Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2000. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 207-218). Available also in a digital version from Dissertation Abstracts.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2000. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 234-247). Available also in a digital version from Dissertation Abstracts.

No abstract available / English Studies / M.A. (English)

This thesis is an extended reading of the topos of the ghostly as it is staged in the modernist writings of T.S. Eliot, Virginia Woolf, Elizabeth Bowen and D.H. Lawrence. As I argue, their distinct appropriations of haunting are innately tied to their individual theories of the aesthetic; there are also a number of recurring motifs throughout their respective oeuvres, which time and again evoke a ghostly register. Consistently appearing in the texts I read here, most of which were published between the years 1919 and 1935, are figurations of the ghostly as a symptom of ‘ontological uncertainty’, as well as renderings of purgatorial subjectivity, and aporias of mourning. I locate my reading in response to the scholarly fields of haunting studies, mourning modernisms and Gothic modernisms. In a move common to contemporary theoretical studies of haunting, I draw also from the latter work of Jacques Derrida, a theoretical lens that facilitates my reading of a complex modernist ethics of mourning and alterity, one that often courts the ghostly, but resists what Derrida terms ‘hauntological’ work. The Derridean figure of the ethical apparition, in its status as the Absolute Other, is consistently complicated or rejected in these texts. This resistance mirrors a purgatorial mode of subjectivity that recurs in a range of guises in the modernisms I read here. In uncovering the economies that lie beneath these haunted subjectivities Jacques Lacan’s metapsychology of the subject helps also to conceptualise Bowen and Lawrence’s handling of the spectral. Bowen’s is a distinctly visual imagination, and her staging of a haunted subjectivity is elucidated by calling upon Lacan’s formulation of the gaze. Lawrence, whose work is consistently concerned with a-symbolic bodily registers, bypasses a number of the purgatorial aporias staged in the writings of Woolf, Eliot and Bowen. Viewing his appropriation of haunting through a Lacanian understanding of feminine jouissance suggests Lawrence’s welcoming of a radical ghostly other that may transcend the aporias of subjectivity, ethics and mourning that characterise these haunting modernisms.

In the early 1980s, a particular kind of “tween” (children aged 10-14) ghost story emerged. Through examining multiple examples of tween ghost stories (such as Wait Till Helen Comes by Mary Downing Hahn, Stonewords by Pam Conrad, and Time Windows by Kathryn Reiss), this paper illustrates the ways in which these stories are remarkably consistent in nature, and then investigates this sub-genre’s specific and consistent articulation of the struggle of moving away from childhood and into the teenage years. By using a ghost to create a situation so off balance (a ghost who is stuck, a protagonist who is in flux), the tween ghost story is uniquely and cleverly designed to help the protagonist navigate through the scary situation of growing up.

By focusing on the status and state of women as represented in selected supernatural fiction by Edith Wharton, we explore the socio-gender relationships, as well as the gender roles of women in general as they existed in the early part of the twentieth century. These associations are discussed, as is the influence Henry James may have had on Wharton’s writing style within the genre of the ghostly tale. The conclusions made within this study lead the reader of the tales to believe that Wharton expressed different feminist perspectives based on how she was developing as a person and as a writer. The resources and scholarship that are strictly allocated to Wharton’s ghost stories are not as vast as they may be for her other fiction; however, more attention is being given to these supernatural works, and this study reiterates the literature’s scholarly importance.

Excerpt: In the White House, Margaret Truman constantly heard floors popping, doors knocking, and drapes sidling back and forth.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Emory University, 2008. / Title from PDF title page (viewed on May 25, 2010) Available through UMI ProQuest Digital Dissertations. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 236-269). Also issued in print.

No abstract available / English Studies / M.A. (English)

This thesis explores a Qing dynasty collection of stories about ghosts and other strange events written by Yuan Mei (1716–1798). The thesis focuses on a number of stories about possession of living persons by spirits, which are studied with the help of Sara Ahmed’s queer phenomenology. By studying stories in which the living and the dead and men and women’s identities overlap while they are possessed, we gain greater understanding about hierarchical relations during Qing dynasty, and how these stories both support and question these. / Uppsatsen studerar en samling av berättelser om spöken och andra ovanliga händelser skriven av Yuan Mei (1716–1798) under Qingdynastin i Kina. Uppsatsen fokuserar på ett antal berättelser där andar tagit en människa i besittning, som studeras med hjälp av Sara Ahmeds queer fenomenologi. Genom att studera berättelser om de levande och döda samt män och kvinnor vars identiteter överlappar vid besittningar, får vi bättre förståelse över hierarkiska relationer under Qingdynastin och hur berättelserna både stödjer och ifrågasätter dessa.