Literature, Technology and Magical Thinking, 18801920 [Paperback]

This is a 2001 study of the intersection of literary culture, the occult and new technology at the fin-de-siecle.Thurschwell examines the intersection of literary culture, the occult and new technology at the fin-de-siècle. She argues that as new technologies, such as the telegraph and the telephone, began suffusing the public imagination from the mid-nineteenth century on, they seemed to support the claims of spiritualist mediums. Making unexpected connections between, for instance, speaking on the telephone and speaking to the dead, she examines how psychical research is reflected in the work of Henry James, George DuMaurier and Oscar Wilde among others.Thurschwell examines the intersection of literary culture, the occult and new technology at the fin-de-siècle. She argues that as new technologies, such as the telegraph and the telephone, began suffusing the public imagination from the mid-nineteenth century on, they seemed to support the claims of spiritualist mediums. Making unexpected connections between, for instance, speaking on the telephone and speaking to the dead, she examines how psychical research is reflected in the work of Henry James, George DuMaurier and Oscar Wilde among others.Thurschwell examines the intersection of literary culture, the occult and new technology at the fin-de-siècle. She argues that as new technologies, such as the telegraph and the telephone, began suffusing the public imagination from the mid-nineteenth century on, they seemed to support the claims of spiritualist mediums. Making unexpected connections between, for instance, speaking on the telephone and speaking to the dead, she examines how psychical research is reflected in the work of Henry James, George DuMaurier and Oscar Wilde among others.Introduction; 1. Severing the wire: the Society for Psychical Research's experiments in intimacy; 2. New forms of outrage: hypnotic aesthetes and the 1890s; 3. 'That Imperial stomach is no seat for ladies': l¦