Supernatural Entertainments

Supernatural Entertainments PDF Author: Simone Natale
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 0271077379
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
In Supernatural Entertainments, Simone Natale vividly depicts spiritualism’s rise as a religious and cultural phenomenon and explores its strong connection to the growth of the media entertainment industry in the nineteenth century. He frames the spiritualist movement as part of a new commodity culture that changed how public entertainments were produced and consumed. Starting with the story of the Fox sisters, considered the first spiritualist mediums in history, Natale follows the trajectory of spiritualism in Great Britain and the United States from its foundation in 1848 to the beginning of the twentieth century. He demonstrates that spiritualist mediums and leaders adopted many of the promotional strategies and spectacular techniques that were being developed for the broader entertainment industry. Spiritualist mediums were indistinguishable from other professional performers, as they had managers and agents, advertised in the press, and used spectacularism to draw audiences. Addressing the overlap between spiritualism’s explosion and nineteenth-century show business, Natale provides an archaeology of how the supernatural became a powerful force in the media and popular culture of today.

Supernatural Entertainments

Supernatural Entertainments PDF Author: Simone Natale
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 0271077379
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 240

Get Book Here

Book Description
In Supernatural Entertainments, Simone Natale vividly depicts spiritualism’s rise as a religious and cultural phenomenon and explores its strong connection to the growth of the media entertainment industry in the nineteenth century. He frames the spiritualist movement as part of a new commodity culture that changed how public entertainments were produced and consumed. Starting with the story of the Fox sisters, considered the first spiritualist mediums in history, Natale follows the trajectory of spiritualism in Great Britain and the United States from its foundation in 1848 to the beginning of the twentieth century. He demonstrates that spiritualist mediums and leaders adopted many of the promotional strategies and spectacular techniques that were being developed for the broader entertainment industry. Spiritualist mediums were indistinguishable from other professional performers, as they had managers and agents, advertised in the press, and used spectacularism to draw audiences. Addressing the overlap between spiritualism’s explosion and nineteenth-century show business, Natale provides an archaeology of how the supernatural became a powerful force in the media and popular culture of today.

Raymond, Or, Life and Death

Raymond, Or, Life and Death PDF Author: Sir Oliver Lodge
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Future life
Languages : en
Pages : 454

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Book Description


The History of Spiritualism..

The History of Spiritualism.. PDF Author: Arthur Conan Doyle
Publisher: ReadHowYouWant.com
ISBN: 1427081824
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 394

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Book Description


The Rise of Contemporary Spiritualism

The Rise of Contemporary Spiritualism PDF Author: Anne Kalvig
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1317017595
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 125

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Book Description
Talking to the dead and communication with 'the other side' is often presented as a taboo in an increasingly technological and medically advanced world. However, practices of spiritualism and mediumship continue to remain popular and in high demand within contemporary Western societies. This book analyses the practices of today’s mediums, who insist on standing at the threshold between life and death, interpreting signs and passing on communications, and asks how such concepts and practices are perceived by contemporary society. Using first-hand material gathered from alternative fairs, mediumistic congresses, séances, and interviews with both practitioners and clients, as well as thorough textual analysis, Anne Kalvig provides a clear overview of the various forms of consumption of mediumship in Western society and places these within a socio-cultural, religious and historical context. She also raises questions as to the controversies surrounding spiritualism and its representation and relationship with popular culture and the media. This book will be of interest to researchers in the field of sociology, religious studies, folklore, media studies and anthropology as well as to anyone interested in the upsurge of contemporary spiritualism, psychic phenomena and the paranormal.

The Darkened Room

The Darkened Room PDF Author: Alex Owen
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226642054
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 345

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Book Description
A highly original study that examines the central role played by women as mediums, healers, and believers during the golden age of spiritualism in the late Victorian era, The Darkened Room is more than a meditation on women mediums—it's an exploration of the era's gender relations. The hugely popular spiritualist movement, which maintained that women were uniquely qualified to commune with spirits of the dead, offered female mediums a new independence, authority, and potential to undermine conventional class and gender relations in the home and in society. Using previously unexamined sources and an innovative approach, Alex Owen invokes the Victorian world of darkened séance rooms, theatrical apparitions, and moving episodes of happiness lost and regained. She charts the struggles between spiritualists and the medical and legal establishments over the issue of female mediumship, and provides new insights into the gendered dynamics of Victorian society.

Talking to the Dead

Talking to the Dead PDF Author: Barbara Weisberg
Publisher: Zondervan
ISBN: 0061755168
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 338

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Book Description
Barbara Weisberg’s Talking to the Dead blends biography and social history in this revelatory story of the family responsible for the rise of Spiritualism. A fascinating story of spirits and conjurors, skeptics and converts in the second half of nineteenth century America viewed through the lives of Kate and Maggie Fox, the sisters whose purported communication with the dead gave rise to the Spiritualism movement—and whose recanting forty years later is still shrouded in mystery. In March of 1848, Kate and Maggie Fox—sisters aged eleven and fourteen—anxiously reported to a neighbor that they had been hearing strange, unidentified sounds in their house. From a sequence of knocks and rattles translated by the young girls as a "voice from beyond," the Modern Spiritualism movement was born. Talking to the Dead follows the fascinating story of the two girls who were catapulted into an odd limelight after communicating with spirits that March night. Within a few years, tens of thousands of Americans were flocking to séances. An international movement followed. Yet thirty years after those first knocks, the sisters shocked the country by denying they had ever contacted spirits. Shortly after, the sisters once again changed their story and reaffirmed their belief in the spirit world. Weisberg traces not only the lives of the Fox sisters and their family (including their mysterious Svengali–like sister Leah) but also the social, religious, economic and political climates that provided the breeding ground for the movement. While this is a thorough, compelling overview of a potent time in US history, it is also an incredible ghost story.

Spirit Matters

Spirit Matters PDF Author: J. Jeffrey Franklin
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501715461
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 287

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Book Description
Orthodox Christianity, scientific materialism, and alternative religions -- The evolution of occult spirituality in Victorian England and the representative case of Edward Bulwer-Lytton -- Anthony Trollope's religion : the orthodox/heterodox boundary -- The influences of Buddhism and comparative religion on Matthew Arnold's theology -- Interpenetration of religion and national politics in Great Britain and Sri Lanka : William Knighton's Forest life in Ceylon -- Identity, genre, and religion in Anna Leonowens' The English governess at the Siamese court -- Ancient Egyptian religion in late-Victorian England -- The economics of immortality : the demi-immortal Oriental, Enlightenment vitalism, and political economy in Bram Stoker's Dracula -- Conclusion : from Victorian occultism to new age spiritualities

The Missing Link in Modern Spiritualism

The Missing Link in Modern Spiritualism PDF Author: Ann Leah Underhill
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Spiritualism
Languages : en
Pages : 554

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Book Description


The Apparitionists

The Apparitionists PDF Author: Peter Manseau
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 0544745973
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 357

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Book Description
A story of faith and fraud in post-Civil War America told through the lens of a photographer who claimed he could capture images of the dead

Altered States

Altered States PDF Author: Marlene Tromp
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 9780791467404
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
Considers the role of Spiritualism in Victorian culture.