Tatiana Kontou - The Ashgate Research Companion to Nineteenth-Century Spiritualism and the Occult

THE ASHGATE RESEARCH COMPANION TO NINETEENTH-CENTURY SPIRITUALISM AND THE OCCULT

Critical attention to the Victorian supernatural has flourished over the last twenty-five years. Whether it is spiritualism or Theosophy, mesmerism or the occult, the dozens of book-length studies and hundreds of articles that have appeared recently reflect the avid scholarly discussion of Victorian mystical practices. Designed both for those new to the field and for experts, this volume is organized into sections covering the relationship between Victorian spiritualism and science, the occult and politics, and the culture of mystical practices. The Ashgate Research Companion to Nineteenth-Century Spiritualism and the Occult brings together some of the most prominent scholars working in the field to introduce current approaches to the study of nineteenth-century mysticism and to define new areas for research.

The Ashgate Research Companions are designed to offer scholars and graduate students a comprehensive and authoritative state-of-the-art review of current research in a particular area. The companions editors bring together a team of respected and experienced experts to write chapters on the key issues in their speciality, providing a comprehensive reference to the field.

Edited by

TATIANA KONTOU

Oxford Brookes University, UK

SARAH WILLBURN

Amherst, MA, USA

ASHGATE

Tatiana Kontou, Sarah Willburn and the contributors 2012

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher.

Tatiana Kontou and Sarah Willburn have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the editors of this work.

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
The Ashgate research companion to nineteenth-century spiritualism and the occult.

1. Spiritualism in literature. 2. Occultism in literature. 3. English literature--19th century
--History and criticism. 4. Spiritualism--Great Britain--History--19th century.
5. Occultism--Great Britain--History--19th century.
I. Nineteenth-century spiritualism and the occult II. Willburn, Sarah A., 1969
III. Kontou, Tatiana.
820.93709034-dc23

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
The Ashgate research companion to nineteenth-century spiritualism and the occult /
[edited by] Sarah Willburn and Tatiana Kontou.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.

ISBN 978-0-7546-6912-8 (hardcover : alk. paper) -- ISBN 978-0-7546-9626-1 (ebook : alk. paper) 1. Spiritualism--History--19th century. 2. Occultism--History--19th century. 3. Great Britain--History--Victoria, 1837-1901. I. Willburn, Sarah A., 1969- II. Kontou, Tatiana. III. Title: Research companion to nineteenth-century spiritualism and the occult.

BF1241.A84 2012

133.909034--dc23

2011043646

ISBN 9780754669128 (hbk)
ISBN 9780754696261 (ebk-PDF)
ISBN 9781409456346 (ebk-ePUB)

Printed and bound in Great Britain by the MPG Books Group, UK

Tatiana Kontou and Sarah Willburn

Christine Ferguson

Richard Noakes

Anthony Enns

Jill Galvan

Leigh Wilson

J. Jeffrey Franklin

Joy Dixon

Matthew Beaumont

Christoforos Diakoulakis

Mazen Naous

Tatiana Kontou

Erika White Dyson

Mackenzie Bartlett

Marlene Tromp

Bridget Bennett

Rachel Oberter

Sarah Willburn

Mackenzie Bartlett is a Lecturer in English at Mount Saint Vincent University, Canada. She completed her PhD at Birkbeck College (University of London) in 2009 and has published and presented papers on gothic fiction and the pathologization of laughter in late Victorian Britain. Her current research is in humour theory and mirthful forms of expression in twentieth-century horror films.

Matthew Beaumont is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of English at University Ccollege London. He is the author of Utopia Ltd: Ideologies of Social Dreaming in England, 18701900 (2005), and co-author, with Terry Eagleton, of The Task of the Critic: Terry Eagleton in Dialogue (2009). He has recently co-edited a collection of essays, Restless Cities (2010).

Bridget Bennett is Professor of American Literature and Culture in the School of English, University of Leeds. Among her publications is Transatlantic Spiritualism and Nineteenth-Century American Literature (2007).

Christoforos Diakoulakis completed his DPhil in English at the University of Sussex in 2012. His research revolves around the notion of coincidence and the play of necessity and chance in modern literature and philosophy. His primary focus is the work of Jacques Derrida. He has also written on William James, Edgar Allan Poe and contemporary American fiction.

Joy Dixon is an Associate Professor of History at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, British Columbia in Canada. Her current project, tentatively titled Sexual Heresies: Religion, Science, and Sexuality in Britain, 18701930, explores the impact of the new sciences of sexuality and of new understandings of sexual identity on religion and religious experience, from liberal modernism to the new orthodoxies of conservative Catholicism and evangelicalism.

Erika White Dyson, PhD Columbia University, is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Harvey Mudd College in Claremont, California. She specializes in nineteenth-century American religious movements, churchstate relations, and science and religion. Her current research examines the arrests of spiritualist ministers and mediums at the turn of the twentieth century, the participation of stage magicians in the prosecution of spirit mediums, and the implications of these arrests for American religious jurisprudence and spiritualist organizations.

Anthony Enns is an Assistant Professor in the Department of English at Dalhousie University. His work on spiritualism and media has appeared in such journals as The Senses and Society and Culture, Theory & Critique as well as the anthologies Victorian Literary Mesmerism (2006), Consciousness, Literature and the Arts (2006), and Picturing America: Trauma, Realism, Politics, and Identity in American Visual Culture (2006).

Christine Ferguson is a Lecturer in Nineteenth-Century Literature at the University of Glasgow. She is the author of Language, Science, and Popular Fiction in the Victorian Fin-de-Sicle (2006) and of articles and book chapters on various aspects of Victorian literature and culture. Her current project focuses on the rise of eugenic and hereditarian thought in the nineteenth-century transatlantic spiritualist movement.