Publisher:
Lang, Peter, AG, Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften, Bern
Eighteenth-century England did not only see the rise of the novel, but also the rise of genres of what we now call the fantastic, such as imaginary voyages and apparition narratives. Combining theoretical reflection and cultural analysis, the author...
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Eighteenth-century England did not only see the rise of the novel, but also the rise of genres of what we now call the fantastic, such as imaginary voyages and apparition narratives. Combining theoretical reflection and cultural analysis, the author of this book investigates the origins, and demonstrates the formal and historical identity of a great variety of texts, which have never been considered as part of the same family. The fantastic, he argues, is an intrinsically modern mode, which uses the devices of realistic representation to describe supernatural phenomena. Its origins can be foun
Table of Contents; LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 7; ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 9; INTRODUCTION 11; CHAPTER ONE Historicizing the Fantastic 17; The Scope and History of the Fantastic 17; The Literature of Ontological Variability 25; For a Prehistory of the Fantastic 38; CHAPTER TWO The Natural, the Supernatural, and the Problem of Mediation 61; Empirical Supernaturalism: Science and Philosophy 63; Empirical Supernaturalism: Providential Narratives 69; The Novel as Providential Narrative 73; The Naturalization of the Monstrous 86; Ghosts in the Age of Reason 97
CHAPTER THREE From Empirical Demonology to Supernatural Fiction 103Empirical Demonology: Glanvill, Baxter, Aubrey 105; The Autonomization of Apparition Narratives 115; The Dramatization of Ontological Hesitation (I): The Apparition-Evidence 125; Defoe and the Supernatural 129; The Dramatization of Ontological Hesitation (II): The Duncan Campbell Narratives 137; The Castle of Otranto and the Aestheticization of the Supernatural 143; CHAPTER FOUR The Rise of Imaginary Voyages 151; Precursors: The Man in the Moone and the Marvels of the New World 152
Precursors: The Natural and the Supernatural in Cyrano's Comical History 157The Adventures of Mr. T. S.: Empiricism, Monsters, and the Wrath of God 161; The Blazing World and the Power of Fancy 166; Iter Lunare: Imaginary Voyages as Conjectural Literature 174; The Consolidator: Fantastic Representation as Allegorical Satire 178; 'Criticism Was for a While Lost in Wonder': The Empirical and the Monstrous in Gulliver's Travels 183; Gulliver's Epigones: Ontological Hesitation and the Persistence of Satire 188; The Extraordinary Case of Automathes: Nature, Revelation, and Intelligent Design 196
Peter Wilkins and the Transformation of the Supernatural 200John Daniel, William Bingfield, and the Transformation of the Monstrous 205; CONCLUSION: Experimenting with the Supernatural 213; BIBLIOGRAPHY 221; INDEX 233;
