The spiritual 'vastation' of James Clarence Mangan : magic, technology, and identity

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    Abstract

    This essay will posit Mangan’s use of the supernatural as less an indication of escapism, than social instruction; an engagement with the live debates of the early nineteenth century between the logic of science, and the seemingly inexplicable feasts of a so far unaccountable spiritual domain. The publication of Mangan’s supernatural prose fiction of this period, as well as the latter’s active interest in the occult and Swedenborgian beliefs, coincides with several interrelated cultural movements of this period of which it is well worth taking note. Joyce claimed that it was in Mangan that ‘East and West meet’, and it is within the orientalism of the early nineteenth century that much of Mangan’s Eastern poetic translations are understood. At the same time, and clearly related to this oriental discourse, Mangan’s stories relate the beginnings of psychical research as a legitimate investigative and scientific discipline in Britain, which subtly drew on its affiliation with the psychology of the unconscious; a veritable and unexplored Other of both the mind and the visible world, which finds its literary representation in Mangan’s tales of an exoticized supernaturalism.
    Original languageEnglish
    Title of host publicationEssays on James Clarence Mangan: The Man in the Cloak
    EditorsSinéad Sturgeon
    Place of PublicationU.K.
    PublisherPalgrave
    Pages163-183
    Number of pages21
    ISBN (Print)9781137273376
    Publication statusPublished - 2014

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