ABSTRACT

The Handbook to the Ghost Story sets out to survey and significantly extend a new field of criticism which has been taking shape over recent years, centring on the ghost story and bringing together a vast range of interpretive methods and theoretical perspectives. The main task of the volume is to properly situate the genre within historical and contemporary literary cultures across the globe, and to explore its significance within wider literary contexts as well as those of the supernatural. The Handbook offers the most significant contribution to this new critical field to date, assembling some of its leading scholars to examine the key contexts and issues required for understanding the emergence and development of the ghost story.

chapter |15 pages

Introduction

ByScott Brewster, Luke Thurston

section I|70 pages

Ghostly Origins

chapter 1|10 pages

Gothic and Romantic Ghosts in Novels, Dramas, and the Chapbook

ByDiane Long Hoeveler

chapter 2|11 pages

The Ghost Story and the Victorian Literary Marketplace

ByAnthony Mandal

chapter 3|9 pages

The Ghost Story and Science

BySarah Bissell

chapter 4|10 pages

Oscar Wilde in the Fourth Dimension

Ghosts, Geometry, and the Victorian Crisis of Meaning
ByJarlath Killeen

chapter 5|10 pages

Ghost Stories and Sensation Fiction

ByBrittany Roberts

chapter 6|9 pages

Women Writers and Ghost Stories

ByMelissa Edmundson

chapter 7|9 pages

The Victorian Ghost Story and the Invention of Christmas

ByDewi Evans

section II|90 pages

Vital Spirits

chapter 8|9 pages

Playful Spirits

Charles Dickens and the Ghost Story
ByClaire Wood

chapter 9|8 pages

Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

ByAlison Milbank

chapter 10|10 pages

Haunting Memories

Death, Mourning, and Memory in the Ghost Stories of Margaret Oliphant
ByElizabeth McCarthy

chapter 11|8 pages

Algernon Blackwood

ByS. T. Joshi

chapter 12|10 pages

Conan Doyle’s Sceptical Reader

Ghost Stories, Science, and Spiritualism
ByKevin Mills

chapter 13|8 pages

M. R. James

ByDarryl Jones

chapter 14|8 pages

Jamesian Ghosts

Romance and History
ByT. J. Lustig

chapter 15|9 pages

Vernon Lee

ByOliver Tearle

chapter 16|9 pages

“A Roaring and Discontinuous Universe”

Edith Wharton’s Modern Hauntings
ByEmily Coit

chapter 17|9 pages

“German Has a Word for the Total Effect”

Robert Aickman’s Strange Stories
ByTimothy Jones

section III|112 pages

Haunted Nations

chapter 18|9 pages

The English Ghost Story

ByDavid Punter

chapter 19|9 pages

The Ghost Story in Scotland

ByTimothy C. Baker

chapter 20|9 pages

Haunted Wales

ByJane Aaron

chapter 21|9 pages

The American Ghost Story

ByJeffrey Andrew Weinstock

chapter 22|10 pages

“If You Build It, They Will Come”

The Strange Case of the English-Canadian Ghost Story
ByCynthia Sugars

chapter 23|8 pages

The Ghost and the Darkness

Creole Hauntings in Caribbean Literature
ByLizabeth Paravisini-Gebert

chapter 24|9 pages

The Latin American Ghost Story

ByEnrique Ajuria Ibarra

chapter 25|9 pages

“There Was More in This Darkness”

The New Zealand Ghost Story
ByErin Mercer

chapter 26|9 pages

Australian Ghost Fiction

ByDavid Ellison, Penelope Hone

chapter 27|10 pages

Strange Ghosts

Asian Reconfigurations of the Chinese Ghost Story
ByKatarzyna Ancuta

chapter 28|9 pages

Indian Ghosts

A Love Affair
ByTabish Khair

chapter 29|10 pages

Shades of Dissent

Notes on Haunting in South African Literary History
ByRebecca Duncan

section IV|59 pages

Haunting Sites

chapter 30|10 pages

Haunted Landscapes

ByLucie Armitt

chapter 31|11 pages

Transport and Trauma

Uncanny Modernities
ByRalph Harrington

chapter 32|7 pages

Ghost Walking

ByScott Brewster

chapter 33|9 pages

The Ghosts of War

ByMatt Foley

chapter 34|10 pages

Haunted Houses

ByNick Freeman

chapter 35|10 pages

Children’s Ghost Stories

ByBeth Rodgers

section V|57 pages

Ghosts on Screen and Stage

chapter 36|10 pages

Screening the Spectre

Ghosts on Film
ByMurray Leeder

chapter 37|9 pages

Enchanted Visions

Ghostly Media From E.T.A. Hoffmann to Alfred Hitchcock
ByElisabeth Bronfen

chapter 38|8 pages

Spirits on the Air

Ghosts, Sound, and the Radio
ByRichard J. Hand

chapter 39|10 pages

Ghosts and Television

ByDerek Johnston

chapter 40|9 pages

Performing the Ghost Story on the English Stage

ByKelly Jones

chapter 41|9 pages

Cyber-Hauntings

The Online Ghost Story and Its Cultural Narratives
ByLorna Piatti-Farnell

section VI|58 pages

Ghosts in Theory

chapter 42|9 pages

How Ghosts Became Disgusting

ByPamela K. Gilbert

chapter 43|9 pages

Ghostly Animals

ByKathryn Bird

chapter 44|9 pages

The Ghost Story and Feminism

ByDiana Wallace

chapter 45|9 pages

“Keeping an Eye on Me”

Queer Spectres
ByArdel Haefele-Thomas

chapter 46|9 pages

Postmodern Ghost Stories

ByMaria Beville

chapter 47|11 pages

“Dead Letters”

Post-Colonial Haunting in the Work of a Materialist
ByGerald Gaylard

section |11 pages

Coda

chapter 48|9 pages

Stories Not Like Any Others

Ghosts and the Ethics of Literature
ByLuke Thurston