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My research aims at investigating the function of ghostly entities in the field of Italian popular literature between the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, by considering the fiction of Carolina Invernizio (1851–1916) and Matilde Serao (1856–1927), two leading authors of the Italian feuilleton, which was directed at petty-bourgeois and proletarian readers. Invernizio wrote some successful novels focused on the "buried alive" woman, whose apparitions are dreadful and uncanny but, at the same time, lead the "living" people to right the wrong, to punish acts of violence, to resolve the faulty lines in society which were provoked by the patriarchal system's excesses or by human evil. This paper examines Invernizio's La sepolta viva ("The Woman buried Alive", 1896), which shows an innovative portrayal of a woman aspiring to a greater role by escaping from gender subjugation. This novel, a bestseller of a prolific writer who published more than 120 novels in forty years, was strongly appreciated in Italy and was repeatedly reprinted and translated into English and Spanish. Matilde Serao, a long-established investigative journalist, was the first woman to edit an Italian journal and to author important works within the Verista movement, including Il ventre di Napoli (The Belly of Naples, 1884) and Il paese di cuccagna (The Land of Cockayne,1891). Serao highlighted the hermeneutical role of the fantastic, which reveals a hidden and obscure reality, allowing people to grasp the deep, unconscious reasons for their actions. In "Barchetta fantasma", (Little ghostly Boat") and "Leggenda di Capodimonte" ("The Legend of Capodimonte"), in the collection Leggende Napoletane (Neapolitan Legends, 1881), ghosts sanction deviant forms of passion. In ""O Munaciello" ("The Little Monk"), also in Leggende napoletane, Serao shows the human side of her literary fantastic by depicting a deformed child, the scapegoat for the community, who returns to the world after death, and embodies both a sad, irrepressible need for love and a willingness to avenge injustice. In "La donna dall'abito nero e dal ramo di corallo rosso" ("The Woman with the Black Dress and the Red Coral Brooch") (1883), the ghost personifies the "Jungian shadow", the rejected side of the self. Ghosts in Invernizio and Serao's works represent a means of defending reasons based on instincts and passions while proposing a more active role for women, giving literary and human dignity to the "difference". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

William of Newburgh'sHistoria rerum Anglicarum(c.1198) is one of the foremost literary artefacts of the late twelfth century. Contained within Book V are four narratives that detail encounters with the walking dead (‘revenants’). This article contends that the specific placement of these narratives within theHistoriaencourages the reader to make a metaphysical connection between the activities of the revenant and the conduct of social malcontents. The paper analyses the medieval concept of monstrousness and the cultural context of theHistoria’s creation, and argues that learned theories of disease causation underscored the base narratology of the four revenant encounters. Following an appraisal of the unrest caused by Williams FitzOsbert and Longchamp, as well as the kings of England and France, the paper concludes by evaluating the ways in which their social monstrosity was encapsulated by the destabilising and destructive tendencies of the walking corpse. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper investigates the connection between the spiritualist movement and the literary ghost story, both of which came to prominence during the second half of the nineteenth century. While existing critical literature has viewed both phenomena as symptoms of a wider Victorian fascination with the supernatural and the possibility of an afterlife, little attention has been paid to the relationship between them. This paper argues for a fresh understanding of the post-1850 ghost story, one that reads the appearance, behavior, and agency of literary ghosts as a dramatic representation of a new conception of the dead--a conception created largely by spiritualism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Titus Andronicusis a play concerned with bodily dismemberments and other “unspeakable” acts, which, under the framework of revenge tragedy, refuse to be forgotten. What is lost from the world of the play always, in effect, seems to return, haunting characters and playgoers alike in the form of apparitions not yet laid to rest, severed body parts that return to the space of the stage, and language itself that, however inarticulate or unspeakable the act, serves to remind us of what was present before: “O, handle not the theme, to talk of hands, / Lest we remember still that we have none” (3.2.29–30). This paper examines the representation of ghosts in Shakespeare's early Roman play, exploring how perpetrators of violent acts and violated bodies are haunted by spectral returns, and to what end. Although not often commented on by critics, Titus's ghosts allow us to gain new insights on the play's textual and theatrical bodies, for, despite the centrality of Lavinia's body in the play's feminist criticism, it is in fact the male body, not Lavinia's, that is most haunted by “groaning shadows that are gone” (1.1.126). [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article examines the evolution of the haunted landscape in T. S. Eliot's poem "The Waste Land." Topics discussed include the possibility of a science of religion, Eliot's interest in anthropology and alternative systems of belief, exploration of intellectual territory, and Eliot's paper "The Interpretation of Primitive Ritual" on so-called primitive societies by Western anthropologists.

In the field of literary theory, this article articulates two concepts: the imaginary (defined following Gilbert Durand's and Cornelius Castoriadis' theorical proposals) and fiction. This paper discusses how the imaginary perspective confronts recurrent problems in fiction theories, and proposes an epistemological statute for fiction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A literary criticism is presented of the 2005 novel "Lunar Park" by Bret Easton Ellis. Topics discussed include the novel's dealing with feelings of emasculation by men and feelings of disempowerment by writers, the use of and meaning of ghosts in the novel, and the ways in which Ellis' own life and experiences are used in his fiction.

The ghost stories of M. R. James, considered by many to be the best in the English language, are currently enjoying critical attention. Yet despite their richness in imagery suggestive of modern critical concerns - sexuality, cultural/political anxieties - this paper argues that James's gothic imagination was spurred by a particular cognitive condition which distinguished the scholar/author. Arguing that James's intellectual outlook which was noted as perplexing by his contemporaries and biographers, was the result of an autistic spectrum condition, this paper aims to demonstrate how James's cognitive style dictated his choice of literary form and narrative style. The analysis explores the way in which James's insistence on 'reticence' in the creation of horror reflects his own essential nature, and argues that James 'managed' his fear of change and the uncontrollable in and through his fiction - all of which resulted in significant innovations in the ghost story form. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]