Women And The Victorian Occult

Author : Tatiana Kontou
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 210 pages
File Size : 51,6 Mb
Release : 2013-10-31
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781317982524

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Women and the Victorian Occult by Tatiana Kontou Pdf

Increasingly, contemporary scholarship reveals the strong connection between Victorian women and the world of the nineteenth-century supernatural. Women were intrinsically bound to the occult and the esoteric from mediums who materialised spirits to the epiphanic experiences of the New Woman, from theosophy to telepathy. This volume addresses the various ways in which Victorian women expressed themselves and were constructed by the occult through a broad range of texts. By examining the roles of women as automatic writing mediums, spiritualists, authors, editors, theosophists, socialists and how they interpreted the occult in their life and work, the contributors in this edition return to sensation novels, ghost stories, autobiographies, séances and fashionable magazines to access the visible and invisible worlds of Victorian life. The variety of texts analysed by the authors in this collection demonstrates the many interpretations of the occult in nineteenth-century culture and the ways that women used supernatural imagery and language to draw attention to issues that bore immediate implications on their own lives. Either by catering for the fad of ghost stories or by giving public trance speeches women harnessed the metaphorical and financial forces of the supernatural. As the articles in this book demonstrate the occult was after all a female affair. This book was published as a special issue of Women's Writing.

Author : Tatiana Kontou
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 203 pages
File Size : 42,9 Mb
Release : 2008
Category : Electronic
ISBN : OCLC:475475785

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Women and the Victorian Occult by Tatiana Kontou Pdf

Author : D. Basham
Publisher : Springer
Page : 271 pages
File Size : 47,9 Mb
Release : 1992-01-14
Category : History
ISBN : 9780230374010

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The Trial of Woman by D. Basham Pdf

The Trial of Woman examines the impact of the nineteenth-century 'Occult Revival' on the Victorian Women's Movement, both in the lives of individual women and in the literature surrounding 'the Woman Question'. The book explores the Victorian Myth of Occult Womanhood and argues that the notion of female occult power was deeply influenced by the advent of Mesmerism, Spiritualism and Theosophy. This myth was itself a determining factor in women's struggle for legal and political rights.

Author : Diana Basham
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 128 pages
File Size : 51,5 Mb
Release : 1992
Category : Electronic
ISBN : 1349388815

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Trial of Woman by Diana Basham Pdf

Author : T. Kontou
Publisher : Springer
Page : 245 pages
File Size : 49,5 Mb
Release : 2009-08-26
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9780230240797

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Spiritualism and Women's Writing by T. Kontou Pdf

Using a wide range of unexplored archival material, this book examines the 'spectral' influence of Victorian spiritualism and Psychical Research on women's writing, analyzing the ways in which modern writers have both subverted and mimicked nineteenth century sources in their evocation of the séance.

Author : Amy Lehman
Publisher : McFarland
Page : 213 pages
File Size : 51,8 Mb
Release : 2014-01-10
Category : Performing Arts
ISBN : 9780786454716

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Victorian Women and the Theatre of Trance by Amy Lehman Pdf

Spiritualists in the nineteenth century spoke of the "Borderland," a shadowy threshold where the living communed with the dead, and where those in the material realm could receive comfort or advice from another world. The skilled performances of mostly female actors and performers made the "Borderland" a theatre, of sorts, in which dramas of revelation and recognition were produced in the forms of seances, trances, and spiritualist lectures. This book examines some of the most fascinating American and British actresses of the Victorian era, whose performances fairly mesmerized their audiences of amused skeptics and ardent believers. It also focuses on the transformative possibilities of the spiritualist theatre, revealing how the performances allowed Victorian women to speak, act, and create outside the boundaries of their restricted social and psychological roles.

Author : Jill Galvan
Publisher : Cornell University Press
Page : 225 pages
File Size : 54,8 Mb
Release : 2011-03-15
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9780801457388

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The Sympathetic Medium by Jill Galvan Pdf

The nineteenth century saw not only the emergence of the telegraph, the telephone, and the typewriter but also a fascination with séances and occult practices like automatic writing as a means for contacting the dead. Like the new technologies, modern spiritualism promised to link people separated by space or circumstance; and like them as well, it depended on the presence of a human medium to convey these conversations. Whether electrical or otherworldly, these communications were remarkably often conducted—in offices, at telegraph stations and telephone switchboards, and in séance parlors—by women. In The Sympathetic Medium, Jill Galvan offers a richly nuanced and culturally grounded analysis of the rise of the female medium in Great Britain and the United States during the Victorian era and through the turn of the century. Examining a wide variety of fictional explorations of feminine channeling (in both the technological and supernatural realms) by such authors as Henry James, George Eliot, Arthur Conan Doyle, Bram Stoker, Marie Corelli, and George Du Maurier, Galvan argues that women were often chosen for that role, or assumed it themselves, because they made at-a-distance dialogues seem more intimate, less mediated. Two allegedly feminine traits, sympathy and a susceptibility to automatism, enabled women to disappear into their roles as message-carriers.Anchoring her literary analysis in discussions of social, economic, and scientific culture, Galvan finds that nineteenth- and early twentieth-century feminization of mediated communication reveals the challenges that the new networked culture presented to prevailing ideas of gender, dialogue, privacy, and the relationship between body and self.

Author : Diana Basham
Publisher : NYU Press
Page : 253 pages
File Size : 55,5 Mb
Release : 1992-01-01
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 081471174X

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The Trial of Woman by Diana Basham Pdf

Anyone interested in Women's history, literary studies, or the occult will find this book engaging and valuable.

Author : Pam Grossman
Publisher : Gallery Books
Page : 304 pages
File Size : 53,5 Mb
Release : 2020-10-06
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
ISBN : 9781982145859

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Waking the Witch by Pam Grossman Pdf

From the podcast host of The Witch Wave and practicing witch Pam Grossman—who Vulture has dubbed the “Terry Gross of witches”—comes an exploration of the world’s fascination with witches, why they have intrigued us for centuries and why they’re more relevant now than ever. When you think of a witch, what do you picture? Pointy black hat, maybe a broomstick. But witches in various guises have been with us for millennia. In Waking the Witch, Pam Grossman explores the impact of the world’s most magical icon. From the idea of the femme fatale in league with the devil to the bewitching pop culture archetypes in Sabrina the Teenage Witch and Harry Potter; from the spooky ladies in fairy tales to the rise of contemporary witchcraft, witches reflect the power and potential of women. Part cultural analysis, part memoir, Waking the Witch traces the author’s own journey on the path to witchcraft, and how this has helped her find self-empowerment and purpose. It celebrates witches past, present, and future, and reveals the critical role they have played—and will continue to play—in the world as we know it. “Deftly illuminating the past while beckoning us towards the future, Waking the Witch has all the makings of a feminist classic. Wise, relatable, and real, Pam Grossman is the witch we need for our times” (Ami McKay, author of The Witches of New York).

Author : Shai Feraro
Publisher : Springer Nature
Page : 325 pages
File Size : 49,5 Mb
Release : 2020-06-11
Category : History
ISBN : 9783030466954

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Women and Gender Issues in British Paganism, 1945–1990 by Shai Feraro Pdf

This book explores the ways in which changing views on gender and the place of women in society during the latter half of the twentieth century affected women’s participation and standing within British Paganism. More specifically, it examines how British Wiccans and Wiccan-derived Pagans reacted to the rise of 'second-wave' feminism and the Women's Liberation Movement in the UK – with a special emphasis on the reception of feminist theory hailing from the USA – and to the emergence of feminist branches of Witchcraft and Goddess Spirituality during the 1970s and 1980s. The book draws on primary sources never before analyzed in an academic context and makes a valuable contribution to the growing body of knowledge on gender and religion during the twentieth century, as very little research has been conducted on the relations between the history of modern Paganism and that of second-wave feminism in the UK.

Author : Maren Tova Linett
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 253 pages
File Size : 50,6 Mb
Release : 2010-09-23
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781139825436

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The Cambridge Companion to Modernist Women Writers by Maren Tova Linett Pdf

Women played a central role in literary modernism, theorizing, debating, writing, and publishing the critical and imaginative work that resulted in a new literary culture during the early twentieth century. This volume provides a thorough overview of the main genres, the important issues, and the key figures in women's writing during the years 1890–1945. The essays treat the work of Woolf, Stein, Cather, H. D. Barnes, Hurston, and many others in detail; they also explore women's salons, little magazines, activism, photography, film criticism, and dance. Written especially for this Companion, these lively essays introduce students and scholars to the vibrant field of women's modernism.

Author : Nicola Bown,Carolyn Burdett,Pamela Thurschwell
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 336 pages
File Size : 49,9 Mb
Release : 2004-02-05
Category : Art
ISBN : 0521810159

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The Victorian Supernatural by Nicola Bown,Carolyn Burdett,Pamela Thurschwell Pdf

Publisher Description

Author : Miriam Wallraven
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 258 pages
File Size : 51,7 Mb
Release : 2015-06-05
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781317581383

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Women Writers and the Occult in Literature and Culture by Miriam Wallraven Pdf

Examining the intersection of occult spirituality, text, and gender, this book provides a compelling analysis of the occult revival in literature from the 1880s through the course of the twentieth century. Bestselling novels such as The Da Vinci Code play with magic and the fascination of hidden knowledge, while occult and esoteric subjects have become very visible in literature during the twentieth century. This study analyses literature by women occultists such as Alice Bailey, Dion Fortune, and Starhawk, and revisits texts with occult motifs by canonical authors such as Sylvia Townsend Warner, Leonora Carrington, and Angela Carter. This material, which has never been analysed in a literary context, covers influential movements such as Theosophy, Spiritualism, Golden Dawn, Wicca, and Goddess spirituality. Wallraven engages with the question of how literature functions as the medium for creating occult worlds and powerful identities, particularly the female Lucifer, witch, priestess, and Goddess. Based on the concept of ancient wisdom, the occult in literature also incorporates topical discourses of the twentieth century, including psychoanalysis, feminism, pacifism, and ecology. Hence, as an ever-evolving discursive universe, it presents alternatives to religious truth claims that often lead to various forms of fundamentalism that we encounter today. This book offers a ground-breaking approach to interpreting the forms and functions of occult texts for scholars and students of literary and cultural studies, religious studies, sociology, and gender studies.

Author : Annie Besant,C. W. Leadbeater
Publisher : Quest Books
Page : 98 pages
File Size : 40,8 Mb
Release : 2015-05-20
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9780835631402

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Thought Forms by Annie Besant,C. W. Leadbeater Pdf

What do ideas look like? This clairvoyant view of the shape, color, and atmospheric effect of mental energy includes black-and-white drawings and color plates to convey a graphic representation of the power of thought. Prominent Theosophists Annie Besant and C. W. Leadbeater were pioneers in asserting that thoughts are, indeed, things. Originally released in 1901, Thought-Forms is a seminal work on what thoughts “look” like. It had an impact far beyond the circle of its primary readers and greatly influenced leading artists such as Piet Mondrian and Wassily Kandinsky. Simple in style and clearly written, Thought Forms is a classic of the Theosophical tradition that has as much to say in our own day as it did a century ago. It lucidly sets forth a way to conceive of the invisible realms within and around us, with implications both for how we view the world and how we act in it. Discussion includes the meaning of color, thought forms built by music, and the nature of helpful thoughts. Based on the authors’ clairvoyant vision, its illustrations suggest the form thoughts take in relation, for instance, to anger, fear, intellect, sympathy, devotion, and a meditative state. Annie Besant herself describes the book’s purpose as being to “serve as a striking moral lesson to every reader, making him realize the nature and power of his thoughts, acting as a stimulus to the noble and a curb to the base. With this belief and hope we send it on its way.”

Author : Alex Owen
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Page : 345 pages
File Size : 51,5 Mb
Release : 2004-04-15
Category : History
ISBN : 9780226642055

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The Darkened Room by Alex Owen Pdf

A highly original study that examines the central role played by women as mediums, healers, and believers during the golden age of spiritualism in the late Victorian era, The Darkened Room is more than a meditation on women mediums—it's an exploration of the era's gender relations. The hugely popular spiritualist movement, which maintained that women were uniquely qualified to commune with spirits of the dead, offered female mediums a new independence, authority, and potential to undermine conventional class and gender relations in the home and in society. Using previously unexamined sources and an innovative approach, Alex Owen invokes the Victorian world of darkened séance rooms, theatrical apparitions, and moving episodes of happiness lost and regained. She charts the struggles between spiritualists and the medical and legal establishments over the issue of female mediumship, and provides new insights into the gendered dynamics of Victorian society.