eBook - PDF

The Magical Imagination

Name: The Magical Imagination
ISBN: 9781139227599

Magic and Modernity in Urban England, 1780–1914

Karl Bell,

English
PDF
Available on iOS & Android

eBook - PDF

The Magical Imagination

Magic and Modernity in Urban England, 1780–1914

Karl Bell,

About this book

This innovative history of popular magical mentalities in nineteenth-century England explores the dynamic ways in which the magical imagination helped people to adjust to urban life. Previous studies of modern popular magical practices and supernatural beliefs have largely neglected the urban experience. Karl Bell, however, shows that the magical imagination was a key cultural resource which granted an empowering sense of plebeian agency in the nineteenth-century urban environment. Rather than portraying magical beliefs and practices as a mere enclave of anachronistic 'tradition' and the fantastical as simply an escapist refuge from the real, he reveals magic's adaptive and transformative qualities and the ways in which it helped ordinary people navigate, adapt to and resist aspects of modern urbanization. Drawing on perspectives from cultural anthropology, sociology, folklore and urban studies, this is a major contribution to our understanding of modern popular magic and the lived experience of modernization and urbanization.

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Yes, you can access The Magical Imagination by Karl Bell in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in History & British History. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.