Vision and Vacancy: The Fictions of J.S. Le FanuUnderlying the melodrama and moralism, the orthodoxy and mysticism of Uncle Silas, W. J. Mc Cormack has discovered a 'sinister vacancy from which authority has withdrawn'. The remark might be applied to the whole body of Sheridan Le Fanu's fiction. "Vision and Vacancy" follows the course of his attraction to the void, and his resistance to it, from the beginning to the end of his career. By placing his work within the appropriate contexts of early apparition narrative and modern ghost story, English and Continental novel, Walton's study provides not only the most thorough account of the richness of his techniques but shows how cosmopolitan influences were an inescapable condition of his (Anglo-) Irishness. |
Contents
From Canterbury to Country House | 31 |
Natural Supernaturalism | 73 |
Names For the Outlaw | 98 |
Copyright | |
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apparition appears Arden artist audience Balzac's beautiful Beckett Burke Carmilla character Cock and Anchor confessional dæmon Dangerfield darkness dead death demonic Dingwell disguise divine Dragon Volant dream Ethel evil eyes face Fanu's fiction father figure ghost story Gothic Guy Deverell haunted hero hero's heroine heroine's Hoffmann horror illusion imagination Lady Laura Le Fanu's Le Père Goriot Longcluse Longcluse's looks lost lover Marston masquerade Maud Maud's Mc Cormack Melmoth Melmoth the Wanderer mind mirror murder Mysterious Lodger narrative narrator narrator's nature novel outlaw painting phantasmagoria plot present Purcell Papers Radcliffe's reader reality Richard romance Sand-Man scene secret seems sense shadow Sheridan Le Fanu Spalatro spectral spirit Splendeurs Stanley Lake strange supernatural Swedenborgian tale terror theme things trompe l'œil turn uncanny Uncle Silas vacancy vampire Vanderhausen Vanity Fair Varbarriere Vautrin Veal victim vision visionary Wylder's Hand