This study proposes first, to investigate the biographical and literary influences that led James to attempt the ghost story; second, to examine the stories themselves in light of James's theory of fiction, and to compare them with the tales of other writers; last, to consider James's ghosts as dramatized unseen realities which strongly affect human experience.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Guo li Taiwan shi fan da xue, 1978. / Cover title. Reproduced from typescript; on double leaves. Includes bibliographical references (p. 301-317).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Guo li Taiwan shi fan da xue, 1978. / Cover title. Reproduced from typescript; on double leaves. Includes bibliographical references (p. 301-317).

Celebrate Halloween Rugby style at Historic Rugby’s Annual Ghostly Gathering events with ghost stories, a bonfire, and visits from some of Rugby’s most prominent haunts! Ghost stories also performed during October 2014.

The implication of belief, that association between the veridical ghost tale and the fictional ghost tale—an association resulting from the onslaught of reason and science, and consequently spiritual doubt—remains largely responsible for the fictional ghost tale’s critical demise. A rise in the spiritualist movement produces a specific literature that coincides with the rise in interest in its fictional counterpart. Both the veridical ghost tale and the fictional ghost tale reach their heights in popularity at precisely the same time; not coincidental, but well planned by talented writers who viewed the preoccupation with ghosts as a platform from which a variety of contemporary issues could be candidly dealt. The Victorian literary ghost figure simultaneously, and ingeniously, fills a spiritual void, satisfies a consumer need for entertainment, and provides an opportunity for cultural commentary. The voice of the Victorian ghost, and the subsequent understanding of its haunted are of distinct cultural significance. / October 2004

The implication of belief, that association between the veridical ghost tale and the fictional ghost tale—an association resulting from the onslaught of reason and science, and consequently spiritual doubt—remains largely responsible for the fictional ghost tale’s critical demise. A rise in the spiritualist movement produces a specific literature that coincides with the rise in interest in its fictional counterpart. Both the veridical ghost tale and the fictional ghost tale reach their heights in popularity at precisely the same time; not coincidental, but well planned by talented writers who viewed the preoccupation with ghosts as a platform from which a variety of contemporary issues could be candidly dealt. The Victorian literary ghost figure simultaneously, and ingeniously, fills a spiritual void, satisfies a consumer need for entertainment, and provides an opportunity for cultural commentary. The voice of the Victorian ghost, and the subsequent understanding of its haunted are of distinct cultural significance.

The implication of belief, that association between the veridical ghost tale and the fictional ghost tale—an association resulting from the onslaught of reason and science, and consequently spiritual doubt—remains largely responsible for the fictional ghost tale’s critical demise. A rise in the spiritualist movement produces a specific literature that coincides with the rise in interest in its fictional counterpart. Both the veridical ghost tale and the fictional ghost tale reach their heights in popularity at precisely the same time; not coincidental, but well planned by talented writers who viewed the preoccupation with ghosts as a platform from which a variety of contemporary issues could be candidly dealt. The Victorian literary ghost figure simultaneously, and ingeniously, fills a spiritual void, satisfies a consumer need for entertainment, and provides an opportunity for cultural commentary. The voice of the Victorian ghost, and the subsequent understanding of its haunted are of distinct cultural significance.

Originally presented as the author's thesis (M.A.?--Nan kai da xue). / Includes bibliographical references (p. 479-486)

The ghost story--in all its forms--has haunted humans since the first tales of the strange and inexplicable were told around the campfires of pre-history. Such stories explore collective ideas of death and the afterlife, the eeriness of certain places, and the awe that is felt in the presence of the Unknown. Pictures of Lily and Other Stories contains three examples of the genre, each written in a different sub-genre. "Money," the story of an impoverished college student who gets a housesitting job that is more perilous than it first appears, owes much to the haunted house stories of British master M.R. James, while "Under the House" parallels the haunted love stories of Edith Wharton. Finally, the novella "Pictures of Lily" explores gothic themes in the tradition of Shirley Jackson and Oscar Wilde.

This thesis examines spectrality in Elizabethan literature, focusing on the ghost as a figuration of disjuncture within contemporary constructions of the dead. Taking account of the cultural unease and uncertainties about the afterlife generated during the Reformation, I explore how particular conceptualizations of the dead manifest instabilities that move the figure of the ghost into the disturbing role of the spectre. The literature I examine ranges from Elizabethan translations of Seneca and key theological treatises to examples of the English revenge tragedy produced by Shakespeare, Marston, and Chettle. In drawing upon this cross-section of work, I highlight the resonances between varying forms of spectrality in order to explore ways in which the ghost incorporates, but also exceeds, the theatre’s requirement for dramatic excess. It thus becomes clear that the presence of the spectre extends beyond the immediate purposes of particular writers or genres to expose a wider disruption of the relation between, and ontologies of, the living and the dead. The theoretical apparatus for this project is drawn primarily from deconstruction and psychoanalytic theory, with attention to the uncanny as an area in which the two intersect and overlap. These modes of analysis usefully highlight areas of disturbance and slippage within the linguistic and conceptual structures by which the living and dead are defined and understood. In adopting this approach, I aim to expand upon and complicate existing scholarship concerning the figure of the ghost in relation to sixteenth-century theological, philosophical, mythological, and popular discourses and traditions. I do so by demonstrating that the emergence of the uncanny arises through a culturally specific haunting of the form and language of Elizabethan treatments of the dead. The spectre thereby emerges as a figure that is as much the product as the cause of instabilities and erosion within the Elizabethan construction and containment of the dead.