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Spirits vs. Ghosts
Guiley, Rosemary. The encyclopedia of ghosts and spirits. New York: Facts on File, 1992.
https://www.worldcat.org/wcpa/servlet/DCARead?standardNo=0816040850&standardNoType=1&excerpt=true
A general difference between a spirit and ghost is that the former is associated with virtue whereas, the latter with evil. Guiley’s cited work is a collection of fictional and non-fictional stories about ghosts and spirits in England. The book starts with the description of acheri that is a witch. Then the story of William Terriss follows whose ghost haunted the theatre after his death. After quoting many such stories, the book mentions the establishment of American Society for Psychical Research (ASPR) which was established in 1885 to study the phenomenon. This book is worth reading for it unveils the various forms of ghosts and spirits and explains the methods to differentiate them. The book was published by ASPR in 1992.
Jenkins, Ruth Y. "Authorizing female voice and experience: Ghosts and spirits in Kingston's The Woman Warrior and Allende's The House of the Spirits." Melus 19.3 (1994): 61-73.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/467872?seq=1
This book of Jenkins was published by Oxford University Press in 1994. It is a non-fiction work that consists of a critical analysis of two English novels; The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston and The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende. Jenkins analyzes the novels with reference to other traditional European novels having paranormal elements to find the relationship of the ghost world with woman psyche. The author notes that females have much tendency towards a spiritual or unreal world and they can transcend the life of significance if they are given freedom. The book is an interesting analysis of ghost-spirit phenomenon and one can read it for the enhancement of knowledge about the phenomenon.
Bath, Jo, and John Newton. "“Sensible proof of spirits”: ghost belief during the later seventeenth century." Folklore 117.1 (2006): 1-14.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00155870500479851
This is a research article that was co-authored by John Bath and John Newton and published by Taylor & Francis, Limited. It attempts to explore the European beliefs about ghosts and spirits during the latter half of the 17th century. The authors consider this era significant for research studies because Europe was entering a new era of Neo-Platonism after passing through the reformation age. Neo-Platonists influenced Christianity and the Elites’ views about ghosts changed. The ghosts were then considered a mental state of man instead of being a literal creature that should be revealed through art. The student of the subject can read this article to learn about the transformation of Christian beliefs and the decline of superstitious practices among Europeans before they entered the era of Industrialization.
Hart, Stephen M. "Magical realism in the Americas: politicized ghosts in One Hundred Years of Solitude, The House of the Spirits, and Beloved." Journal of Iberian and Latin American Studies 9.2 (2003): 115-123.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1470184032000171759?journalCode=cjil20
This journal article was published online in June 2010 where Stephen Hart attempts to find and define Magical Realism in American literature. He believes that American Magic Realism is influenced by the European studies of the phenomenon. He finds that the author(s) of this genre attempt to project reality staying objective. The representation of phantoms in literature appealed mostly to the weakly integrated nations. Hart analyzes three famous novels; One Hundred Years of Solitude, The House of the Spirits, and Beloved. This article is worth reading for those who like to explore the mysterious aspects of the human mind by analyzing literature.
Gardner, Daniel K. "Ghosts and spirits in the Sung Neo-Confucian world: Chu Hsi on Kuei-then." Journal of the American Oriental Society 115.4 (1995): 598.
https://search.proquest.com/openview/9c2d336c26cbdb25ad182b183d13741b/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=40957
Chu Hsi or Zhu Xi is held responsible for the revival of Confucian philosophy during the 9th and 10th centuries under the Sung dynasty. Zhu Xi revolutionized the Shen religion by introducing new deities and other spiritual figures to set some morals for the Chinese people. Daniel Gardener explores the works of Zhu Xi and finds the role of ghosts and spirits in the formation of Shen beliefs. The students and scholars who have an interest in oriental philosophy can learn much from this research article.
Bennett, Gillian. "Ghost and witch in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries." Folklore 97.1 (1986): 3-14.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0015587X.1986.9716363?journalCode=rfol20
Gillian Bennett explores medieval European literature and finds that ghosts had a significant place in the lives and beliefs of European people. Most of the medieval beliefs were derived from folklores which were considered incomplete without adding ghosts and spirits. Bennett has reviewed the literature that endorses this claim that folklores were nothing without spiritual elements. Bennett especially quotes a 17th-century book Religio Medico by Thomas Browne that clearly shows the representation of ghosts and spirits. Bennett finds that folklores had such strong influence on the lives of the people even stronger than religion that they had become superstitious under this influence. This is a remarkable work of Bennett for he has strengthened his argument by quoting credible authors like Keith Thomas, Thomas Browne, and many others.
Ackerman, Alan L. "Visualizing Hamlet's Ghost: The Spirit of Modern Subjectivity." Theatre Journal 53.1 (2001): 119-144.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/25068886?seq=1
The John Hopkins University Press published this research article by Ackerman that explores the famous Shakespearean play, Hamlet. Ackerman finds that the ghost in Hamlet is the self of the protagonist that is a turning point in portraying spirits in literature. Ghosts were always imagined creatures whether in a story or real-life until Shakespeare materialized this creature and presented it on stage. This tradition was followed by the modern literati and we observed the physical description of the ghosts. Ackerman considers it a mistake and criticizes those who gave physical shape to the ghosts. This article is a critique of this phenomenon where Ackerman defines a ghost and explains why we should not bring it out from imagination: objectifying the subjective entity.
Pimple, Kenneth D. "Ghosts, spirits, and scholars: The origins of modern spiritualism." Out of the Ordinary: Folklore and the Supernatural (1995): 75-89.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/j.ctt46nwn8.10.pdf
This article was published by Utah State University Press in 1995. The article finds the roots of modern spiritualism discussing the arguments of the believers and non-believers of ancient spiritualism. Pimple argues that Modern Spiritualism appears as a deliberate attempt of propagating such beliefs likely for aesthetic pleasure. Modern spiritual beliefs are not like they were in medieval Europe where the folklores about ghosts were considered as true as the Bible. Two groups are engaged in deciding whether spiritualism has something to do with the Truth or not. Some of them believe and defend Modern spiritualism whereas, the others contradict, but they both are unaware of Spiritualism, Pimple argues. A simple language and argumentation appeals to the reader of this article.
Clarke, Philip A. "Indigenous spirit and ghost folklore of “settled” Australia." Folklore 118.2 (2007): 141-161.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00155870701337346
European settlers culminated most of the aborigines and their beliefs vanished with their departure from the horizon of Australia. Fortunately, a small segment of those aborigines survived and submitted before the foreign invaders. They accepted the culture of the colonizers, but thanks to their folklores for their mythologies also survived to some extent. These folklores influenced the Europeans and ghosts of their mythologies entered the literature produced by the colonizers. Philip Clarke’s research article is the critical study of the ghosts which penetrated European literature through aborigine folklores.
Lundie, Catherine A., ed. Restless spirits: ghost stories by American women, 1872-1926. Univ of Massachusetts Press, 1996
https://books.google.com.pk/books?hl=en&lr=&id=tz5JXML3R14C&oi=fnd&pg=PA1&dq=spirits+vs+ghost&ots=fWET7XnFad&sig=byv3XPFj39gvXsffoVpi0yDN4JY&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=spirits%20vs%20ghost&f=false
American female authors who produced literature portrayed ghosts as different characters than that of the males. A ghost in a male’s story is a negative character that signifies the stress of the author like mental depression and miseries. Whereas, the female authors portrayed ghosts as their signifiers and they used to get catharsis by ghosts in their stories. The ghosts in female stories are frank with the characters and they do not cause any harm to them. The ghosts have no physical bodies to fill any space in the house rather they dwell in the minds of the characters. Catherine Lundie’s article discusses the works produced by female authors during the last quarter of 19th century and the first quarter of the 20th century. Ghosts and spirits have no distinction in this era of female literature. Lundie finds that the women stayed most of their time in the houses during this era that could be the reason that they filled their imaginary houses with the ghosts who were realistic and the characters used to relieve their stress by talking to them. This article is worth reading to understand the female psyche during the era apart from understanding the ghosts of the late Victorian and the early Modern eras.
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