THE VICTORIAN GHOST STORY AND THEOLOGY FROM LE FANU TO JAMES ZOË LEHMANN IMFELD The Victorian Ghost Story and Theology Zoë   Lehmann   Imfeld The Victorian Ghost Story and Theology From Le Fanu to James Zoë   Lehmann   Imfeld University of Bern Bern, Switzerland ISBN 978-3-319-30218-8 ISBN 978-3-319-30219-5 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-30219-5 Library of Congress Control Number: 2016940610 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2 016 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifi cally the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfi lms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specifi c statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the pub- lisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. Cover illustration: © Illustration by Gustave Doré from Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The Raven’. Rare Books and Special Collections Division of the Library of Congress, Washington, DC. Printed on acid-free paper This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature The registered company is Springer International Publishing AG Switzerland And the fallen human soul, at its best, must be as a diminishing glass, and that a broken one, to the mighty truths of the universe round it; and the wider the scope of its glance, and the vaster the truths into which it obtains an insight, the more fantastic their distortion is likely to be, as the winds and vapors trouble the fi eld of the telescope most when it reaches farthest. John Ruskin, Stones of Venice A CKNOWLEDGEMENTS The research for this book was made possible by a Marie Heim-Vögtlin Grant from the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF). The MHV grant is aimed at female scholars who are balancing an academic career with family commitments. As the mother of very young children, I cannot describe the value of such a grant, and I think it should be considered the jewel in the crown of the Swiss academic system. I give my enduring thanks to Virginia Richter, who when I turned up on her academic-doorstep took me under her wing, and has provided guidance and support ever since. Her advice and insight have been invalu- able from the conception of this research idea to its fi nal manuscript. I am also indebted to Alison Milbank, whose careful and thoughtful advice at various stages of this book made me examine and re-examine both my literary criticism and use of theology to produce something sound. This book has also benefi ted from many and repeated readings by my colleagues at the University of Bern, who were incredibly generous with their time and offered comments and suggestions that greatly improved the resulting work. Likewise thanks go to my ‘Emeritus-RA’, with whom many a theological discussion has taken place over ‘extraordinary’ after- noon teas in Oxford. Long may they continue. I must of course also give my sincere thanks to William Desmond and Charles Taylor, whose writings provide fundamental background to my theoretical claims, and both of whom were kind enough to provide feed- back and suggestions to early parts of this book. I am very lucky to have been on the receiving end of a great deal of sup- port from Ben Doyle and his team at Palgrave Macmillan. My thanks also vii viii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS to Francesca Lehmann and Lobsang Gammeter for carefully proofreading the manuscript. Last but of course not least, this book would not have been possible without the support and patience of my husband Bruno, and my children Toby and Sophie, who will hopefully one day read ghost stories with as much glee as I do. C ONTENTS 1 Introduction: Rethinking the Victorian Ghost Story 1 Rethinking Victorian Agnosticism 2 Rethinking Victorian Society 4 Reviving Theological Ghosts 6 A Journey through the Stories of Machen, MRJ, Le Fanu and Henry James 7 2 Haunted by the Ghost of God—Reading Theologically 13 God as Ghostly: The Relegation and Return of Meta-Narrative 14 Being as Ghostly: The Christian Meta-Narrative of the Ghost Story 26 3 ‘Strangely mistaking death for life’: Arthur Machen 39 Anglo-Catholicism and Arthur Machen’s Sense of Mystery 4 1 Machen’s Thomist Anthropology 4 6 ‘The White People’ 47 Man without Christ in ‘The Great God Pan’ 5 5 Aesthetic Nihilism in The Three Impostors 59 Conclusion 70 4 ‘What is this that I have done?’: M. R. James 79 M. R. James, Anglican Dogma and the Moral Authority of Text 8 0 MRJ’s Theological Anthropology 8 4 ix