Spirits and Ghosts: Literature as Paranormal Activity
The purpose of the course is to analyse the presence of “paranormal phenomena” in 19th and 20th century literary works. We will try and see how this presence (or haunting) can be construed as both a questioning of a certain type of scientific ambition and a singular redefinition of what is usually (and perhaps wrongly) called “mimesis”. Moreover, after a close examination of various paranormal manifestations as “invoked” in several texts, we will wonder whether literature is not essentially and ontologically a spectral phenomenon. A number of literary works—either in full or in extract—will be considered (Shakespeare: Hamlet; Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol; Henry James, “The Ghostly Rental”; Oscar Wilde, “The Canterville Ghost”; Sylvia Plath, “Ouija”; James Merrill, The Changing Light at Sandover, etc.). Texts will be handed out to students in class.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “Haunted Houses”
Sylvia Plath, “Ouija"
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “Haunted Houses”
Sylvia Plath, “Ouija"
Bailey, D. American Nightmares: The Haunted House Formula in American Popular Fiction. Bowling Green: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1999.
Bann, J. P. Spirit Writing. The Influence of Spiritualism on the Victorian Ghost Story. PhD dissertation. University of Stirling, 2007.
Barsham, Diana. The Trial of Woman : Feminism and the Occult Sciences in Victorian Literature and Society. New York: New York University Press, 1992.
Bauduin, T. M. and H. Johnsson (eds). The Occult in Modernist Art, Literature, and Cinema. Amsterdam: Palgrace, 2018.
Buse, P. and A. Stott (ed.). Ghosts: Deconstruction, Psychoanalysis, History. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999.
Del Pilar Blanco, M. E. Peeren (eds.) The Spectralities Reader. Ghost and Haunting in Contemporary Cultural Theory. London: Blommsbury, 2013.
Edmunson Makala, M. Women’s Ghost Literature in Nineteenth-Century Britain. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2013.
Fleischhack, Maria and Elmar Schenkel (eds.) Ghosts — or the (Nearly) Invisible: Spectral Phenomena in Literature and the Media. Peter Lang. Frankfurt am Main, 2016.
Johnson, G. M. Mourning and Mysticism in First World War Literature and Beyond. Grappling with Ghosts. London: Palgrave, 2015.
Kröger, L. and M. R. Anderson (eds.). The Ghostly and the Ghosted in Literature and Film. Spectral Identities. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2013
Lachapelle, S. Investigating the Supernatural. From Spiritism and Occultism to Psychical Research and Metaphysics in France, 1853-1931. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011.
Lehmann Imfeld, Z. The Victorian Ghost Story and Theology: From Le Fanu to James. London: Palgrave, 2016.
Rabaté, J.-M. The Ghosts of Modernity. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1996.
Royle, N. The Uncanny. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003.
Smajić, Srdjan. Ghost-Seers, Detectives, and Spiritualists: Theories of Vision in Victorian Literature and Science. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2010.
Smith, A. The Ghost Story, 1840-1920. A Cultural History. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2010.
Wallraven, M. Women Writers and the Occult in Literature and Culture: Female Lucifers, Priestesses, and Witches. New York/London: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2015
Wolfreys, Julian. Victorian Hauntings: Spectrality, Gothic, the Uncanny and Literature. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002.
————. Haunted Selves, Haunting Places in English Literature and Culture: 1800-Present. London: Palgrave, 2018