Beyond the Labyrinth

In Episode Six, we beagle about Alfred’s new novella, A Push of the Pendulum. The novella opens as its reluctant hero, Julian Drake, is dislocated – emotionally, because his parents are divorcing and selling his childhood home, but also physically, as they have enrolled him in boarding school – St. Eligius Episcopal School, to be ...

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In Episode Five, we beagle about in a topic–plague–that seems very close to home, but at the same time will take us far and wide, all the while showing us the universality of human experience. We explore the eerie similarities of Defoe’s Journal of the Plague Year (published in 1722 about the last round of ...

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Join us today as we beagle about in questions of belief, starting with total denial – Douglas Adams’ electric monk from Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency! We’ll also look at the more serious side as we consider the filters we all use to protect ourselves through our discussion of Aldous Huxley’s The Doors of Perception, ...

The post Episode Four: Cleanse Your Doors (of Perception) . . . or Just Rent an Electric Monk appeared first on Daedalia.

In this episode, we nose around in a loosely gathered suite of ideas arising from Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur and some modern interpretations, including the film, Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Malory’s book is a reworking of legends and tales of Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table. Arthur may have ...

The post Episode Three: ‘Strange Adventures’: Meaning and Modernity in Le Morte d’Arthur and Monty Python and the Holy Grail appeared first on Daedalia.

“He knew that he was about to change his world forever, rob it of all its glamour and adventurous expectancy and what Shelley had once in a poem called the ‘tempestuous loveliness of terror.'” – Tim Powers, The Stress of Her Regard In this episode we nose around in a loosely gathered suite of ideas ...

The post Episode Two: Literal Vampires? Lamia in Keats and Tim Powers appeared first on Daedalia.

In 1894, William Morris wrote a tract for the Socialist Democratic Federation journal Justice called “How I Became a Socialist.” While the article mostly concerns social causes, Morris at one point makes a remarkable statement that captures the essence of our interest in this brilliant Victorian: “Apart from the desire to produce beautiful things, the ...

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