For the majority of Wes Craven's biographers, the director's film career begins with his 1972 feature The Last House on the Left. A few, such as the documentarian Thommy Hutson, note his early days learning editing while working for Harry Chapin. Craven himself also occasionally revealed his early work on various adult films (see for instance his appearance in Inside Deep Throat [Fenton Bailey, Randy Barbato, 2005]). However, the filmmaker's first effort was actually a 45-minute student project for which he was Director of Photography while he was a faculty member at Clarkson College of Technology (CCT) in 1968. Curiously, Craven often tells or remembers the details of this experience incorrectly and even inconsistently. For instance, in one interview he recalls the title of this film as The Searchers, when in fact its name was the much more striking Pandora Experimentia. These erroneous details concerning Craven's early filmmaking experiences give us a curious picture of the development of one of the most influential horror auteurs of the twentieth century.

Craven's brief sojourn in New York's North Country is no secret, but certain details have taken on the character of legend, especially locally. In the late 1960s, he was a Professor of Humanities who held an MA from Johns Hopkins University. Although Craven only taught at Clarkson for two years, from 1966 to 1968, his time there has provided fodder for a local story concerning the origins of one of his best-known films, A Nightmare on Elm Street. Like other towns in the United States, Potsdam does have an Elm Street; it is one of the main downtown roads, and it skirts the northern edge of what was the college's main campus in the 1960s. It has long been part of new students’ informal orientation to Clarkson that they hear the story of how Craven helped some undergraduates make a parody-horror film called (you guessed it) A Nightmare on Elm Street; that the boiler room of Old Snell Hall inspired Freddy's boiler room scenes, and that the former Theta Chi fraternity house at 10 Elm Street was popularly known as the “Elm Street House” and had been used as a location in the student project.

0 Introduction

Australian English has received much attention with a view to describe and model the components of its lexicon and phonology while assessing its role and status in the English-speaking world. Recently, possibly because the Australian science of linguistics thoughtfully relies on national programmes of spoken corpus-making as well as on a broad landscape of laboratory phonology, some perceptual and acoustic analyses of stress and pitch accent have regularly been published, notably about High Rising Terminal (HRT) (for example Guy and Vonwiller 1989; Fletcher and Harrington 2001; Fletcher et al. 2002; Horvath 2004; Jespersen 2016). Other linguistic works have investigated the issue of lexical stress in Australian English phonology (Tabain et al. 2004).

Australian English is no homogeneous variety. The demonstration that multiple British dialectal origins at the root of its endogenous development led to a common systemic core (one transported English) under a determined evolutionary process of native Englishes must be balanced with the contemporary reality of phonological variation in Australian English (Przewozny and Viollain 2016). Furthermore, while language contact between British dialects of English has constantly played a crucial role from the early days of Proto-Early Australian English (for example Mitchell 1940; Turner 1966; Hill 1967; Bernard 1969; Fielding and Ramson 1973; Horvath 1985; Gunn 1992; Przewozny 2016), the influence of the Aboriginal input has to be considered too, both from the point of view of lexical stress in Aboriginal loanwords in Standard Australian English (Dixon 2002; Dixon et al. 2006; Martin 2011b) and that of the lexicon of Standard Aboriginal English (Malcolm and Kaldor 1991; Eades 1993; Vinson 2008 among others).

The scope of this chapter is (i) to analyse the nature of lexical stress patterns in Aboriginal loanwords in Standard Australian English (SAusE), (ii) to present a systemic account of lexical stress in SAusE based on dictionary data, and (iii) to examine the common hypothesis that speakers of Standard Australian Aboriginal English (SAbE) have a tendency to stress words initially in contemporary spoken data.

Our theoretical stance is a Guierrian one (see Chapters 2 and 5 of this volume) inasmuch as dictionary data, morphological and orthographic information can support the systematic study of the Australian lexicon.

0 Introduction

In this chapter, we investigate the hypothesis that exceptional stress properties of English are under-represented in a systematic fashion.

What does under-representation mean here? It means that some phonological property occurs less often than expected. For example, in a sample of 19,528 English words, we find 3949 words with trochaic stress (σ´ σ˘ ) and 1416 words with final stress (σ˘σ´). On the assumption that both patterns should be equally likely, the latter class is clearly under-represented with respect to the former and a statistical comparison confirms this: χ2(1, N = 5365) = 1195.916, p < 0.05, Cramér's V = 0.472.

If we assume feet in English are generally trochaic, as argued, for example, by Hayes (1981), and assume the general framework of Optimality Theory (OT) (Prince and Smolensky 1993; McCarthy and Prince 1993b), then in the case of a disyllable with final stress, its markedness could stem from the fact that the initial syllable is unfooted (Parse-σ) or it could stem from the fact that a monosyllabic foot is built (FtBin): σ˘ [σ´ ]. Both constraints would be violated by the winning candidate.

If we assume that it is avoidance of unfooted syllables that makes iambs marked and less common, then this predicts that forms like σ˘σ´σ˘ should also be under-represented; if what is driving the under-representation of σ˘σ´ is avoidance of monosyllabic feet, then no such prediction is made about forms like σ˘σ´σ˘. Interestingly, when we turn to three-syllables words, the facts confirm that it is monosyllabic feet that are avoided, not unparsed syllables. Forms like σ˘σ´σ˘ are much more frequent (1233) than words like σ`σ´σ˘ (159).

This is consistent with the general claim of Input Optimization (Hammond 2013, 2014, 2016, 2017) and thus provides an argument for that framework. The claim there is that input representations are skewed so as to reduce phonological complexity, the rank and number of violations exhibited by winning candidates. This chapter offers a statistical analysis of the distribution of exceptional stress in English, demonstrating that the distribution can be unified by assigning a penalty to constraint violations commensurate with the rankings of the constraints.

Wes Craven's films have always dealt with a whole manner of pioneering themes; blurred realities, nightmarish villains, and grotesque fears, yet his cinematic influence on dream worlds, maniacal killers, and media, or generational trauma and death, indicate how this was a director with a unique perspective. This chapter's analysis of Shocker (1989) will focus upon the return of the dead as something atypical. Often the dead come back in films as zombies; Night of the Living Dead (George Romero, 1968), Zombi 2 (Lucio Fulci, 1979), Dawn of the Dead (Zack Snyder, 2004), Zombieland (Ruben Fleischer, 2009), and so on. Craven's writings transcend the familiar dead-return-as-zombies trope, and he accomplishes something else in Shocker—vengeance and a (literally) electrifying villain as an embodiment of societal fears.

Shocker had to be developed from another idea. Craven originally wanted to make a television series about the experience of serial killers—in fact he gained further inspiration reading a book “which said that when people watch television, they have brainwaves almost identical to those when dreaming.” Craven decided that the television and the dream world run parallel with one another, because both allow characters and spectators to enter another universe. The studio, however, rejected Craven's idea of what was dubbed “Dream Stalker” because it was deemed too controversial and according to the director, “Fox had problems with it. They thought it would have been too violent, too negative, too difficult for the audience to know and identify with the killer.” The original concept of a protagonist working with their abilities in order to catch a murderer through a dream or psychic skill has since become a popular basis for television series, such as the CBS hits Ghost Whisperer (2005–10) or Medium (2005–11). Craven's own childhood was itself restricted within his strict fundamentalist community. Even watching films was considered sinful and this fear of betraying his Christian upbringing was used to breed guilt, and according to Craven it caused him to finally sneak into the cinema to see To Kill a Mockingbird (Robert Mulligan, 1962).

The idea for this book emerged from conversations among participants at the 2015 conference in France entitled ‘PAC 2015: Variation, Change and Spoken Corpora – Advances in the Phonology and Phonetics of Contemporary English’. Jacques Durand made the initial call for the book, devised the plan for its implementation, and set it in motion. Anne Przewozny and Eiji Yamada then took over the editing of the book but, due to the busy schedule of the editors, the pace of progress was slow. Later, Nicolas Ballier and Jean-Michel Fournier joined us as editors. In the end, it took six years after the original plan to publish the book, which is an incredibly long incubation period. However, the significance of publishing this book has never wavered in spite of all the difficulties, including the COVID pandemic that began at the end of 2019 and is not yet under control as of this writing.

The reason our plan did not vanish is that we believe stress is an important subject. It has been one of the central issues in research since the early days of linguistics. Its study became more active in the twentieth century, especially with the work of Daniel Jones and Leonard Bloomfield, and was taken over by the generative phonology of Chomsky and Halle (1968) (hereafter SPE). Since then, no study of word stress in English has been possible without reference to this work, whether one accepts the SPE view or not. Despite the importance of the subject, although a number of papers have been written, in more than fifty years there have been (to the editors’ knowledge) only a few monographs in this tradition that have analysed word stress in English as a central issue. These include Fudge (1984), Burzio (1994), Hammond (1999), Wenszky (2004), Yamada (2010) and Zamma (2013).

Research on word stress in English since SPE can be roughly divided into ‘pre-Optimality Theory (pre-OT)’ and OT. Significant theories of ‘pre-OT’ include Segmental Phonology in SPE, Metrical Phonology in Liberman (1975), Liberman and Prince (1977), Hayes (1980, 1982), Prince (1983) and others, Lexical Phonology in Mohanan (1982) and Kiparsky (1982a, 1982b) and others, and later theory in Halle and Vergnaud (1987).

This chapter is the modest result of what Giovanni Levi has called an ‘intensive technique for the reconstruction of the biographical events’ of a number of Christians from Syria. While some have questioned the validity of a method that starts on the level of the individual, such an approach has the advantage of enabling one to determine a certain coherence among individual attitudes, faced with events considered part of ‘great history’. What appears from these analyses is the existence of a rationalisation of behaviour, a strategy on the personal or family level. But it is a strategy that aimed not solely at economic objectives. Returning to Giovanni Levi's analysis, we may say that it sought less the realisation of simple, predetermined economic concerns alone than the managing of uncertainty. What no doubt obsessed the Christians of the Middle East, like men from ancien régime societies in general, was a guarantee of security in the face of unpredictable events.

Let us begin with an observation: there was a continuous circulation of people and goods between Italy and the Middle East. The enormous proportion of documents concerning Syrian Christians, and Eastern matters in general, in the archives of the Congregation de Propaganda Fide in Rome reveals the dominance of the Mediterranean in a Vatican ministry which might be expected to be more preoccupied by the missions of America or China during this period.

One should bear in mind that the religious, cultural, or even spiritual connections with the Catholic West were always accompanied by economic relations. Furthermore, the symbolic advantages gained from connecting with the Roman Church could be exploited financially and socially by those who benefitted from them. This is not surprising: the small Churches of the Middle East blended in with the confessional group (ṭāʾifa) that they defined, and local lay notables played a predominant role in their midst. One therefore must avoid trying to separate the socio-economic sphere from the religious one.

In order to remember Wes Craven as the radical horror director that he was, we must first acknowledge the genre itself as one that can be subversive and provoke audiences with uncomfortable, nightmarish realities—perhaps even a warning of things to come if society does not reconsider its present. Craven stated that his movies were “a source of a public nightmare, […] reflect[ed] something that is already there.” As a result, The Last House on the Left (1972), The Hills Have Eyes (1977), A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), My Soul to Take (2010), and his film tetralogy Scream (1996–2011) confronted aspects of racism, class struggle, and middle-class suburban privilege and hypocrisy through violent and oftentimes raw images. From his debut, Craven broke social conventions by distorting the American Dream, which held that the nation would provide equal opportunities to achieve success. Since the Founding Fathers of the United States, American philosophy has focused on understanding human determination and individual effort as the main forces required to prosper. Consequently, this philosophy placed responsibility solely on citizens’ decisions, which “served as a powerful vehicle for blaming those who did not succeed.” Social injustice and class struggle permeated several of Craven's film stories. His criticism of the hegemonic ideology also complicated the naturalization of the dichotomy between normalcy and monstrosity. Social hierarchy was rooted in middle-class values (higher education, religious beliefs, private property, rationalism, and laws), which led to protection of the status quo and the exclusion of those individuals who deviated from it. Nevertheless, the Collingwoods (The Last House on the Left), the Robesons (The People under the Stairs, 1991), and Springwood's neighbors (A Nightmare on Elm Street) violate the rules that uphold their position in order to protect themselves and even their suburban groupings from immediate menaces (killing their daughter's killers, cleansing society from working Black people, and murdering a child stalker, respectively). In acting rashly, however, they make the future even more dangerous for new generations, and their often criminal acts come back to haunt them. Thus, Wes Craven exposes the establishment's hypocrisy; these characters despise criminals for their cruel acts and their inability to adapt to social rules but, in the end, they all turn to violence as a (perhaps short-term) solution.

Wes Craven's 1991 horror film The People Under the Stairs is perhaps most notable for its protagonist being a working-class Black child named Fool (Brandon Adams). This was a rare sight in an R-rated studio horror film, but in a promotional interview in Cinefantastique, Craven positioned this intersection of youth, social marginalization, and horror as an obvious match:

Over thirty years later, this statement seems prescient of how American horror would develop to be more inclusive of marginalized filmmakers, characters, and audiences. Black horror films—made primarily by, for, and about Black Americans—have existed for decades. However, Get Out's (Jordan Peele, 2017) capturing of the zeitgeist triggered a surge of interest and production of Black horror in American popular culture that resonates with a socio-political climate which continues to be characterized by racial injustice and inequality. Horror specifically for children has also become increasingly mainstream, with the Goosebumps and Monster High transmedia franchises, and films like ParaNorman (Chris Butler, Sam Fell, 2012). As Craven alludes to, Black horror and children's horror both focus on characters and cater to audiences who occupy marginalized positions in society. They are both also the subjects of growing areas of scholarship. It would seem obvious, then, that these categories would be rife for cross-over in child-friendly horror films that center the experiences of Black children navigating a myriad of horrific experiences, from puberty to racism.

Nonetheless, US children's horror films focus almost exclusively on white children, who are also usually male and from affluent suburban locations—for instance Gremlins (Joe Dante, 1984), The Monster Squad (Fred Dekker, 1987), The Gate (Tibor Takács, 1987), Hocus Pocus (Kenny Ortega, 1993), Monster House (Gil Kenan, 2006), and The Hole (Joe Dante, 2009), to name a few.

Across the past ten years, folk horror has emerged as perhaps the most fashionable topic in horror scholarship. Paul Newland calls this enthusiasm for folk horror, for films old and new, “a contemporary ‘cultification’” of the sub-genre. However, as amateur groups online who likewise engage with folk horror have illustrated, pretty much anything old and vaguely weird can get thus labelled, and uncritically too. Rather than offer a concrete definition of what folk horror is, I would like to suggest a discursive methodology to see what signification befalls a text when labelled “folk horror.”

Folk horror exists at the convergence of three discourses—the Pagan, the Rural, and the Folklore. By discourse, I refer to those ideas initially suggested by Michel Foucault in The Archaeology of Knowledge, wherein discourse analysis is a means of qualitative study which enables us to explore beyond the surface meaning of a text; to explore not only what a text says, but more significantly to recognize the power inequity of those discussions and looking to what the text cannot say. Discourse refers to what can be said about a topic; it is determined by dominant, that is hegemonic, power imbalances that limit the possibilities about what can be said/uttered. We can only discuss something—anything—in ways and to the ends that our society allows us. We cannot think beyond the limits of our society, despite any alternative possibilities, since such cannot be uttered because language, as a social construct, does not permit it. Any discourse, when manifested through analysis, must be viewed as a product, or limitation, of those who control it. To illustrate this, I will first define and discuss these three discourses as a kind of discursive methodology. Secondly, I will apply this methodology to one of Wes Craven's most famous early films, The Hills Have Eyes (1977).

For a long time, the culture of Eastern Christians was judged by placing them on a scale of civilisations, ahead of their Muslim environment but behind their Western counterparts. This was already Volney's method when in 1785 he mentioned the progress of writing and reading among Christians. At the end of the nineteenth century, Eastern Christians themselves discussed their place on this scale, and they themselves used the European terminology of ‘decadence’ (inḥiṭāṭ) and ‘renaissance’ (nahḍa), which is still in use in some quarters today. In the 1950s and 1960s, during the period of decolonisation and the Second Vatican Council, voices were raised within Eastern Christianity (in particular by the Melkites) to protest against the imposition of the Latin model that deprived the Easterners of their roots; they demanded their autonomy, a return to their origins and a pursuit of authenticity. This reaction was part of a broader movement that we can qualify as ‘culturalist’, the aim of which was to promote local specificity and to perfect the knowledge of the differentiated workings of societies and cultures. It was based on a dualist vision that assumed a clear opposition between Europeans and others and presented the latter as victims of Western aggression. In the specific case of the Middle East, however, it remained contained within a confessional tension that aimed to reaffirm the specific identity not only of the Christian minorities in Islam, but of one Christian denomination in relation to others. Today, however, we view the situation as incorporating more complex configurations that combine traits of varied origins in often unexpected ways. These include the effects that the encounter with the Other had on European civilisation. The latter can no longer be presented as a monolithic and timeless abstraction. By increasingly taking into account the diachronic dimension, we have become more sensitive to the dynamic of contact situations, in constant transformation. Here, I would like to present one approach from within this historiographical current, applying it to the Christians of the Middle East and their relationship to Catholicism.

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, visitors to Italy and Rome who belonged to the different Christian confessions from the Arab Middle East represented only a small proportion in relation to travellers from the states of Christian Europe. They formed none the less a significant group by virtue of their social status and their number, compared to the size of their original community.

Only a few of this already small number left a written testimony of their stay. The travelogue genre, which was very popular in early modern Europe and still alive in the Muslim written tradition, only made a timid appearance in Arab Christian literature of this period, whereas the stereotyped formula of the ‘pilgrim's guide’, in which Rome occupied a secondary place behind Jerusalem and the Sinai, survived. However, the Roman archives, and in particular the correspondence preserved at the Congregation de Propaganda Fide, partially compensate for this absence and make it possible to retrace some episodes of the lives of those who settled for a while in the capital of Catholicism, or elsewhere in Italy.

I have already mentioned those lay people, usually devoted to trade, who occasionally came to seek the protection of the Roman Church. The clergy who came to Christian Europe were far more numerous. A certain number of them looked to establish themselves permanently in Europe, and the most famous succeeded in finding a biographer. Some had successful careers in teaching and translating Eastern languages; others obtained an ecclesiastical living or casual income in exchange for offering pastoral care to Levantines in Malta, Livorno, or other Italian towns. However, an ecclesiastical prebend was nearly always inaccessible to them, while the position of Orientalist scholar remained uncertain, dependent on a patron. Therefore, the recommendation of the cardinals of the Propaganda was often necessary to obtain or keep a stable job.

The most colourful character whose existence I was able to follow through the Congregation's records is also an exemplary case, in so far as, over the course of his long life, he explored all of the options available to an Eastern ecclesiastic in Europe: he tried to make a living using his regional and linguistic skills; he engaged in trade with his compatriots; and he sought the patronage of, or a pension from, the cardinals of the Propaganda.