Coven - Usage in Literature and Popular Culture

Usage in Literature and Popular Culture

In fantasy stories and popular culture, a coven is a gathering of witches to work spells in tandem. Such imagery can be traced back to Renaissance prints depicting witches and to the three "weird sisters" in Shakespeare's play Macbeth. More orgiastic witches' meetings are also depicted in Robert Burns' poem "Tam o' Shanter" and in Goethe's play Faust. Movie portrayals have included, for example, Suspiria, Rosemary's Baby, The Covenant, Underworld and Underworld: Evolution, The Craft, Coven and Paranormal Activity 3. In television, covens were portrayed in the U.S. supernatural drama Charmed and the HBO series True Blood.

In novels such as The Vampire Chronicles by Anne Rice and the Twilight series by Stephenie Meyer, covens are families or unrelated groups of vampires who live together.

Read more about this topic:  Coven

Famous quotes containing the words usage, literature, popular and/or culture:

    Pythagoras, Locke, Socrates—but pages
    Might be filled up, as vainly as before,
    With the sad usage of all sorts of sages,
    Who in his life-time, each was deemed a bore!
    The loftiest minds outrun their tardy ages.
    George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)

    In literature as in ethics, there is danger, as well as glory, in being subtle. Aristocracy isolates us.
    Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867)

    Resorts advertised for waitresses, specifying that they “must appear in short clothes or no engagement.” Below a Gospel Guide column headed, “Where our Local Divines Will Hang Out Tomorrow,” was an account of spirited gun play at the Bon Ton. In Jeff Winney’s California Concert Hall, patrons “bucked the tiger” under the watchful eye of Kitty Crawhurst, popular “lady” gambler.
    —Administration in the State of Colo, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)

    No race has the last word on culture and on civilization. You do not know what the black man is capable of; you do not know what he is thinking and therefore you do not know what the oppressed and suppressed Negro, by virtue of his condition and circumstance, may give to the world as a surprise.
    Marcus Garvey (1887–1940)