Spectres of the Self: Thinking about Ghosts and Ghost-Seeing in England, 1750-1920

by Shane McCorristine

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521767989
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	07/22/2010
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Shane McCorristine is a post-doctoral researcher in the Humanities Institute of Ireland, University College Dublin. He has previously published articles on surrealism, children's literature and supernatural fiction.

Table of Contents

Introduction; Part I. The Dreams of the Ghost-Seers: 1. The haunted mind, 1750–1850; 2. Seeing is believing?: Ghost-seeing and hallucinatory experience; Part II. A Science of the Soul: 3. Ghost-hunting in the Society for Psychical Research; 4. Phantasms of the living and the dead; 5. The concept of hallucination in late-Victorian psychology; Epilogue: towards 1920; Appendix; Bibliography.

Editorial Reviews

"Spectres of the Self presents enthralling and laborious scholarship. But more importantly, it will inspire future researchers to work on this previously unmapped terrain of the supernatural." -Irmak Ertuna-Howison, Canadian Journal of History

From the Publisher