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A History of the Modern British Ghost StoryA Failed Modernity: The Ghost Story as the Bad Conscience of the Historical Novel

A History of the Modern British Ghost Story: A Failed Modernity: The Ghost Story as the Bad... [This chapter focuses on Sir Walter Scott’s ghost stories, chiefly on his most famous story, ‘The Tapestried Chamber’ (1828). But it begins with another, less well-known tale, ‘The Highland Widow’ (1827), because a reading of that story helps to establish the relationship between ghost stories and historical novels. It is the underlying argument of this book that the ghost story, like any genre, needs to be understood in relation to other genres with which it is, at any given historical moment, in conversation or competition. And the first such genre, with which the modern ghost story is contemporaneous and that it sets out to complicate, to counter, or even to contradict, is the historical novel. This chapter, then, begins by identifying some of the characteristics of the form through a reading of ‘The Highland Widow’; it then draws a set of comparisons with Scott’s historical novels as a means of highlighting the specific work of the ghost story; and it ends with a closer examination of ‘The Tapestried Chamber’ to demonstrate the significance of the differences between the two genres.] http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png

A History of the Modern British Ghost StoryA Failed Modernity: The Ghost Story as the Bad Conscience of the Historical Novel

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Publisher
Palgrave Macmillan UK
Copyright
© Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited 2011
ISBN
978-1-349-32615-0
Pages
28 –56
DOI
10.1057/9780230316836_2
Publisher site
See Chapter on Publisher Site

Abstract

[This chapter focuses on Sir Walter Scott’s ghost stories, chiefly on his most famous story, ‘The Tapestried Chamber’ (1828). But it begins with another, less well-known tale, ‘The Highland Widow’ (1827), because a reading of that story helps to establish the relationship between ghost stories and historical novels. It is the underlying argument of this book that the ghost story, like any genre, needs to be understood in relation to other genres with which it is, at any given historical moment, in conversation or competition. And the first such genre, with which the modern ghost story is contemporaneous and that it sets out to complicate, to counter, or even to contradict, is the historical novel. This chapter, then, begins by identifying some of the characteristics of the form through a reading of ‘The Highland Widow’; it then draws a set of comparisons with Scott’s historical novels as a means of highlighting the specific work of the ghost story; and it ends with a closer examination of ‘The Tapestried Chamber’ to demonstrate the significance of the differences between the two genres.]

Published: Nov 17, 2015

Keywords: Historical Trauma; Historical Moment; External Narrator; British Army; Narrative Frame

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