Supernatural Fiction

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Supernatural Fiction

1.

Seven Masters of Supernatural Fiction
by Edward Wagenknecht. 216 pgs.

Book

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An unusual grouping of writers, this insightful study includes some, like Henry James, who are indisputably leaders of the "canon" regardless of genre, and others, like Algernon Blackwood, who wrote almost exclusively in the supernatural; all, however, were clearly masters of this genre. The seven chapters, respectively on J. Sheridan Le Fanu, Henry James, M. R. James, Algernon Blackwood, Arthur Machen, Walter de la Mare, and Marjorie Bowen, each examine plot, character, mood, and setting in a traditional sense, sparked by personal observations and unique comparisons. Each is preceded by a biographical sketch and documented by bibliography and notes. For some, these chapters may be the fullest accounts ever published. All demonstrate the happy combination of a scholar's insights and a fan's enthusiasm.

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Title Page

Contents

Preface

J. Sheridan Le Fanu

Henry James

M. R. James

Algernon Blackwood

Arthur Machen

Walter De La Mare

Marjorie Bowen

Notes

SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING

Index

About the Author
2.

The Supernatural in Short Fiction of the Americas: The Other World in the New World
by Dana Del George. 156 pgs.

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Title Page

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1: Coming to Terms with American Supernatural Short Fiction

2: The Law of Authority

3: The Law of Science

4: The Law of Total Fiction

Conclusion

Bibliography

Index
3.

Casting the Runes, and Other Ghost Stories
by M. R. James. 360 pgs.

Book

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This selection of twenty-one short stories by M.R. James--a first-class writer of supernatural fiction--represents his best work, including "Count Magnus," "The Rose Garden," "The Uncommon Prayer-book," "Rats," "The Malice of Inanimate Objects," and "A Vignette," as well as the title story.

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Title Page

Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Note on the Text

Select Bibliography

A Chronology of M. R. James

Canon Alberic's Scrap-Book

The Mezzotint

Number 13

Count Magnus

'Oh, Whistle, and I'Ll Come to You, My Lad'

The Treasure of Abbot Thomas

A School Story

The Rose Garden

The Tractate Middoth

Casting the Runes

The Stalls of Barchester Cathedral

Mr Humphreys and His Inheritance

The Diary of Mr Poynter

An Episode of Cathedral History

The Uncommon Prayer-Book

A Neighbour's Landmark

A Warning to the Curious

Rats

The Experiment

The Malice of Inanimate Objects

A Vignette

Explanatory Notes

Appendix M. R. James on Ghost Stories
4.

Ugetsu Monogatari: Tales of Moonlight and Rain: A Complete English Version of the Eighteenth-Century Japanese Collection of Tales of the Supernatural
by Ueda Akinari, Leon M. Zolbrod. 280 pgs.

Book

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Title Page

Translator's Foreword

Contents

Illustrations

Introduction

Notes on the Introduction

Preface

Volume One

I: White Peak (shiramine)

II: Chrysanthemum Tryst (kikuka No Chigiri)

Volume Two

III: The House Amid the Thickets (asaji Ga Yado)

IV: The Carp That Came to My Dream (muō No Rigyo)

Volume Three

V: Bird of Paradise (buppōsō)

VI: The Caldron of Kibitsu (kibitsu No Kama)

VII: The Lust of the White Serpent (jasei No In)

Volume Four

VIII: The Blue Hood (aozukin)

Volume Five

IX: Wealth and Poverty (himpuku-Ron)

Notes on the Text

Appendix 1: Imperial Succession in the Twelfth Century

Select Bibliography
5.

Morgan Library Ghost Stories
by Inge Dupont, Hope Mayo. 112 pgs.

Book

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Title Page

Contents

List of Illustrations

Introduction

Morgan Library Ghost Stories

Old Macgregor: A Tale of Hallowe'En

Lily Hodge

Lex Talionis

Author's Note

The Ballad of the Belle

The Clergyman's Bargain

Non Furtum Facies Richard Priest

Bibliographical Note

Slide Lecture Liran Ludeley

Notes on the Contributors

Colophon
6.

Censored by Confucius: Ghost Stories by Yuan Mei
by Kam Louie, Louise Edwards. 223 pgs.

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"The one hundred-some stories depict the important role ghosts played in the lives of the Chinese, as well as revealing a great deal about sex, revenge, transvestism, corruption, and other topics banned by Mei's puritanical mid-Qing society". -- Reference & Research Book News.

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Contents

Preface

Deputy Prefect LI

Scholar Cai

Revenge of the Skull

General Zhao Spears the Cheeky Monster

The Magistrate of Pingyang

Tricking the Thunder God

Ghosts Are Afraid of Those Unafraid of Death

Scholar Qiu

Ghosts Have Only Three Tricks

Master Chen Qingke Blows the Ghost Away

The Tall Ghost is Captured

The Lady Ghost of the Western Garden

A Sentry is Struck by Lightning

In Which Hunters Expurgate the Fox Fairies

The Goats Who Fulfilled Their Fate

Capturing a Ghost

Mr. Xu

The Hairy People of Qin

The Human Ape

The Human Prawn

The Duck's Lover

The Spirit of the Turtle Stone

Ghosts Who Play with Firecrackers May Burn Themselves

Kaxiong

Freak Wind

The Old Woman Who Was Transformed into a Wolf

A Loyal Dog Makes Use of Another Dog's Body

Leng Qiujiang

The Nailed-Up Specter Makes Good Her Escape

The Messenger of Death Who Loved His Wine

A Fox Fairy Plays Guanyin for Three Years

Butterfingered Scholar Wu

The Patriarch of Fox Fairies

Swindled by the Earth God's Wife

The Good Little Ghost

The Ghosts Who Pretended They Could Speak Mandarin

The City God Gets Drunk

Two Great Ways to Deal with Ghosts

The Immortal Prostitute

Zhang Youhua

A Ghost Borrows an Official Title for a Daughter's Marriage

The Bear

Two Corpses Make Love in the Wilderness

King Buffalo Head

The Muddleheaded Ghost

The Ghost That Stood in Awe of the Powerful

The Lovesick Ghost

Thunder Strikes the Earth God

Zhang Guangxiong

The Blue-Capped Demon

Cousin Raccoon

An Imprisoned Ghost

A Fox Fairy and a Ghost Invade the Stomach

The Immortal Fox Fairy Hangs Itself

Ghosts Hate Poverty

Xiao Fu

A Jeweled Pagoda Formed by Ghosts

The Land Without Doors

Scholar Song

Scholar Zhuang

Little Mischief

Commander Wang

The Sea Monster of Jiangxi

The Sparrows Repay a Debt of Kindness

Quan Gu

A Ghost is Chased off by a Ghost

The Folding Immortal

Demons Are Terrified of Rationalism

Spiritual Man Luo Catches the Wrong Demon

The Thunder God Strikes Wang San

Memories of Suiyan

The Cool Old Man

A Tiger Steals the God of Literature's Head

Revenge on the Warrior of the Flowers

The Wooden Guardsmen

A Woman Transforms into a Man

The Prince of Guazhou

Yang Er

Helping a Ghost Get Revenge

A Donkey Helps Solve a Strange Case

Scholar Zhang

The Reincarnation of Cai Jing

Hanging onto the Ears of a Tiger

Animals and Humans Are Equally Unpredictable

A Ghost Buys Herself a Son

Poor Ghosts Haunt, Rich Ghosts Don't Bother

Revenge of the Wronged Wife

A Ghost Makes an Offering of Dumplings

You Don't Have to Be Virtuous to Become a God

In Which the Ghost Sues Her Loved One

Elder Brother Ding

Miss Wang Er

Double Blossom Temple

The Female Impersonator

Tools of the Sex Trade

Stealing Ginseng

Stealing a Painting

Stealing a Pair of Boots

Stealing a Wall

Daylight Ghosts

About the Translators
7.

Ghosts and the Japanese: Cultural Experience in Japanese Death Legends
by Michiko Iwasaka, Barre Toelken. 140 pgs.

Book

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The authors show that everyday beliefs and customs, particularly death traditions, offer special insight into the culture of Japan.

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Title Page

Contents

Illustrations

Color Plates in Part III

Preface

Part I: An Introduction to the Left Stairway

Part II: Death Customs in Contemporary Japan

Part III: Japanese Death Legends and Vernacular Culture

Epilogue

Bibliography

Index
8.

The Tale of Terror: A Study of the Gothic Romance
by Edith Birkhead. 246 pgs.

Book

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Title Page

Preface

Contents

Chapter I Introductory.

Chapter II the Beginnings of Gothic Romance.

Chapter III "The Novel of Suspense." Mrs. Radcliffe.

Chapter IV the Novel of Terror. Lewis and Maturin.

Chapter V the Oriental Tale of Terror. Beckford.

Chapter VI Godwin and the Rosicrucian Novel.

Chapter VII Satires on the Novel of Terror.

Chapter VIII Scott and the Novel of Terror.

Chapter IX Later Developments of the Tale of Terror.

Chapter X Short Tales of Terror.

Chapter XI American Tales of Terror.

Chapter XII Conclusion.

Index
9.

Mystery in Children's Literature: From the Rational to the Supernatural
by Adrienne E. Gavin, Christopher Routledge. 228 pgs.

Book

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Mystery in Children's Literature charts a development from religious mystery through rationally solved detective fictions to insoluble supernatural and horror mysteries. Written by internationally recognized scholars in the field, these 13 original essays offer challenging and innovative readings of both classic and popular mysteries for children. This volume will be essential and stimulating for anyone with an interest in children's literature or in mystery fiction.

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Contents

Notes on Contributors

1: Mystery in Children’s Literature from the Rational to the Supernatural: an Introduction

Works Cited

2: ‘so Great and Beautiful That I Cannot Write Them’: Religious Mystery and Children's Literature

Works Cited

3: Nancy's Ancestors: the Mystery of Imaginative Female Power in the Secret Gardenand a Little Princess

Works Cited

4: The Juvenile Detective and Social Class: Mark Twain, Scouting for Girls, and the Nancy Drew Mysteries

Works Cited

5: Children's Detective Fiction and the ‘perfect Crime’ of Adulthood

Works Cited

6: Digging Up the Family Plot: Secrets, Mystery, and the Blytonesque

Works Cited

7: Plotting the Past: the Detective as Historian in the Novels of Philippa Pearce

Works Cited

8: The Secret Development of a Girl Writer: Louise Fitzhugh's Harriet the Spy

Works Cited

9: Apparition and Apprehension: Supernatural Mystery and Emergent Womanhood in Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, and Novels by Margaret Mahy

Works Cited

10: Possessed by the Beast: Subjectivity and Agency in Pictures in the Darkand Foxspell

Works Cited

11: ‘there Are Worse Things Than Ghosts’: Reworking Horror Chronotopes in Australian Children's Fiction

Works Cited

12: The Mysteries of Postmodern Epistemology: Stratemeyer, Stine, and Contemporary Mystery for Children

Works Cited

13: Harry Potter and the Mystery of Ordinary Life

Works Cited

14: Enigma's Variation: the Puzzling Mysteries of Avi, Ellen Raskin, Diana Wynne Jones, and Chris Van Allsburg

Works Cited

Index
10.

Fantastic Literature: A Critical Reader (Includes discussion of supernatural fiction in multiple chapters)
by David Sandner. 360 pgs.

Book

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Unprecedented in range and scope, this volume serves as a record of and reference for the development of fantasy literature. Working to be inclusive, rather than exclusive, opening a dialogue wherever possible, Sandner presents the full range of debates concerning the fantastic and its relationship to the sublime, the Gothic, children's literature, romance and comedy, and the purposes of imaginative literature. Introductions to each essay, presented in full or excerpted for the most relevant commentary, situate the reader in the history of fantasy literature and the criticism it has inspired.

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Title Page

Copyright Acknowledgments

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Phaedrus: 388-366 B.C.

The Poetics: C. 334-323 B.C.

An Apology for Poetry: 1595

“the Fairy Way of Writing”: 1712

Letters on Chivalry and Romance: 1762

On the Pleasure Derived from Objects of Terror: 1773

Letter and Biographia Literaria: 1797 and 1817

On the Supernatural in Poetry: 1826

On the Supernatural in Fictitious Composition: 1827

Frauds on the Fairies: 1853

Fairy Stories: 1868

The Fantastic Imagination: 1890

Fairy Tales: 1908

The Uncanny: 1919

Introduction to Supernatural Horror in Literature: 1927

Critics: 1956

The Mythos of Summer: Romance: 1957

Characteristics of Genre and Plot Composition in Dostoevsky's Works: 1963

Definitions of Territory: Fantasy: 1970

The Fantastic: a Structural Approach to a Literary Genre: 1970

From Elfland to Poughkeepsie: 1973

Introduction to Modern Fantasy: 1975

The Fantastic and Fantasy: 1976

The Evolution of a Word: 1979

Magical Narratives: on the Dialectical Use of Genre Criticism: 1981

The Encounter with Fantasy: 1982

Clinamen: Towards a Theory of Fantasy: 1982

Literary Fantasy and Ecological Comedy: 1985

“fantasy” from Critical Terms for Science Fiction and Fantasy: 1986

Prelude: Nameless Things and Thingless Names: 1987

Fantasy as Mode, Genre, Formula: 1992

“fantasy” from the Encyclopedia of Fantasy: 1997

Joseph Addison: the First Critic of the Fantastic: 2000

Fabling to the Near Night: 2000

Marxism and Fantasy: an Introduction: 2002

Index

About the Author
11.

The Ghosts of Modernity
by Jean-Michel P. Rebate. 260 pgs.

Book

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Jean-Michel Rabate, the eminent French Joycean, combines psychoanalytical and philosophical concepts in rereading the history of modernity to give a more precise meaning to the term modernism. Rabate focuses throughout on a single theme, the ghostly nature of modernity. In writing a history of the concept of modernity with the awareness that the radically new has often been subject to the effects of the return of the repressed. Rabate analyzes the notion of loss in various fields: in Freudian aesthetics of color, in literary history, and in philosophy. The postmodernist fascination with a lost object allows a reconsideration of the boundaries of such terms as modernism and postmodernism. The conclusion ties together all these motifs, from Joyce to Barthes, and shows their theoretical basis in Marx's criticism of ideology and in Freud's consideration of mourning. From the analysis of "color" as an unthinkable object of discourse to an aesthetics of the unpresentable, Rabate points to the possibility of an "ethics of mourning", which would seem capable of overcoming the dead end of history whose ending condemns it to eternal repetition.

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Crosscurrents: Comparative Studies in European Literature and Philosophy Edited by S. E. Gontarski

Contents

Foreword

Preface

Introduction: The Penultimate . . . Is Dead

One: The Masters of Colors That Know

Two: André Breton's Ghostly Stance

Three: Roland Barthes, Ghostwriter of Modernity

Four: Mallarmé's Crypts

Five: Verlaine and Mallarmé Between the Angels and the Ghosts of Language

Six: Broch's Modernity as Crime, or the Sleepwalking of Theory

Seven: Beckett and the Ghosts of Departed Quantities

Eight: Shades of the Color Gray

Nine: Uncoupling Modernism

Conclusion

Notes

Index
12.

The Supernatural in Tragedy
by Charles Edward Whitmore. 379 pgs.

Book

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Title Page

Preface

Contents

Introduction: Definitions and Exclusions

Part I: Antiquity

Chapter I: Greek Tragedy

Chapter II: Seneca

Part II: The Middle Ages and the Renaissance

Chapter III: The Medieval Sacred Drama

Chapter IV: The Renaissance in Italy

Chapter V: The Elizabethan Age in England

Part III: Some Modern Aspects

Chapter VI: The Period of Subsidence

Chapter VII: The Modern Revival

Conclusion: Function of the Supernatural in Tragedy

Bibliography

Index
13.

Unraveling Stories: Exploring the Juncture of Ghost Story and Local Tragedy, in Journal of Folklore Research
by Ilana Harlow. 24 pgs.

Journal Article
14.

"The Rules of Folklore" in the Ghost Stories of M. R. James, in Folklore
by Jacqueline Simpson. 10 pgs.

Journal Article

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