My friend Gérald asked me to write an article on a short story by Elizabeth Spencer called "Owl" in which a woman hears an owl hoot at night and fears it is an omen of death. The article is not due until January. I'm currently trying to find other instances of similar owl mythology in literature. Reading the story reminded me of a story by Ron Rash I had heard another colleague talk about that involves a similar myth of hooting owls three nights in a row as bad omens. Yesterday, I was looking at some scans of Joyce Carol Oates correspondance sent by one of the contributors to my volume and came across the title to a best-selling 1960s novel by Margaret Craven called I Heard the Owl Call My Name. I promptly ordered a used copy along with a copy of Craven's autobiography entitled Again Calls the Owl. Do any of you know of any other examples of literary bad owls?
Thursday, August 4, 2016
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3 comments:
An owl scares the bears back to bed in a Berenstein Bears book. That's all I have for you at the moment. It's not necessarily a bad owl, though.
The Craven book came immediately to my mind.
Sorry to say I haven't run across any, at least not recently enough to remember them.
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