Haunting Modernisms

Matt Foley has particular research interests in modernism, the Gothic, the ghost story and literary acoustics. From 2015-2017, he held a Lectureship at the University of Stirling, UK, where he taught on a range of courses in modern and contemporary literature. He is currently writing on a diverse range of topics, including the acoustics of Gothic literature and the fiction of Michel Faber and Patrick McGrath. Haunting Modernisms is his first monograph.

“Haunting Modernisms attempts to bridge the gap between Gothic and Modernist definitions of what it means to haunt and be haunted. … Each chapter sows the seeds of discussions yet to come, creating a rich and complex study that draws together both theoretical and historical approaches.” (Lucy Hall, Fantastika Journal, Vol. 3 (4), January, 2019)​

• 1. Introduction: modernism, mourning, and the ghostly.- 2. Haunted images, deadness, and impossible mourning.- 3. Melancholia and the dead in T. S. Eliot’s aesthetics of purgatory.- 4. Pursuing the phantom in Woolf’s aesthetics of survival.- 5. The gaze in Elizabeth Bowen’s spectral resistance fantasies.- 6. The blood consciousness and Lawrence’s silent ghosts.- 7. Conclusion: The other/Other and locating the ghostly.- Index.