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Spectres of the self : thinking about ghosts and ghost-seeing in England, 1750-1920 / Shane McCorristine

Author
McCorristine, Shane, 1983-
Published
Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2010.
Physical Description
1 online resource (x, 275 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).
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Contents
The dreams of the ghost-seers -- The haunted mind, 1750-1850 -- Seeing is believing : hallucinations and ghost-seeing -- A science of the soul -- Ghost-hunting in the society for psychical research -- Phantasms of the living and the dead -- The concept of hallucination in late Victorian psychology -- Epilogue: towards 1920.
Summary
Spectres of the Self is a fascinating study of the rich cultures surrounding the experience of seeing ghosts in England from the Reformation to the twentieth century. Shane McCorristine examines a vast range of primary and secondary sources, showing how ghosts, apparitions, and hallucinations were imagined, experienced, and debated from the pages of fiction to the case reports of the Society for Psychical Research. By analysing a broad range of themes from telepathy and ghost-hunting to the notion of dreaming while awake and the question of why ghosts wore clothes, Dr McCorristine reveals the sheer variety of ideas of ghost seeing in English society and culture. He shows how the issue of ghosts remained dynamic despite the advance of science and secularism and argues that the ghost ultimately represented a spectre of the self, a symbol of the psychological hauntedness of modern experience.
Subject(s)
ISBN
9780511779749 (ebook)
9780521767989 (hardback)
9780521747967 (paperback)
Note
Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 05 Oct 2015).
View MARC record | catkey: 34840813