BEHIND THE MEDIUM'S MASK: FOREWORD

Revista Canaria de Estudios Ingleses, 2005

The aim of this article is to propose a reading of Michèle Roberts' neo-Victorian novel, In the Red Kitchen (1990), in the light of recent work on the relationship between mainstream science -for example, the study of nerve illnesses-and the occult sciences in the second half of the Victorian period. This novel examines the connections between hysteria and spiritualism, as well as challenges and demystifies the scientific discourse of early psychology, thus proposing a "hysterical" narrative. Lastly, it will be argued that Roberts' novel is part of a recent trend that can be found in neo-Victorian fiction in which nineteenthcentury science and the occult interrelate.

Nineteenth-Century Gender Studies, 2020

Critical attention to the Victorian supernatural has flourished over the last twenty-five years. Whether it is spiritualism or Theosophy, mesmerism or the occult, the dozens of book-length studies and hundreds of articles that have appeared recently reflect the avid scholarly discussion of Victorian mystical practices. Designed both for those new to the field and for experts, this volume is organized into sections covering the relationship between Victorian spiritualism and science, the occult and politics, and the culture of mystical practices. The Ashgate Research Companion to Nineteenth-Century Spiritualism and the Occult brings together some of the most prominent scholars working in the field to introduce current approaches to the study of nineteenth-century mysticism and to define new areas for research.

2015

Born in 1835 in East Bloomfield, New York, Amanda Theodosia Jones has been described as a teacher, inventor, businesswoman, poet, and Spiritualist. Jones engaged in many intellectual and artistic practices over her lifetime, but her autobiography details how each was informed by the one practice that she considered to be her true calling: her spiritual practice as a psychic medium. Her work as an autobiographer reveals how she attempted to contextualize her achievements and interests to demonstrate how they were unified by the guiding principles of the spirit world. As such, I aim to examine Jones’s practice and self-representation from a rhetorical perspective, considering how, in her autobiography, she accounted for engaging in what were considered strictly male endeavors. I ask: how did Jones use the power of her various practices to render her gender transgressions palatable to a nineteenth-century readership and what role did her spirit controls play in tempering the effect of ...

Journal for Scientific Exploration , 2016

Madame d'Esperance was a physical medium, well-known for her materialized forms, which bereaved sitters often recognized as their dead relatives. A critical evaluation is made of her acclaimed autobiographical account, Shadow Land, with a particular focus on her activities, first in Newcastle, England, and then in Gothenburg, Sweden. In this process, we had access to recently discovered archives and rare publications. A presentation is made of some of the fraudulent methods used by physical mediums and the possible psychological processes behind the remarkable experiences of the sitters attending séances.

Journal of Scientific Exploration, 2016

Madame d'Esperance was a physical medium, well-known for her materialized forms which bereaved sitters often recognized as their dead relatives. A critical evaluation is made of her acclaimed biographical account, Shadow Land, with a particular focus on her activities, first in Newcastle, England and then in Gothenburg, Sweden. In this process we had access to recently discovered archives and rare publications. A presentation is made of some of the fraudulent methods used by physical mediums and the possible psychological processes behind the remarkable experiences of the sitters attending séances.

windbridge.org

1962

2005

Spirituality has had a profound effect and influence upon all of humanity since the beginning of time. Primitive cave dwellers who looked at natural phenomena (like thunder and lightening) as being godly signs from a force much greater than themselves, wondered, ...