Literature, technology, and magical thinking, 1880-1920

By Pamela Thurschwell

Subjects: Magic in literature, Telepathy in literature, Parapsychology--in literature, Psychoanalysis and literature, Literature and technology--great britain--history--20th century, History, Literature, modern--english, English literature--history and criticism, English literature--20th century--history and criticism, English literature, Pr468.m34 t48 2001, Spiritualism in literature, English literature, history and criticism, 20th century, Literature and technology--history, Literature and technology, History and criticism, Literature and technology--great britain--history--19th century, 820.9/37, English literature, history and criticism, 19th century, English literature--19th century--history and criticism, Homosexuality and literature, Occultism in literature

Description: "In this book Pamela Thurschwell examines the intersection of literary culture, the occult and new technology at the fin-de-siecle. Thurschwell argues that technologies such as the telegraph and the telephone annihilated distances that separated bodies and minds from each other. As these new technologies began suffusing the public imagination from the mid-nineteenth century on, they seemed to support the claims of spiritualist mediums. Talking to the dead and talking on the phone both held out the promise of previously unimaginable contact between people: both seemed to involve 'magical thinking'. Thurschwell looks at the ways in which psychical research, the scientific study of the occult, is reflected in the writings of such authors as Henry James, George Du Maurier and Oscar Wilde, and in the foundations of psychoanalysis. This study offers new and provocative interpretations of fin-de-siecle literary and scientific culture in relation to psychoanalysis, queer theory and cultural history."--BOOK JACKET.