TY - BOOK AU - Johnson,George M. TI - Mourning and mysticism in First World War literature and beyond: grappling with ghosts SN - 9781349673476 (paperback) AV - PR478.W65 J64 2015 U1 - 820.9358 J630M 23 PY - 2015/// CY - Hampshire PB - Palgrave Macmillan KW - World War, 1914-1918 KW - Great Britain KW - Literature and the war KW - English literature KW - 20th century KW - History and criticism KW - Mourning customs in literature KW - Mysticism in literature KW - Spiritualism in literature KW - HISTORY / Military / World War I KW - bisacsh KW - LITERARY CRITICISM / General KW - LITERARY CRITICISM / European / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh KW - PHILOSOPHY / Religious N1 - Includes bibliographical references (pages 234-251) and index; Machine generated contents note: -- PrefaceIntroduction: Attachment, Mourning and Mysticism1. F. W. H. Myers: Loss and the Obsessive Study of Survival2. Spirit Soldiers: Oliver Lodge's Raymond and Christopher3. From Parodist to Proselytizer: Arthur Conan Doyle's 'Vital Message'4. Well-Remembered Voices: Mourning and Spirit Communication in Barrie and Kipling's First World War Narratives5. 'Mourning, the War, and the 'New Mysticism' in May Sinclair and Virginia Woolf'6. 'Purgatorial Passions': 'The ghost' (a.k.a. Wilfred Owen) in Owen's poetry7. ''Misty-schism': the Psychological Roots of Aldous Huxley's Mystical Modernism'8. After-life/After-word: the Culture of Mourning and MysticismBibliographyIndex N2 - "How did people respond to the overwhelming loss of loved ones during the First World War? Many took their lead from iconic early twentieth-century writers, including Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Sir Oliver Lodge, J.M. Barrie, Rudyard Kipling, Virginia Woolf, Wilfred Owen, and Aldous Huxley, among others, who embraced some form of mysticism as a means of coping. These figures had experienced profound losses and even trauma in their early lives, sensitizing them to losses of loved ones during the war and making these writers receptive to the possibility of communicating with spirits. Most of these writers had become fascinated with the work of Frederic Myers and other key psychical researchers regarding potential extensions of personality, including telepathy, clairvoyance, and automatic writing, phenomena which supported the possibility that personality survived death. Mourning and Mysticism in First World War Literature and Beyond skilfully weaves psychology, history, psychobiography and literary analysis to show that these writers' engagement with mysticism and spiritualism in particular was not deluded, but at least in some situations constituted a more ethical, creative and therapeutic form of mourning than drawing solace from state-sanctioned representations of mourning such as war memorials"-- ER -