"Alas, poor ghost!" : traditions of belief in story and discourse / by Gillian Bennett.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Bennett, Gillian.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Folklore--Great Britain.

Folklore.

Occultism--Great Britain.

Occultism.

Ghosts--Great Britain.

Ghosts.

Women--Great Britain--Folklore.

Women.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (233 pages) : illustrations; digital, PDF file(s).

Edition:

Revised edition.

Place of Publication:

Logan : Utah State University Press, c1999.

Language Note:

English

System Details:

text file

Summary:

In the rational modern world, belief in the supernatural seemingly has been consigned to the worlds of entertainment and fantasy. Yet belief in other worldly phenomena, from poltergeists to telepathy, remains strong, as Gillian Bennett's research shows. Especially common is belief in continuing contact with, or the continuing presence of, dead family members. Bennett interviewed women in Manchester, England, asking them questions about ghosts and other aspects of the supernatural. (Her discussion of how her research methods and interview techniques evolved is in itself valuable.) She first published the results of the study in the well-received Traditions of Belief: Women and the Supernatural, which has been widely used in folklore and women's studies courses. "e;Alas, Poor Ghost!"e; extensively revises and expands that work. In addition to a fuller presentation and analysis of the original field research and other added material, the author, assisted by Kate Bennett, a gerontological psychologist, presents and discusses new research with a group of women in Leicester, England. Bennett is interested in more than measuring the extent of belief in other worldly manifestations. Her work explores the relationship between narrative and belief. She anticipated that her questions would elicit from her interviewees not just yes or no replies but stories about their experiences that confirmed or denied notions of the supernatural. The more controversial the subject matter, the more likely individuals were to tell stories, especially if their answers to questions of belief were positive. These were most commonly individualized narratives of personal experience, but they contained many of the traditional motifs and other content, including belief in the supernatural, of legends. Bennett calls them memorates and discusses the cultural processes, including ideas of what is a "e;proper"e; experience of the supernatural and a "e;proper"e; telling of the story, that make them communal as well as individual. These memorates provide direct and vivid examples of what the storytellers actually believe and disbelieve. In a final section, Bennett places her work in historical context through a discussion of case studies in the history of supernatural belief.

Contents:

Belief and Disbelief

Is Belief in the Supernatural Declining?

Telling It Slant

Patterns of Belief

Order in Chaos

Family Love

Competing Cultures

Contact with the Dead

Life after Death

Ghosts and Hauntings

Visitations

Cause, Consequence, and Lack Liquidated

Delving

Witnesses, Bereavement, and the Sense of Presence / Kate Bennett

Witnesses

Bereavement

The Sense of Presence

From Private Experience to Public Performance Supernatural Experience as Narrative

Belief and Disbelief: Patterns of Narration

Story Dialectic: The Imaginary Judge and Jury

"Alas, Poor Ghost!" Case Studies in the History of Ghosts and Visitations

The Ghost of Hamlet's Father

The Cock Lane Poltergeist

The Clodd/Lang Debate

The Vanishing Hitchhiker

A Brief History of "Witnesses"

Collecting the Data

The Manchester Study

The Leicester Study

Transcribing Spoken Texts

The Manchester Respondents

Linguistic Clues to Belief and Disbelief

Word Lists Showing Story Patterns in Memorates

Bibliography

Index.

Notes:

"New, expanded, and extensively rev. ed. of Traditions of belief : women and the supernatural."

Includes bibliographical references (p. 207-220) and index.

Description based on print version record.

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

Other Format:

Print versio :

ISBN:

0-87421-356-8

0-585-17525-X

OCLC:

44958637

Access Restriction:

Open access Unrestricted online access