Literature, Technology, and Magical Thinking, 1880-1920
Literature, Technology, and Magical Thinking, 1880-1920

Author: Pamela Thurschwell

Publisher:

Published: 2001

Total Pages: 194

ISBN-13: 9786610159369

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In this book Pamela Thurschwell examines the intersection of literary culture, the occult and new technology at the fin-de-siecle. Thurschwell argues that technologies such as the telegraph and the telephone annihilated distances that separated bodies and minds from each other. As these new 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 new and provocative interpretations of fin-de-siecle literary and scientific culture in relation to psychoanalysis, queer theory and cultural history.

Literature, Technology and Magical Thinking, 1880–1920
Literature, Technology and Magical Thinking, 1880–1920

Author: Pamela Thurschwell

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2001-07-05

Total Pages: 209

ISBN-13: 1139428853

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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.

Imagination, Creativity and Spirituality in Psychotherapy
Imagination, Creativity and Spirituality in Psychotherapy

Author: Leanne Domash

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-09-28

Total Pages: 483

ISBN-13: 100019079X

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The aim of this book is to awaken creative desire and expand the imagination of the psychotherapist and, in turn, her patient. Each chapter is meant to surprise the reader and help him see the world in a new way. Many varieties of imagination are explored -- the spiritual, the relational, the dreamworld, the aesthetic and the adaptive. The author offers space to reflect, to daydream, to remember; space to pursue goals, to make new connections; space to take risks and space to be wrong. The psychotherapist is encouraged to find her own voice, be poetic, dare to create, converse with other disciplines and, most especially, enter the world of dreams. This is all passed onto the patient as the dyad enters the intersubjective field. Both scholarly and practical, this volume elegantly and persuasively synthesizes for the first time research in many fields, including spirituality and Kabbalah, neuroscience, the arts, biology and artificial intelligence, to give an in depth and original understanding of the current pressing problems in the rapidly changing field of psychotherapy: how do we work with unconscious processes and early memories to help our patients become more imaginative, creative, hopeful and resilient, and in so doing, heal. The relationship between the body and creative imagination is fully explored as well as the disruptive effect of trauma on the imagination and how to address this. The emphasis on surprise, uncanny communication, interdisciplinary inquiry, use of dreamwork and the imagination of the body — how it spontaneously meets new challenges— all stimulate the creativity of the reader. Through numerous case studies, the author illustrates the practical implications of how this exploration allows for deeper understanding and more effective treatment. With the innovative synthesis and specific techniques the author provides, the clinician has tools to carry on the work of moving the field of psychotherapy forward as well as work ever more effectively with patients.

The Long Life of Magical Objects
The Long Life of Magical Objects

Author: Allegra Iafrate

Publisher: Penn State Press

Published: 2020-01-17

Total Pages: 173

ISBN-13: 0271085339

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This book explores a series of powerful artifacts associated with King Solomon via legendary or extracanonical textual sources. Tracing their cultural resonance throughout history, art historian Allegra Iafrate delivers exciting insights into these objects and interrogates the ways in which magic manifests itself at a material level. Each chapter focuses on a different Solomonic object: a ring used to control demons; a mysterious set of bottles that constrain evil forces; an endless knot or seal with similar properties; the shamir, known for its supernatural ability to cut through stone; and a flying carpet that can bring the sitter anywhere he desires. Taken together, these chapters constitute a study on the reception of the figure of Solomon, but they are also cultural biographies of these magical objects and their inherent aesthetic, morphological, and technical qualities. Thought-provoking and engaging, Iafrate’s study shows how ancient magic artifacts live on in our imagination, in items such as Sauron’s ring of power, Aladdin’s lamp, and the magic carpet. It will appeal to historians of art, religion, folklore, and literature.

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

Author: Tatiana Kontou

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-03-23

Total Pages: 455

ISBN-13: 131704228X

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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.

Modernism and Magic
Modernism and Magic

Author: Leigh Wilson

Publisher: Edinburgh University Press

Published: 2015-10-01

Total Pages: 291

ISBN-13: 0748672338

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Explores the interplay between modernist experiment and occult discourses in the early twentieth century

Mourning and Mysticism in First World War Literature and Beyond
Mourning and Mysticism in First World War Literature and Beyond

Author: George M. Johnson

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2015-06-14

Total Pages: 239

ISBN-13: 1137332034

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This book traces how iconic writers - including Arthur Conan Doyle, J.M. Barrie, Rudyard Kipling, Virginia Woolf, Wilfred Owen, and Aldous Huxley - shaped their response to the loss of loved ones in the First World War through their embrace of mysticism.

Modes of Composition and the Durability of Style in Literature
Modes of Composition and the Durability of Style in Literature

Author: David L. Hoover

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-11-29

Total Pages: 222

ISBN-13: 1000262707

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Modes of Composition and the Durability of Style employs the tools and methods of computational stylistics to show that style is extremely resistant to changes in how texts are produced. Addressing an array of canonical writers, including William Faulkner, Joseph Conrad, Thomas Hardy, and Henry James, along with popular contemporary writers like Stephen King and Ian McEwan, this volume presents a systematic study of changes in mode of composition and writing technologies. Computational analysis of texts produced in multiple circumstances of composition, such as dictation, handwriting, typewriting, word processing, and translation, reveals the extraordinary durability of authorial style. Modes of Composition and the Durability of Style in Literature will be essential for readers interested in exploring the rapidly expanding field of digital approaches to literature.

Victorian Literature and Finance
Victorian Literature and Finance

Author: Francis O'Gorman

Publisher: OUP Oxford

Published: 2007-03-22

Total Pages: 216

ISBN-13: 0191536008

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Victorian Britain offered to the globe an economic structure of unique complexity. The trading nation, at the heart of a great empire, developed the practices of advanced capitalism - currency, banking, investment, money markets, business practices and theory, intellectual property legislation - from which the financial systems of the contemporary world emerged. Cultural forms in Victorian Britain transacted with high capitalism in a variety of ways but literary critics interested in economics have traditionally been preoccupied either with writers' hostility to industrial capitalism in terms of its shaping of class, or with the development of consumerism. Victorian Literature and Finance is the first extended study to take seriously the relationships between literary forms and those more complex discourses of Victorian high finance. These essays move beyond the examination of literature that was merely impatient with the perceived consequences of capitalism to analyse creative relationships between culture and economic structures. Considering such topics as the nature of currency, women and the culture of investment, the profits of a modern media age, the dramatization of risk on the Victorian stage, the practice of realism in relation to business theory, the culture of speculation at the end of the century, and arguments about the uncomfortable relationship between literary and financial capital, Victorian Literature and Finance sets new terms for understanding and theorizing the relationship between high finance and literary writing in the nineteenth century.

Time and the Moment in Victorian Literature and Society
Time and the Moment in Victorian Literature and Society

Author: Sue Zemka

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2011-11-24

Total Pages: 301

ISBN-13: 1139503073

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Sudden changes, opportunities, or revelations have always carried a special significance in Western culture, from the Greek and later the Christian kairos to Evangelical experiences of conversion. This fascinating book explores the ways in which England, under the influence of industrializing forces and increased precision in assessing the passing of time, attached importance to moments, events that compress great significance into small units of time. Sue Zemka questions the importance that modernity invests in momentary events, from religion to aesthetics and philosophy. She argues for a strain in Victorian and early modern novels critical of the values the age invested in moments of time, and suggests that such novels also offer a correction to contemporary culture and criticism, with its emphasis on the momentary event as an agency of change.