Spiritualism and British society between the wars

Author(s)

    • Hazelgrove, Jenny

Bibliographic Information

Spiritualism and British society between the wars

Jenny Hazelgrove

(Studies in popular culture)

Manchester University Press, 2000

  • : hbk
  • : pbk

Available at  / 5 libraries

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Note

Includes index

Description and Table of Contents

Volume

: hbk ISBN 9780719055584

Description

Historians of modern British culture have long assumed that under pressure from secular forces, interest in spiritualism had faded by the end of the Great War. Jenny Hazelgrove challenges this assumption and shows how spiritualism grew between the wars and became part of the fabric of popular culture. This work provides an insight into an alternative culture that flourished - alongside more conventional outlets for spiritual beliefs and needs. Hazelgrove uses a vast range of primary material from this period, such as films, novels and autobiographies, as well as mass observation surveys to present her case. Hazelgrove suggests that the movement continued to gain in popularity after World War I, and explores the raging contemporary debate over its meaning. By doing this, she engages with issues of gender, subjectivity and power in relation to the development of the image of the medium and of spiritualism in general.

Table of Contents

  • Spiritualism after the Great War
  • Catholic connections
  • virgin mothers and warrior maids
  • possession, dissociation and unseen families
  • mothers. mediums and vampires
  • frustration, repression and deviant desire
  • the dual agenda of psychical research
  • becoming a medium.
Volume

: pbk ISBN 9780719055591

Description

What role does memory play in migrants' adaption to the emotional challenges of migration? How are migrant selfhoods remade in relation to changing cultural myths? This book, the first to apply Popular Memory Theory to the Irish Diaspora, opens new lines of critical enquiry within scholarship on the Irish in modern Britain. Combining innovative use of migrant life histories with cultural representations of the post-war Irish experience, it interrogates the interaction between lived experience, personal memory and cultural myth to further understanding of the work of memory in the production of migrant subjectivities. Based on richly contextualised case studies addressing experiences of emigration, urban life, work, religion, and the Troubles in England, chapters shed new light on the collective fantasies of post-war migrants and the circumstances that formed them, as well as the cultural and personal dynamics of subjective change over the life course. At the core of the book lie the processes by which migrants 'recompose' the self as part of ongoing efforts to adapt to the transition between cultures and places. Life history and the Irish migrant experience offers a fresh perspective on the significance of England's largest post-war migrant group for current debates on identity and difference in contemporary Britain. Integrating historical, cultural and psychological perspectives in an innovative way, it will be essential reading for academics and students researching modern British and Irish social and cultural history, ethnic and migration studies, oral history and memory studies, cultural studies and human geography. -- .

Table of Contents

  • Spiritualism after the Great War
  • Catholic connections
  • virgin mothers and warrior maids
  • possession, dissociation and unseen families
  • mothers. mediums and vampires
  • frustration, repression and deviant desire
  • the dual agenda of psychical research
  • becoming a medium.

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