"Can She the Bodiless Dead Espy?": Coleridge and the Hermeneutics of Ghost Seeing
ELH: English literary history December 1, 2024 DOI: 10.1353/elh.2024.a945317 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Key points | Argues that Coleridge's aesthetics of the preternatural center on the primacy of interpretation in visionary experience, and proposes that Christabel stages the interpretive crisis of ghost-seeing as a "necromantic sociality" interpenetrated by the dead. |
Abstract
Abstract:This article argues for a revised understanding of Coleridge's aesthetics of the preternatural by analyzing them through the lens of his long-standing engagement with the phenomenology and hermeneutics of ghost-seeing. Focusing first on critical works such as The Friend, The Statesman's Manual, and Coleridge's notes on Hamlet, I contend that Coleridge articulates an account of visionary experience which stresses the primacy of the interpretive act. The article concludes with a reading of Christabel as a meditation on the hermeneutics of apparitions in which the interpretive crisis of ghost-seeing facilitates a necromantic sociality interpenetrated by the presences of the dead.