The Supernatural and English Fiction

This book is the first ever to describe and discuss all the principal English writers who have handled the subject of the supernatural. Among those included in Glen Cavaliero's absorbing study are James Hogg, Sheridan Le Fanu, Henry James, Rudyard Kipling, Walter de la Mare, M. R. James, John Cowper Powys, William Golding, Iris Murdoch, and Muriel Spark. As well as analysing the senses in which the supernatural may be understood, he relates them to different kinds of fiction, such as the Gothic novel, the occultist romance, the ghost story, novels of paranormal psychology, nature mysticism, and late twentieth-century uses of allegory and fable. He examines the impact of supernaturalist themes upon naturalistic writers, and discusses the relevance of the supernatural to the question of the truthfulness of fiction, and to contemporary literary theory and its ideological accompaniments.