The Victorian Ghost Story and Theology

From Le Fanu to James

Zoe Lehmann Imfeld

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9783319302188
• eBook ISBN: 9783319302195
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: European Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

This book argues that theology is central to an understanding of the literary ghost story.Victorian ghost stories have traditionally been read in the context of agnosticism – as stories which reveal a society struggling with Christian orthodoxy in a new 'Enlightened' world. This book, however, uses theological ideas from St Augustine through to modern theologians to identify a theological journey taken by the protagonists of such stories, and charts each stage of this journey through the short stories it examines. It also proposes a theory of reader participation which creates an imaginary space in which modern epistemology is suspended. The book studies the work of four major authors of the supernatural tale: Arthur Machen, M.R. James, Sheridan Le Fanu and Henry James.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Frontmatter
• 1. Introduction: Rethinking the Victorian Ghost Story
• 2. Haunted by the Ghost of God—Reading Theologically
• 3. ‘Strangely mistaking death for life’: Arthur Machen
• 4. ‘What is this that I have done?’: M. R. James
• 5. ‘These devils have made quite a saint of you’: Sheridan Le Fanu
• 6. ‘He’s there from the moment he knows somebody else is’: Haunted by Paralysis in the Stories of Henry James
• 7. Conclusion: ‘This supernatural soliciting cannot be ill, cannot be good’
• Backmatter