Haunting Presences - Ghosts in French Literature and Culture (Hardcover)

This book responds to the current critical interest in phantoms and haunting. It explores and assesses the twentieth century's fascination with the ghost in relation to notions of identity, authorship and memory, tracing the changing form of the ghost in key twentieth-century French media: film, photography, literature and theory. However, the ghosts of works present cannot be understood fully without considering the ghosts of works past. Each of the twentieth-century works analyzed considers itself haunted by the past, by memory, be it personal or textual. Consequently, this volume also considers this past and these textual memories by exploring specific ghosts in successive ages (Medieval, Renaissance, Early-Modern and the nineteenth century) and genres key to these epochs (poetry, drama and the novel).Thus, this collection offers an insight into the ghost's past, its evolution across time and genre, before turning to focus on how art in twentieth-century France deals with its textual memories and the ghosts of its past. A substantial introduction explains and pulls together the themes and analytical structure of this volume to provide unity and cohesion among the various chapters.