Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
  1. Home
  2. Search

Refine search

Refine search

Access:
Content type:
Publication date:
Apply   From and To filters
Subject: Show more
Journals Show more
Publishers: Show more
Societies Show more
Series: Show more
Collections: Show more

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
Cancel
×

1 results

  • Chapter 8 - Dickens among the Spiritualists

  • from Part III
  • Melissa Dickson, University of Queensland
  • Book:
    Acoustics in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Science
    Published online:
    13 December 2024
    Print publication:
    19 December 2024, pp 165-180

  • Summary

    It is well known that tales of the occult and the supernatural provided Charles Dickens with an ideal forum in which to explore the mysterious workings of the human mind, body, and nervous system. Although Dickens’s imaginative explorations of spectral encounters can be firmly tied to his preoccupation with the operations of the mind, this chapter demonstrates that Dickens nonetheless actively drew upon spiritualist modes of thought and practice in his writing. This is most notable, I argue, in Dickens’s meditations on the nature of the creative ‘spirit’ as a kind of presence to be overheard and in his use of sound in facilitating strange or seemingly supernatural experiences. A self-confessed voice-hearer and ghost-seer, Dickens frequently positions both himself and his characters, most especially those upon their deathbeds, as highly sensitive listeners, alert to, indeed eager to encounter, the possibilities of vibrations beyond the ordinary.