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A Counter-History of Crime FictionPseudo-Sciences and the Occult

A Counter-History of Crime Fiction: Pseudo-Sciences and the Occult [In the course of the nineteenth century the increasing importance of science changed the role that ‘mystery’ played in the collective imagination. Even before Queen Victoria’s reign Thomas Carlyle had reassessed common religious and popular beliefs in a chapter of Sartor Resartus (1833–34) entitled ‘Natural Supernaturalism’. While acknowledging the value of science, Carlyle questioned its mechanical view of the universe, refusing to renounce either faith or ‘mystery’, and relocating the supernatural in the inner dimension of the human being: Witchcraft, and all manner of Spectre-work, and Demonology, we have now named Madness, and Diseases of the Nerves. Seldom reflecting that still the new question comes upon us: What is Madness, what are Nerves? Ever, as before, does Madness remain a mysteriousterrific, altogether infernal boiling up of the Nether Chaotic Deep …1 Victorians were attracted both to the aberrant side and to the ‘superhuman’ powers of the mind. While the ancient abyss of hell seemed to close its doors, previously unfathomed inner abysses opened up their depths in a world whose coordinates of time and space were being traced with increasing exactitude.] http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png

A Counter-History of Crime FictionPseudo-Sciences and the Occult

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Publisher
Palgrave Macmillan UK
Copyright
© Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited 2007
ISBN
978-0-230-59462-3
Pages
66 –90
DOI
10.1057/9780230234536_5
Publisher site
See Chapter on Publisher Site

Abstract

[In the course of the nineteenth century the increasing importance of science changed the role that ‘mystery’ played in the collective imagination. Even before Queen Victoria’s reign Thomas Carlyle had reassessed common religious and popular beliefs in a chapter of Sartor Resartus (1833–34) entitled ‘Natural Supernaturalism’. While acknowledging the value of science, Carlyle questioned its mechanical view of the universe, refusing to renounce either faith or ‘mystery’, and relocating the supernatural in the inner dimension of the human being: Witchcraft, and all manner of Spectre-work, and Demonology, we have now named Madness, and Diseases of the Nerves. Seldom reflecting that still the new question comes upon us: What is Madness, what are Nerves? Ever, as before, does Madness remain a mysteriousterrific, altogether infernal boiling up of the Nether Chaotic Deep …1 Victorians were attracted both to the aberrant side and to the ‘superhuman’ powers of the mind. While the ancient abyss of hell seemed to close its doors, previously unfathomed inner abysses opened up their depths in a world whose coordinates of time and space were being traced with increasing exactitude.]

Published: Oct 9, 2015

Keywords: Collective Imagination; Supernatural Explanation; Pencil Drawing; Detective Fiction; Psychical Research

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