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At the beginning of his Creole opus The Grandissimes, George Washington Cable refers to Louisiana as "A land hung in mourning, darkened by gigantic cypresses, submerged; a land of reptiles, silence, shadow, decay". This anti-pastoral view of Louisiana as an ecosystem of horrific nature and the very human melancholy it breeds is one that has persisted in popular American culture to the present day. However, the literature of Louisiana itself is marked by its creativity in blending elements of folktales, fairy tales, and local color. This paper proposes to examine the transhuman, or the transcendence of the natural by means of supernatural transformation, in folk horror tales of Louisiana. As the locus where the fairy tale meets the burgeoning Southern Gothic, these tales revolve around a reworking of what Vladimir Propp refers to as transfiguration, the physical and metaphysical alteration of the human into something beyond the human. The focus of this paper will be on three recurring figures in Louisiana folk horror: yellow fever, voodoo, and the Devil. Drawing upon works including Alcée Fortier's collection of Creole folktales Louisiana Folktales (1895), Dr. Alfred Mercier's "1878", and various newspaper tales of voodoo ceremonies from the ante- and post-bellum periods, this article brings together theorizations about the fairy tale from Vladimir Propp and Jack Zipes and historiological approaches to the Southern Gothic genre to demonstrate that Louisiana, in its multilingual literary traditions, serves as a nexus where both genres blend uncannily together to create tales that are both geographically specific and yet exist outside of the historical time of non-fantastic fiction. Each of these figures, yellow fever, voodoo, and the Devil, challenges the expectations of what limits the human. Thus, this paper seeks to examine what will be termed the "Louisiana gothic", a particular blend of fairy-tale timelessness, local color, and the transfiguration of the human. Ultimately, the Louisiana gothic, as expressed in French, English, and Creole, tends toward a view of society in decay, mobilizing these elements of horror and of fairy tales to comment on a society that, after the revolution in Saint-Domingue, the Louisiana Purchase, and the Civil War, was seen as falling into inevitable decline. This commentary on societal decay, expressed through elements of folk horror, sets apart Louisiana gothic as a distinct subgenre that challenges conventions about the structures and functions of the fairy tale. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Land cover (LC) plays a crucial role in the monitoring and planning of the environment among various domains, such as climate change, the management of natural resources, and sustainable development. However, inconsistent LC legends hamper their usability, particularly as technologies, like remote sensing, rapidly improve data quality and quantity for extracting valuable information. Ontologies play a pivotal role in improving the standardization and harmonization of different LC taxonomies, enabling both a reduction in inconsistencies and a way to harness ever-increasing computing power to help scientists provide faster and better answers. However, using ontologies without suitable tools, especially when expressive power is matched with complexity, can prove a daunting task. This paper introduces the land characterization system (LCHS), an innovative tool built to support the ontology discussed in the ISO 19144-2 standard, known as Land Cover Meta Language (LCML). The LCHS can help streamline and speed up the creation and editing of LC legends using a data-driven design approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Estudios de Linguistica del Espanol is the property of University Library of Bern and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Studies in Oral Folk Literature / Estudis de Literatura Oral Popular is the property of Universitat Rovira I Virgili and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article examines Ukrainian folkloric parallels to Viy, a character in the horror novella of the same name by Nikolai Gogol. It is a formidable chthonic, demonic creature whose eyelids cover the eyes and need to be lifted, and the gaze sees what is hidden from others. Although the writer claimed that this character, like the entire plot of the story, was taken from Ukrainian folklore, some modern researchers claim that Viy is the author's own invention. This is contradicted by folkloric data, primarily Ukrainian lore. Demonic characters with different names but with the same appearance and very similar functions as Viy appear in Ukrainian folk tales, legends and beliefs recorded in the 19th and 20th centuries. The plots have various degrees of closeness to the plot of Gogol's story, showing that Viy is an authentic figure from Ukrainian folklore. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present article delves into exploring the naming of a place (or toponymy) to unravel the potentials related to the history and legend of Bondaraya village as an effort to provide enrichment and education to the community. It further maps out and elaborates the naming processes of places that derive from the legend, the discourse, and the historical background, with which it outlines a recommendation for the government to develop policies regarding the promotion of cultural tourism objects and local wisdom education in Gorontalo Province. The study employed a qualitative design with an anthropolinguistic approach. It aimed to explore the local wisdom of the Bondaraya village community in the form of their culture and tradition through the lens of toponymy. The data were collected by in-depth interviews and Focus Group Discussion. Further, the data were analyzed in a descriptive manner. The result shows that the toponymy within Bondaraya village accentuates the local wisdom, which is the identity of the village. The study finds out that the naming of places in this village is closely related to some of the local wisdom elements in the area, i.e., the musical art (oral literature) and societal system. In conclusion, the toponymy of Bondaraya village is closely related to the local wisdom within the community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]