to follow me there send an ask or DM me. It won't really be sims related but I might post sometimes about it.
Anyways hat is what I've been up to. Eventually I'm going to update my ADHD and depression traits but I want to get the anxiety one done first. Still needing testers!!!
