Transatlantic Spiritualism and Nineteenth-Century American Literature
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Published: June 12, 2007
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 260
ISBN-13: 9781403978004
Subjects: Literary studies: 19th century; Spirit communication & mediumship, spiritualism; 19th Century American Literature; Literary Criticism; Religion - Classic Works; English; USA; American - General; Christianity - Literature & the Arts; United States - 19th Century; Religion / Christian Literature; General; 19th century; American literature; History; History and criticism; Spiritualism; Spiritualism in literature; United States
Description: "Why did so many Americans visit and write about seances? What are the connections between the "emergence" of spiritualism in 1848 and earlier kinds of supernatural phenomena? This book asks about the cultural and political meanings of spiritualism in the 19th century United States. In order to re-assess both transatlantic spiritualism and the culture in which it emerged, Bennett locates spiritualism within a highly technologized transatlantic capitalist culture. She argues that, though performances in which the dead speak through and to the living, white Americans' most profound anxieties about political and cultural dispossession, especially of Indians, are articulated."--Jacket.