The Ghost Story from the Middle Ages to the Twentieth Century

A descendant of the fireside tale, the short story has never neglected the uncanny. Indeed, the development of the literary ghost story helped to make short fiction what it is today: a genre of the intuited rather than the known, compressed and fleeting in its nature. These studies of the literary ghost story cast a light on its subjects and its methods. Beginning with the ghost story of popular report and following the form into print as the local expands to the global, these essays...
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A descendant of the fireside tale, the short story has never neglected the uncanny. Indeed, the development of the literary ghost story helped to make short fiction what it is today: a genre of the intuited rather than the known, compressed and fleeting in its nature. These studies of the literary ghost story cast a light on its subjects and its methods. Beginning with the ghost story of popular report and following the form into print as the local expands to the global, these essays trace the movement from the almost palpable manifestations of traditional ghosts to the psychological terrors of the modern form. Whether in the Usher or the Old Library Bram Stoker knew so well, the book's contributors still pursue the haunted moment and ask, 'Is a ghost there if no one sees it?'