Italian novelist Umberto Eco said, “Books always speak of other books, and every story tells a story that has already been told.” The Demon Lover is designed around that notion of retellings—the idea that authors draw on and transform stories that have already been told, and in the process, create new meanings. This unit is part of Inquiry By Design’s high school series, Retellings: Stories Across Time.

In this three-text unit, students have the opportunity to study two twentieth- century retellings of a traditional Scottish folk ballad called “The Daemon Lover,” alongside a study of the ballad itself. The first retelling students will read is by Anglo- Irish writer Elizabeth Bowen and is set in London in 1941. The second retelling was published eight years after Bowen’s short story and is by American writer Shirley Jackson. Students will read, interpret, write about, and discuss each text separately. They will also read, write about, and discuss the texts as a set, comparing their characters, sequences of events, and meanings. Finally, if the teacher chooses, students will continue on to write a retelling of their own.