Ghost-Seers, Detectives, and Spiritualists

Ghost-Seers, Detectives, and Spiritualists PDF Author: Srdjan Smajić
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139485881
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 281

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Book Description
This book is a study of the narrative techniques that developed for two very popular forms of fiction in the nineteenth century - ghost stories and detective stories - and the surprising similarities between them in the context of contemporary theories of vision and sight. Srdjan Smajić argues that to understand how writers represented ghost-seers and detectives, the views of contemporary scientists, philosophers, and spiritualists with which these writers engage have to be taken into account: these views raise questions such as whether seeing really is believing, how much of what we 'see' is actually only inferred, and whether there may be other (intuitive or spiritual) ways of seeing that enable us to perceive objects and beings inaccessible to the bodily senses. This book will make a real contribution to the understanding of Victorian science in culture, and of the ways in which literature draws on all kinds of knowledge.

Ghost-Seers, Detectives, and Spiritualists

Ghost-Seers, Detectives, and Spiritualists PDF Author: Srdjan Smajić
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139485881
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 281

Get Book

Book Description
This book is a study of the narrative techniques that developed for two very popular forms of fiction in the nineteenth century - ghost stories and detective stories - and the surprising similarities between them in the context of contemporary theories of vision and sight. Srdjan Smajić argues that to understand how writers represented ghost-seers and detectives, the views of contemporary scientists, philosophers, and spiritualists with which these writers engage have to be taken into account: these views raise questions such as whether seeing really is believing, how much of what we 'see' is actually only inferred, and whether there may be other (intuitive or spiritual) ways of seeing that enable us to perceive objects and beings inaccessible to the bodily senses. This book will make a real contribution to the understanding of Victorian science in culture, and of the ways in which literature draws on all kinds of knowledge.

Ghost-seers, Detectives, and Spiritualists

Ghost-seers, Detectives, and Spiritualists PDF Author: Srdjan Smajic
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780511716065
Category : Detective and mystery stories, English
Languages : en
Pages : 262

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Book Description
This is an original study of the narrative techniques that developed for two very popular forms of fiction in the nineteenth century, Äì ghost stories and detective stories, Äì and the surprising similarities between them in the context of contemporary theories of vision and sight. Srdjan Smajiá argues that to understand how writers represented ghost-seers and detectives, the views of contemporary scientists, philosophers, and spiritualists with which these writers engage have to be taken into account: these views raise questions such as whether seeing really is believing, how much of what we, Äòsee' is actually only inferred, and whether there may be other (intuitive or spiritual) ways of seeing that enable us to perceive objects and beings inaccessible to the bodily senses. This book will make a real contribution to the understanding of Victorian science in culture, and of the ways in which literature draws on all kinds of knowledge.

The Night Side of Nature; Or Ghosts and Ghost Seers

The Night Side of Nature; Or Ghosts and Ghost Seers PDF Author: Catherine Crowe
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Ghosts
Languages : en
Pages : 430

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Book Description


The Night Side of Nature

The Night Side of Nature PDF Author: Catherine Crowe
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108027504
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 396

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Book Description
This best-selling collection of ghost stories, intertwined with supernatural interpretations, is a classic example of early Victorian spiritualist writing.

Weird Fiction and Science at the Fin de Siècle

Weird Fiction and Science at the Fin de Siècle PDF Author: Emily Alder
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030326527
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 254

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Book Description
This book explores how nineteenth-century science stimulated the emergence of weird tales at the fin de siècle, and examines weird fiction by British writers who preceded and influenced H. P. Lovecraft, the most famous author of weird fiction. From laboratory experiments, thermodynamics, and Darwinian evolutionary theory to psychology, Theosophy, and the ‘new’ physics of atoms and forces, science illuminated supernatural realms with rational theories and practices. Changing scientific philosophies and questioning of traditional positivism produced new ways of knowing the world—fertile borderlands for fictional as well as real-world scientists to explore. Reading Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886) as an inaugural weird tale, the author goes on to analyse stories by Arthur Machen, Edith Nesbit, H. G. Wells, William Hope Hodgson, E. and H. Heron, and Algernon Blackwood to show how this radical fantasy mode can be scientific, and how sciences themselves were often already weird.

Ghosts, Spirits, and Psychics

Ghosts, Spirits, and Psychics PDF Author: Matt Cardin
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1610696840
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 456

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Book Description
This fascinating work provides a complete overview of paranormal phenomena, including the beliefs, attitudes, and notable figures who have attempted to explain, defend, or debunk the mysteries behind the unknown. Recent interest in the paranormal as pop culture fodder belies its historical status as an important subject of cultural, philosophical, and scientific significance. This book traces the trajectory of paranormal studies from its early role as a serious academic and scientific topic studied by mainstream scientists and eminent scholars to its current popularity in books, film, and TV. This compelling reference work details the experiences, encounters, and ideas that make up this controversial field of study. The contributed entries examine the broad phenomena of the paranormal, addressing the history of scientific investigations along with its contemporary media depictions to illustrate the evolution of cultural attitudes about the paranormal. A selection of primary documents provides real-life accounts and contributions from noted experts that explore the full scope of themes from spiritualism to poltergeists to astrology. Accompanying images, timelines, quotations, and sidebars make the content come to life and encourage alternative explanations of these events.

From Steam to Screen

From Steam to Screen PDF Author: Rebecca Harrison
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1786723220
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
In late nineteenth and early twentieth century Britain, there was widespread fascination with the technological transformations wrought by modernity. Films, newspapers and literature told astonishing stories about technology, such as locomotives breaking speed records and moving images seemingly springing into life onscreen. And, whether in films about train travel, or in newspaper articles about movie theatres on trains, stories about the convergence of the railway and cinema were especially prominent. Together, the two technologies radically transformed how people interacted with the world around them, and became crucial to how British media reflected the nation's modernity and changing role within the empire. Rebecca Harrison draws on archival sources and an extensive corpus of films to trace the intertwined histories of the train and the screen for the first time. In doing so, she presents a new and illuminating material and cultural history of the period, and demonstrates the myriad ways railways and cinema coalesced to transform the population's everyday life. With examples taken from more than 240 newsreels and 40 feature-length films, From Steam to Screen is essential reading for students and researchers working on film studies and British history at the turn of the century and beyond.

Ghosts

Ghosts PDF Author: Roger Clarke
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 1250053579
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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Book Description
Describes the history of ghost-hunting and searching for proof of spectres, spirits and ghosts in some of the supposedly most-haunted sites of the past 500 years, drawing upon folklore, religion, neuroscientific advancements and the technology of paranormal explorers.

Shirley Jackson, Influences and Confluences

Shirley Jackson, Influences and Confluences PDF Author: Melanie R. Anderson
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317055276
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 206

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Book Description
The popularity of such widely known works as "The Lottery" and The Haunting of Hill House has tended to obscure the extent of Shirley Jackson's literary output, which includes six novels, a prodigious number of short stories, and two volumes of domestic sketches. Organized around the themes of influence and intertextuality, this collection places Jackson firmly within the literary cohort of the 1950s. The contributors investigate the work that informed her own fiction and discuss how Jackson inspired writers of literature and film. The collection begins with essays that tease out what Jackson's writing owes to the weird tale, detective fiction, the supernatural tradition, and folklore, among other influences. The focus then shifts to Jackson's place in American literature and the impact of her work on women's writing, campus literature, and the graphic novelist Alison Bechdel. The final two essays examine adaptations of The Haunting of Hill House and Jackson's influence on contemporary American horror cinema. Taken together, the essays offer convincing evidence that half a century following her death, readers and writers alike are still finding value in Jackson’s words.

The Late Victorian Gothic

The Late Victorian Gothic PDF Author: Hilary Grimes
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 131702625X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 196

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Book Description
Examining the automatic writing of the spiritualist séances, discursive technologies like the telegraph and the photograph, various genres and late nineteenth-century mental science, this book shows the failure of writers' attempts to use technology as a way of translating the supernatural at the fin de siècle. Hilary Grimes shows that both new technology and explorations into the ghostly aspects of the mind made agency problematic. When notions of agency are suspended, Grimes argues, authorship itself becomes uncanny. Grimes's study is distinct in both recognizing and crossing strict boundaries to suggest that Gothic literature itself resists categorization, not only between literary periods, but also between genres. Treating a wide range of authors - Henry James, Rudyard Kipling, Arthur Conan Doyle, George Du Maurier, Vernon Lee, Mary Louisa Molesworth, Sarah Grand, and George Paston - Grimes shows how fin-de-siècle works negotiate themes associated with the Victorian and Modernist periods such as psychical research, mass marketing, and new technologies. With particular attention to texts that are not placed within the Gothic genre, but which nevertheless conceal Gothic themes, The Late Victorian Gothic demonstrates that the end of the nineteenth century produced a Gothicism specific to the period.