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  1. Home
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  3. Literature, Technology and Magical Thinking, 1880–1920
  • Cited by 166
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press
Online publication date:
September 2009
Print publication year:
2001
Online ISBN:
9780511484537
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511484537
Subjects:
Literature, English Literature 1830-1900, English Literature 1700-1830, Psychology, Psychology: General Interest
Series:
Cambridge Studies in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture (32)
Information

Book description

In this 2001 book Pamela Thurschwell examines the intersection of literary culture, the occult and new technology at the fin-de-siècle. Thurschwell argues that 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 provocative interpretations of fin-de-siècle literary and scientific culture in relation to psychoanalysis, queer theory and cultural history.

Reviews

"Thurschwell has written an original, important exploration..." English Literature in Transition, 1880-1920

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