The Victorian SupernaturalNicola Bown, Carolyn Burdett, Pamela Thurschwell The Victorians were haunted by the supernatural, by ghosts and fairies, table-rappings and telepathic encounters, occult religions and the idea of reincarnation, visions of the other world and a reality beyond the everyday. This collection brings together essays by scholars from literature, history of art and history of science which explore the diversity of the Victorians' fascination with the supernatural. The essays show that the supernatural was not simply a reaction to the 'post-Darwinian loss of faith', but was embedded in virtually every aspect of Victorian culture. |
Contents
Introduction | 1 |
Spiritualism science and the supernatural | 23 |
Charles Dickens and ghosts | 44 |
the Victorian ghost story | 67 |
coercive second sight | 87 |
Contents | 90 |
Browning the dramatic monologue and the resuscitation | 109 |
Baron Corvo and the key to the underworld | 128 |
What is the stuff that dreams are made of? | 151 |
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Andrew Lang apparitions argued Ayesha belief Braddon Browning Browning's Cambridge Carpenter century Christ Christian clairvoyance contemporary Corvo critical Crookes cultural Cumberland Daniel Deronda dead death debate Dickens Dickens's divine domestic dreamer's dreams Dyce Eliot's English Essays and Reviews fiction figure fourth dimension Frederick Rolfe ghost stories ghostly Gwendolen haunted human Ibid idea imagination interpretation Jewish John Jolly Corner knowledge Lang's literary Literature living London Luckhurst magic manifestations Mary Elizabeth Braddon material mediums mental mesmeric mind modern monologue Mordecai narrative narrator nature nineteenth nineteenth-century novel occult Oxford painting phenomena physical picture poem prophetic Psychical Research reading reincarnation Rider Haggard Rolfe Rolfe's romance scientific séance second sight sense servants sleep social Society for Psychical space spectral Spiritualism Spiritualists suggests supernatural superstition telepathy theories Theosophy thought Toto's uncanny University Press Victorian supernatural vision William William Benjamin Carpenter William Holman Hunt women writing