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.

• 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.

“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)​