Stray Leaves from Strange Literature and, Fantastics and Other Fancies

Hearn, Lafcadio, 1850-1904Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.8
Word count
478K words
Chapters
48

Tags

English Originals Foreign Literature Literary GiantsEclectic ReadingExotic CultureCultural ChangeFolk CustomsCross-Cultural View

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Stray Leaves from Strange Literature; and, Fantastics and Other Fancies by HearnAuthor: Hearn, Lafcadio, 1850-1904,Language: English, Class: PS: Language and Literatures: American and Canadian literature, Release Date: Sep 30, 2017

Editor's review

Lafcadio Hearn collected legends and strange tales from many lands with an outsider's eye. This book gathers two parts, Stray Leaves from Strange Literature and Fantastics and Other Fancies, and belongs to the public-domain texts of American literature. Its strength lies in cross-cultural story-gathering and a prose style with an exotic flavor; the short pieces suit fragmented reading and offer a window into how a late nineteenth-century Western writer retold Eastern and other folk imaginations. Read it as a literary story collection rather than strict folklore record, and note the elements of translation and re-creation. For readers drawn to strange tales, comparative literature, and prose sketches, it is a work to dip into casually or examine closely for its source materials.

Who it's for

A good fit for

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Reading tips

  1. Read piece by piece, briefly noting each story's source and cultural background.
  2. Compare the stories with their original legends and note the author's rewriting and embellishment.
  3. Read Hearn's life and creative background first, then consider how his exotic perspective took shape.
  4. If English is difficult, start with the pieces that interest you most and read slowly with a dictionary.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12
  13. 13
  14. 14
  15. 15
  16. 16
  17. 17
  18. 18
  19. 19
  20. 20
  21. 21
  22. 22
  23. 23
  24. 24
  25. 25
  26. 26
  27. 27
  28. 28
  29. 29
  30. 30
  31. 31
  32. 32
  33. 33
  34. 34
  35. 35
  36. 36
  37. 37
  38. 38
  39. 39
  40. 40
  41. 41
  42. 42
  43. 43
  44. 44
  45. 45
  46. 46
  47. 47
  48. 48

FAQ

What does this book contain? According to the source, the book contains two parts, Stray Leaves from Strange Literature and Fantastics and Other Fancies, both collections of Hearn's short stories and sketches. The language is English, and it is a public-domain text under the American and Canadian literature classification.
Are these stories original folk legends? Not entirely. Hearn mostly retold and re-created material from legends and reading materials of various regions, with his personal style and period imagination. For folklore research, trace the sources; for literary reading, enjoy the narrative and exotic atmosphere.
Is it suitable as English-learning material? It can serve as advanced English reading material. The text is late nineteenth-century prose with literary sentence patterns and vocabulary, harder than contemporary popular reading. It is advisable to have some vocabulary foundation, then read individual pieces with notes and a dictionary, building both expression and contact with literary language.

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

Hearn, Lafcadio, 1850-1904 Author

Hearn, Lafcadio (1850–1904) was an essayist and writer of folk literature who wrote in English in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and lived for a long time in Japan. His works draw chiefly on legends, ghost stories and daily life in Japan, China and the Caribbean. Twenty-two of his works are held here, including Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things, Kokoro: Hints and Echoes of Japanese Inner Life, Some Chinese Ghosts, Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan: First Series, Kotto, Exotics and Retrospectives and Two Years in the French West Indies. His writing blends foreign observations, folk tales and personal meditation in a cool, vivid style, and has deeply influenced Western understanding of Japanese culture. Because public information is limited, his early life and biographical details are not elaborated here; this note focuses on the subjects and style of his works.