James Malcolm Rymer

James Malcolm Rymer (b. 1814–d. 1884) created two of the most influential monsters of 19th-century fiction: Varney the Vampyre and Sweeney Todd. The son of an Edinburgh-born London engraver, Malcolm Rymer, who published poetry and a Gothic novel, Rymer was raised in a working-class literary-artistic family. His brothers Gaven and Chadwick were artists, and his brother Thomas put his engraving skills to criminal use as a serial financial forger. For the penny periodicals magnate Edward Lloyd, Rymer prolifically wrote bestselling serials including Ada, the Betrayed, or, The Murder at the Old Smithy (1843); The Black Monk, or, The Secret of the Grey Turret (1844); Varney, the Vampyre, or, The Feast of Blood (1845–1847); and the Sweeney Todd tale The String of Pearls, a Romance (1846–1847, expanded in 1850 as The String of Pearls, or The Barber of Fleet Street). In the 1850s, Lloyd’s business model changed. Favoring news over fiction, he jettisoned Rymer, who in 1858 took up employment composing serials for Reynolds’s Miscellany, a penny periodical founded by the radical journalist and novelist George W. M. Reynolds. Some of Rymer’s serials of this period, such as the outlaw romances Edith the Captive, or the Robbers of Epping Forest (1861–1862) and its sequel Edith Heron, or the Earl and the Countess (1866), were issued in stand-alone editions by Reynolds’s regular publisher, John Dicks. Rymer also composed essays, short tales, and poetry and served as a periodical editor, including of two of Lloyd’s penny periodicals. Extremely private, he published for the most part anonymously, as “the author of” several of his bestselling penny bloods, and under a variety of pseudonyms, including the anagrams “Malcolm J. Errym” and “Malcolm J. Merry” and “Lady Clara Cavendish.” In the 20th century, while Sweeney Todd’s fame grew, Rymer was largely forgotten, in part because an apocryphal bibliographic tradition erroneously maintained that The String of Pearls and many of his other works were written by another Lloyd employee, Thomas Peckett Prest. Since the 1960s, scholarly interest in penny fiction has brought to light Rymer’s contemporaneous popularity, his complex aesthetics, his often liberal or radical politics, his profound impact on Victorian mass culture, and his work’s vibrant transmedia afterlives.

Reflections on Popular Culture and Philosophy

Contributions to the philosophical genre of popular culture and philosophy aim to popularize philosophical ideas with the help of references to the products of popular (mass) culture with TV series like The Simpsons, Hollywood blockbusters like The Matrix and Jurassic Park, or popular music groups like Metallica. While being commercially successful, books in this comparatively new genre are often criticized for lacking scientific rigor, providing a shallow cultural commentary, and having little didactic value to foster philosophical understanding. This paper discusses some of these methodological and didactic objections and seeks to encourage a constructive discussion of concerns with the genre. It shows how the genre similar to previous attempts to foster public understanding of philosophy and that it is a methodologically viable approach to reach a broad range of readers with diverse informational preferences and educational backgrounds. Considering what makes this approach to the popularization of philosophical thinking successful will shed light on some of the criteria for popularization of philosophy in general.

Causes of Drug Initiation among Adolescents

Drug use is a behaviour frequently seen among adolescents. The World Drug Report draws attention to the increase in this phenomenon. The studies were undertaken to look for determinants that promote drug use and those that protect against reckless activities. It seems important to determine the causes of drug initiation. The presented study aimed to identify the determinants favouring first contact with drugs among adolescents. Eighteen respondents participated in the study. Purposive sampling was used and data were collected using categorized interviews. The exploratory nature of the interviews focused on obtaining information on three areas: family life, peer influences and the role of mass culture products. Education, financial background, and inquiries about life plans, dreams, and their realization were also recorded. The analysis of empirical data made it possible to establish interesting factors conducive to the respondents’ first contact with drugs both in the family environment, peer environment, but also related to popular culture, lifestyle, the influence of significant others, as well as to the dangers of the Internet. Established causes of drug initiations are indicated. The obtained results can be used in designing preventive interventions among adolescents. They can also be the basis for planning further studies with this group.

Evolution of the English-speaking song discourse in the XX–XXI centuries.

The article analyses various tendencies in the development of the English-speaking song discourse, that have revealed themselves in the course of the previous 50 years. The aim of the research is to identify these tendencies and to determine the reasons of their emergence. The goals of this research were to trace the evolution of this type of discourse by way of analysing a vast corpus of song lyrics and to identify the factors that had influenced the changes that followed. The focus of our attention was mainly on rock song lyrics due to their obvious non-commercial nature. The results of the research allow us to state that in the course of evolution of the English-speaking song discourse such tendency as a tendency to simplification/sophistication manifested itself persistently. Moreover, both vectors either replaced one another or developed simultaneously. Besides, a tendency to melodicism, related to the abovementioned one, also revealed itself. We should also mention a tendency to commercialisation, typical of mass culture in general. Another one is a tendency to technological dependency, mainly of synthesizers and computers. Among the most influential tendencies we can name a tendency to visualisation, which actually brings the song discourse close to cinematographic discourse.

Fryderyk Chopin w literaturze francuskiej: od figury romantycznej do ikony popkultury

The reception of Chopin and his music in French literature follows the rhythm of the changes in the European intellectual and aesthetic climates. George Sand recorded in her memoirs the image of a romantic genius par excellence, a dark, torn and complicated soul. The decadent and symbolist poetry, best exemplified by Maurice Rollinat, presents a portrait ofa blood-spitting neurasthenic, a soulmate of the poet. Marcel Proust paints the image of an elegant dandy and exquisite artist, while the first part of the twentieth century is dominated by the neoromantic vision of Chopin as a great Polish patriot; this theme is perfectly illustrated by the poems of Anna de Noailles and Edmond Rostand. André Gide presents a radicallynew view of Chopin’s music, seeing the Polish composer as a neoclassicist pianist. Contemporary literature and art go on to dress Chopin in jeans, eagerly turning him into a mass culture hero.

The Zombie as a Mirror of Modern Mass Culture

Zombies were and still are one of the most important symbols of modern mass culture. The zombie discourse originated among African slaves brought to the sugar plantations in the Caribbean. In many ways, the narratives of the “living dead” were a reaction to the crisis phenomena of plantation life. This is evidenced by the rich comparative material presented on many peoples of the world. Such notions of invulnerability after formal death proved to be an important tool of resistance to new conditions caused by external threats. Termed “revitalization,” they were an important element of the Millennialist movements. While initially the sorcerers who could bring themselves back to life were central to these beliefs, in the following period the focus shifted to the victims of various manipulations, transformed into soulless beings. Leaving the environment of their original “habitat,” zombies took on a new life, occupying a firm place in modern mass culture. Having become a symbol of ruthless exploitation of man, relegated to the level of a machine appendage, zombies proved to be one of the most “productive” symbols. They reflected the main trends in the development of society and even began to function as instruments of philosophical reflection. All this allows us to consider zombies as an indicator of altered society, producing new “walking dead”. The metaphors associated with zombies allows us to conclude that the comprehension of zombies makes modern man begin to perceive them constructively, creating a new image, demonstrating the movement towards humanization.