Art and the Transitional Object in Vernon Lee's Supernatural Tales - Hardcover

Pulham, Patricia

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0754650960 ISBN 13: 9780754650966

Publisher: Routledge, 2008

Synopsis

In her persuasively argued study, Patricia Pulham astutely combines psychoanalytic theory with socio-historical criticism to examine a selection of fantastic tales by the female aesthete and intellectual Vernon Lee (Violet Paget, 1856-1935). Lee's own definition of the supernatural in the preface to Hauntings questions the nature of the 'genuine ghost', and argues that this figure is not found in the Society of Psychical Research but in our own psyches, where it functions as a mediator between past and present. Using D.W. Winnicott's 'transitional object' theory, which maintains that adults transfer their childhood engagement with toys to art and cultural artifacts, Pulham argues that the prevalence of the past in Lee's tales signifies not only an historical but a psychic past. Thus the 'ghosts' that haunt Lee's supernatural fiction, as well as her aesthetic, psychological, and historical writings, held complex meanings for her that were fundamental to her intellectual development and allowed her to explore alternative identities that permit the expression of transgressive sexualities.

About this title

About the Author

Patricia Pulham is Senior Lecturer in Victorian Literature at the University of Portsmouth, UK.

Edition details

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0754650960
• ISBN 13: 9780754650966
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 188