Spectral America: Phantoms and the National ImaginationJeffrey Andrew Weinstock Popular Press, 2004 - 282 pages From essays about the Salem witch trials to literary uses of ghosts by Twain, Wharton, and Bierce to the cinematic blockbuster The Sixth Sense, this book is the first to survey the importance of ghosts and hauntings in American culture across time. From the Puritans' conviction that a thousand preternatural beings appear every day before our eyes, to today's resurgence of spirits in fiction and film, the culture of the United States has been obsessed with ghosts. In each generation, these phantoms in popular culture reflect human anxieties about religion, science, politics, and social issues. Spectral America asserts that ghosts, whether in oral tradition, literature, or such modern forms as cinema have always been constructions embedded in specific historical contexts and invoked for explicit purposes, often political in nature. The essays address the role of "spectral evidence" during the Salem witch trials, the Puritan belief in good spirits, the convergence of American Spiritualism and technological development in the nineteenth century, the use of the supernatural as a tool of political critique in twentieth-century magic realism, and the "ghosting" of persons living with AIDS. They also discuss ghostly themes in the work of Ambrose Bierce, Edith Wharton, Gloria Naylor, and Stephen King. |
Contents
Spectral Evidence and the Puritan | 8 |
U S Literary Magic Realism | 12 |
Crisis of Subjectivity ALISON TRACY | 18 |
Celebrations of the Living Dead in Early | 40 |
Can Such Things Be? Ambrose Bierce the Dead Mother | 57 |
Sarah Orne Jewett as | 78 |
The Ghost Dance The Gates Ajar | 101 |
Spiritualism and Science | 124 |
Edith Whartons The Eyes | 157 |
and the Postmodern ELIZABETH T HAYES | 169 |
Cinema and The Sixth Sense | 185 |
A ModernDay | 207 |
Haunting Words and Apparitional | 221 |
Salems Ghosts and the Cultural Capital of Witches | 244 |
Contributors | 265 |
Psychogenic Fugue | 141 |
Other editions - View all
Spectral America: Phantoms and the National Imagination Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock No preview available - 2004 |
Common terms and phrases
accused AIDS Almira American culture American Gothic angels argues believe body Boston Bourne's Buick Captain Stormfield century chap Christian Cole communion contemporary Culwin dead mother death discourse dream Dunnet Landing Edited elegists England essay European American experience fiction film friends fugue Gates Ajar Gates novels Ghost Dance ghost films ghost stories ghostly haunted heaven HIV/AIDS homosexuality human Hundred Secret Senses identity Indian individual invisible world James Jess John Kwan literary living magic realism Malcolm mediumship Meet Joe Black Meserole modern Mooney movie Museum narrative narrator Native American nineteenth nineteenth-century Olivia person phantom Phelps Phelps's Pointed Firs present psychic psychology Puritan readers religion of friendship Reprint Sarah Orne Jewett Sixth Sense social society soul specters spectral evidence spiritual spiritualist supernatural Supernatural Fiction tion tourist traditional trials Twain uncanny University Press vision Wharton witch witchcraft woman women Wovoka writing York