Spectres of the Past: Reading the Phantom of Family Trauma in Neo-Victorian Fiction

Gruß S (2014)


Publication Language: English

Publication Type: Book chapter / Article in edited volumes

Publication year: 2014

Publisher: Routledge

Edited Volumes: Neo-Victorian Literature and Culture: Immersions and Revisitations

Series: Routledge Studies in Nineteenth Century Literature

City/Town: London, New York

Book Volume: 12

Pages Range: 123-136

Abstract

This article draws on Abraham and Torok’s psychoanalytical concepts of the phantom and the crypt as suitable tools for the analysis of trauma and spectrality. In my readings of John Harwood’s The Ghost Writer (2004) and Asylum (2013) and Diane Setterfield’s The Thirteenth Tale (2006), I explore the question of intergenerational (or phantomatic) haunting and family trauma and point to the ways in which these texts interlink traumatisation and (inter)textual haunting. At the same time, I maintain that these novels can be used to question our own stance on the neo-Victorian and the usefulness of trauma studies as an apt theoretical tool for neo-Victorian studies.

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How to cite

APA:

Gruß, S. (2014). Spectres of the Past: Reading the Phantom of Family Trauma in Neo-Victorian Fiction. In Böhm-Schnitker Nadine, Gruss Susanne (Eds.), Neo-Victorian Literature and Culture: Immersions and Revisitations. (pp. 123-136). London, New York: Routledge.

MLA:

Gruß, Susanne. "Spectres of the Past: Reading the Phantom of Family Trauma in Neo-Victorian Fiction." Neo-Victorian Literature and Culture: Immersions and Revisitations. Ed. Böhm-Schnitker Nadine, Gruss Susanne, London, New York: Routledge, 2014. 123-136.

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