{"title":"Francis Young","description":"Robin Douglas is a writer and researcher based in London. His work is on the history of esoteric and pagan religious traditions from antiquity to the present day. Francis Young teaches for Oxford University's Department for Continuing Education and is the author or editor of over 20 books in the fields of the history of religion and folklore.","products":[{"product_id":"paganism-persisting-a-history-of-european-paganisms-since-antiquity-paperback","title":"Paganism Persisting: A History of European Paganisms since Antiquity - Paperback","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ePaganism in Europe was not defeated by Christianity: it never went away. From the fourth century to the twentieth, against the background of a largely Christian culture, people repeatedly attempted to revive various kinds of pre-Christian religion - beliefs and practices that we have come to label as 'paganism'.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eAncient paganism did not survive the Middle Ages in its original form; this book tells the story of the persistence of elements of paganism and the pagan idea through Europe's pagan revivals, from Byzantine Greece to medieval Eastern Europe and Renaissance Florence, from eighteenth-century Norwich to revolutionary Paris and Edwardian England. While some of these revivals are well known and others are almost entirely forgotten, they all reveal the rich diversity of interpretations of paganism - and how those interpretations have been conditioned by the surrounding culture.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eRevived paganisms ranged from the austerely rational to the earnestly romantic, from the mystical and occult to the stridently nationalistic. \u003cem\u003ePaganism Persisting\u003c\/em\u003e uncovers European paganism's long afterlife, up to and including the emergence of modern paganism as a mass movement in the twentieth century. The authors are both historians of religion specializing, respectively, in the intellectual history of the idea of paganism and in the development of popular religion and folklore. This book has much to offer to anyone interested in European cultural history, the history of ideas and religious studies.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"BooksCloud","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51382160261343,"sku":"9781804132418","price":64.8,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0813\/8958\/4607\/files\/2YV0eYbWZ89781804132418.webp?v=1789286467"},{"product_id":"fairies-a-history-hardcover","title":"Fairies: A History - Hardcover","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eMany people think they know what fairies are, what a fairy looks like, and how a fairy is expected to behave. Francis Young's new history of fairies demonstrates that the truth about belief in fairies is far stranger than clichéd images of tiny figures with wings and wands.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBefore the rise of the 'small winged fairy' in the nineteenth century, the category of fairies included a vast range of supernatural human-like creatures, from the elves of Scandinavia and the aos sí of Ireland to the vilas of the Balkans and the \u003ci\u003efadas\u003c\/i\u003e of Iberia. Young traces the ancient origins of belief in such creatures and how it adapted to the rise of Christianity and then flourished in medieval Europe, before being transformed - but not destroyed - by the upheavals of the Reformation, the Enlightenment, and even European colonial expansion, which made fairies a global phenomenon. He concludes this uniquely wide-ranging history by reflecting on the surprising ways in which fairy belief endures in our apparently disenchanted contemporary world.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNo one who reads this brilliant tour through the enchanted pathways of fairyland will ever look at the winged creatures of contemporary popular culture - or the woods at the bottom of their garden - in the same way again.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"BooksCloud","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51397103911135,"sku":"9781509566778","price":35.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0813\/8958\/4607\/files\/VPTOk8cWZZ9781509566778.webp?v=1789463545"}],"url":"https:\/\/blackandbarhe.com\/collections\/francis-young.oembed","provider":"Black \u0026 Barhe Bookstore","version":"1.0","type":"link"}