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Relevant bibliographies by topics / Supernatural in fiction

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Academic literature on the topic 'Supernatural in fiction'

Author: Grafiati

Published: 4 June 2021

Last updated: 1 August 2024

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Journal articles on the topic "Supernatural in fiction"

1

Šešlak, Mirko Ž. "PHILIP K. DICK’S UBIK: A NATURAL POSSIBLE WORLD OF SCIENCE FICTION OR A SUPERNATURAL POSSIBLE WORLD OF FANTASY?" Lipar XXIV, no. 82 (2023): 107–21. http://dx.doi.org/10.46793/lipar82.107s.

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The article aims to explore whether the text of Philip K. Dick’s Ubik constructs a natural (physi- cally possible) or a supernatural (physically impossible) fictional world. According to Darko Suvin, one of the fundamental traits of science fiction is that its texts construct natural, physically possible fictional worlds. Readers of science fiction have often complained of Ubik, regarding it a confusing work, riddled with supernatural impurities and a lack of precise explanations. The betrayal of these expectations often casts doubt on whether this novel is science-fictional or a work of fantasy. If we aim to determine whether the fictional world of Ubik belongs to the possible worlds of science fiction, the theoretical framework for such a task can be found in Lubomir Doležel’s possible worlds theory. To do this, we must analyze the alethic constraints of the given fictional world, for those narrative modalities govern the formation of the fic- tional world’s physical laws and determine what is possible, impossible and necessary within its boundaries. If our analysis shows that the alethic constraints present in Ubik are analogous to the physical laws of the real world, we will prove that this fictional world is physically pos- sible and therefore possesses one of the fundamental traits of science fiction, naturalness. If our analysis shows otherwise, the fictional world of Ubik can be relegated to the supernatural, physically impossible worlds of fantasy.

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Johnston, Sarah Iles. "The Religious Affordance of Supernatural Horror Fiction." Numen 70, no. 2-3 (March 10, 2023): 113–37. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/15685276-20231688.

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Abstract This article argues that some supernatural horror fiction has religious affordance – that is, provides ideas that readers can draw upon to build their own religious outlook. In this regard, supernatural horror fiction is an important but previously overlooked part of lived religion. It also demonstrates that the afforded ideas are entwined with the supernatural experiences that the stories describe and looks at rhetorical tropes that dispose readers to believe in those experiences (at least while reading the story), and by extension to entertain the credibility of the religious ideas, as well. It demonstrates the important role that ambiguity, a central feature of supernatural horror fiction since the 1830s, plays in persuading readers to believe in the supernatural experiences and the religious ideas. Two case studies are used to make these arguments: M. R. James’s “Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad” (1904) and Stephen King’s Revival (2014).

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Majidova, Ilaha Adil. "The conceptual interpretation of S. King`s literary heritage." SCIENTIFIC WORK 62, no. 01 (February 8, 2021): 159–61. http://dx.doi.org/10.36719/2663-4619/62/159-161.

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S.King is a modern American writer of supernatural, horror fiction, science fiction and fantasy. His works are powerful because he integrates his life experiences and observations into idiosyncratic stories. He uses a free style of writing. Generally By the help of supernatural beings, vampire, demon, insubstantial events he mystifies and shocks readers, confuses their minds. The writer’s psycho-emotional situation, inner world rebound his works. This article is devoted to the conceptual interpretation of S.King’s creativity. In his works he tries to show the depth of his imagination. Key words: modern American literature, fantasy, horror fiction, psycho-emotional creativity, mystical elements

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Gentile, Kathy Justice. "Sublime Drag: Supernatural Masculinity in Gothic Fiction." Gothic Studies 11, no. 1 (May 2009): 16–31. http://dx.doi.org/10.7227/gs.11.1.4.

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Walker, Pierre A. "Book review: The Supernatural and English Fiction." Henry James Review 18, no. 2 (1997): 204–6. http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/hjr.1997.0014.

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Zalomkina, Galina V. "GOTHIC COMPONENTS OF SCIENCE FICTION’S GENEALOGY." VESTNIK IKBFU PHILOLOGY PEDAGOGY AND PSYCHOLOGY, no. 2 (2023): 43–59. http://dx.doi.org/10.5922/pikbfu-2023-2-5.

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Science fiction can be defined as the literature about cognizable unusual phenomena which represents hypothetical scientific, technical and social products of their rational exploration. Before the genre emerged, the subject of exploring the unusual was developed mainly in the field of mythological fiction, which became the basic element of Gothic literature. In Gothic, the features of science fiction began to form: in M. Shelley’s novel “Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus”, the motives of the supernatural are rationalized through the use of scientific and technical issues. The goal of the presented research is detecting the nature, methods and specifics of the transformations of the Gothic plot that led to the formation of the science fiction genre. It is achieved by the use of comparative, historical-genetic, hermeneutic, mythopoetic methods. Gothic literature reacted to the growing interest in scientific and technological progress by attempting to rationalize the elements of the supernatural plot: demons, werewolves, the living dead could be presented either as a result of experimentation or as an object of scientific exploration. In Russian literature, V. F. Odoevsky made a move from Gothic poetics towards long-term social, scientific and technological forecasting in a fiction text. The role of Gothic in the genesis of science fiction is clearly visible in the artistic world of H. P. Lovecraft who elaborated supernatural horror in the form of nonhuman manifestations of the indifferent Universe. The protagonist scientist is involved into the knowledge of it and, therefore, is put in the situation of a mythological cultural hero, reinterpreted in the coordinates of the plot of scientific research.

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Dhakal, Lekha Nath. "Fantasy in Literature: A Symbiotic Relation to the Real." Pravaha 26, no. 1 (June 1, 2020): 119–23. http://dx.doi.org/10.3126/pravaha.v26i1.41866.

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This article attempts to explore the use of fantasy in literature and how it has attained the position of a literary category in the twentieth century. This work also concerns how as the form literature, it functions between wonderful and imitative to combine the elements of both. The article reveals that wonderful represents supernatural atmospheres and events. The story-telling is unrealistic which represents impossibility as it creates a wonderland. In the imitative or the realistic mode, the narrative imitates external reality. In it, the characters and situations are ordinary and real. Fantasy in literature does not escape the reality. It occurs in an interdependent relation to the real. In other words, the fantastic cannot exist independently of the real world that limits it. The use of fantastic mode in literature interrupts the conventional artistic representation and reproduction of perceivable reality. It embodies the reality and transgresses the standards of literary forming. It normally includes a variety of fictional works which use the supernatural and actually natural as well. The developers of fantasy fiction are fairy tales, science fiction about future wars and future world. A major instinct of fantastic fiction is the violence threatened by capitalist violation of personality that is spreading universally.

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Vaage, Margrethe Bruun. "On Punishment and Why We Enjoy It in Fiction." Poetics Today 40, no. 3 (September 1, 2019): 543–57. http://dx.doi.org/10.1215/03335372-7558136.

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The article proposes an explanation for why spectators may enjoy excessive punishment when watching fiction, even in Scandinavia where harsh punishment is roundly condemned. Excessive punishment is typically carried out by a vigilante avenger, and in fiction this character is often a fantastic character (e.g., not realistic, taking on superhuman and/or supernatural characteristics). We allow ourselves to enjoy punishment more readily when the character who punishes is clearly fictional. In The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and Let the Right One In, fantastic elements seep into an otherwise realistic setting and allow the spectator to fully enjoy the main characters’ vigilante revenge. The theory of fictional reliefs posited here holds that this mixture of modes facilitates one of two paths to moral judgment.

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Schor, Esther H. "The haunted interpreter in Margaret Oliphant's supernatural fiction." Women's Studies 22, no. 3 (January 1993): 371–88. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00497878.1993.9978987.

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Donnarieix, Anne-Sophie. "Les chamanes contemporains – figures d’instabilité." Quêtes littéraires, no. 6 (December 30, 2016): 187–96. http://dx.doi.org/10.31743/ql.229.

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Antoine Volodine and Christian Garcin both make a distinctive use of shamanism in fictional novels. By multiplying shaman characters and intertwining the shamanistic principles and the narrative, they develop a poetic of instability noticeable through various hybridization processes notably strengthened by the intrusion of supernatural elements. The analysis of three motives in which this game of unstable balance is particularly mirrored – identity, History and fiction – shall turn our attention to the role of shamanism as a vector of fictional dynamism.

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Dissertations / Theses on the topic "Supernatural in fiction"

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Hall, Daniel James Alan. "Gothic fiction in France and Germany (1790-1800)." Thesis, University of Exeter, 2000. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.324030.

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Golding, Justin Alex. "Muse : a novel ; The Broken Home : defamiliarization in supernatural fiction." Thesis, Aberystwyth University, 2016. http://hdl.handle.net/2160/a7f45fb0-eb57-4873-9319-5943115b201f.

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Yule, Jeffrey V. "Science, the supernatural, and the postmodern impulse in contemporary fiction /." The Ohio State University, 1998. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1487952208107624.

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Stansberry, Tonya Faye. "Imprisoned and Empowered: The Women of Edith Wharton's Supernatural Fiction." [Johnson City, Tenn. : East Tennessee State University], 2003. http://etd-submit.etsu.edu/etd/theses/available/etd-0712103-091758/unrestricted/StansberryT072203f.pdf.

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Thesis (M.A.)--East Tennessee State University, 2003.
Title from electronic submission form. ETSU ETD database URN: etd-0712103-091758. Includes bibliographical references. Also available via Internet at the UMI web site.

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Herbig, Art, and Andrew F. Herrmann. "Polymediated Narrative: The Case of the Supernatural Episode "Fan Fiction"." Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University, 2016. https://dc.etsu.edu/etsu-works/757.

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Modern stories are the product of a recursive process influenced by elements of genre, outside content, medium, and more. These stories exist in a multitude of forms and are transmitted across multiple media. This article examines how those stories function as pieces of a broader narrative, as well as how that narrative acts as a world for the creation of stories. Through an examination of the polymediated nature of modern narratives, we explore the complicated nature of modern storytelling.

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Eckersley, Adrian Barry. "The fiction of Arthur Machen : fantastic writing in the context of materialism." Thesis, Birkbeck (University of London), 1995. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.250145.

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Leslie-McCarthy, Sage. "The Case of the Psychic Detective: Progress, Professionalisation, and the Occult in Psychic Detective Fiction from the 1880s to the 1930s." Thesis, Griffith University, 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/10072/365497.

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This thesis examines a little-known hybrid genre popular in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: psychic detective fiction. The stories that comprise this hybrid genre involve the rational investigation of supernatural phenomena. They have received relatively little critical attention due, in part, to their inability to fit comfortably in either the traditional “detective” or “ghost story” categories, in addition to the comparative obscurity of many of the writers. Typically, psychic detective narratives have been subsumed within the discourses of late Victorian “Gothic” criticism. Consequently they have been understood as manifestations of various forms of cultural anxiety because Gothic criticism is typically concerned with the transgression of boundaries and the anxieties associated with modernity. This thesis moves beyond the anxiety model of Gothic criticism by arguing that psychic detective fiction engages with ideas of progress, contemporary occult theories and the development of professionalisation at the turn of the century. While anxiety was certainly one response to the uncertainty and rapid change that is generally understood as characterising the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, so too was optimism, excitement regarding new possibilities and a fervent desire to bring about social improvement. In particular, this thesis focuses upon progressive ideas of social reform, collectivism, relativity, the synthesis of seemingly different “ways of knowing” and the possibilities offered by new fields of study such as the social sciences and psychical research. It is the sense of possibility, excitement, and faith in the ability to improve (both as individuals and as a society), that characterises psychic detective fiction. The detectives discussed are concerned with problem solving, attempting to bring about positive resolutions to supernatural problems, and providing assistance to those in need. In psychic detective fiction resolution and understanding is most often brought about through the merging of seemingly disparate elements and the transcending of binary oppositions, rather than the traditionally Gothic mode of reinstating former boundaries and enforcing the separation or elimination of the threatening force. Psychic detectives are more concerned with forging new paths than recovering the status quo.
Thesis (PhD Doctorate)
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
School of Arts
Faculty of Arts
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Brennan, Joseph Carl Linden. "I am your worst fear, I am your best fantasy: new approaches to slash fiction." Thesis, Department of Media and Communications, 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/2123/5872.

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This thesis uses slash fan fiction produced for the CW television series Supernatural to suggest two new slash typologies. While existing frameworks — romantopia (concerned with sex) and intimatopia (concerned with intimacy) — are useful, I argue that many slash stories fall outside the scope of these two terms into two newly proposed categories: paratopia and monstropia. Paratopic slash is centrally concerned with psychological change or geographical repositioning and realises, like romantopia and intimatopia, potentials of homosocial desire. Monstropic slash is centrally concerned with perversity and realises potentials of homosexual panic; it is a genre of slash fiction until now unexplored by slash scholarship. To illustrate these frameworks I discuss Supernatural slash stories in detail. Supernatural was chosen to illustrate both paratopia and monstropia because it is arguably a text that promotes homosexual panic as much as it does homosocial desire. I also argue that Supernatural slash, which would ordinarily be classified as romantopic or intimatopic, is paratopic due to the changes necessary to negotiate the characters’ homophobia and authentically present them in either sexual or intimate love. In conclusion, I argue that paratopia and monstropia are useful frameworks for understanding the ‘other worlds’ that slash inhabits — worlds beyond the reach of ‘topias’ romantopia and intimatopia.

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Giblin-Jowett, Hellen. "Smell, smells and smelling in Victorian supernatural fiction of the fin de siècle." Thesis, University of Newcastle upon Tyne, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/10443/2523.

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My PhD examines how writers at the fin de siècle responded to new understandings of smell, smells and smelling in their representations of the supernatural, demonstrating how those understandings were harnessed to nascent disciplines and technologies concerned with the limits and potential of the human subject. It recovers a lost history of smell and explains how shifts in the meaning of ‘smell’ (verb and noun) were witnessed and interrogated by writers in the period. Drawing attention to significant omissions from foundational accounts of olfaction in the nineteenth century, the thesis performs five key reclamatory readings to illuminate a number of supernatural stories. Firstly, it considers cross-channel influences on the articulation and reception of smell- description, drawing out a specifically British experience of scent that relates to the defaecalisation of the River Thames between 1858 and 1875. It then uncovers the origin, and demonstrates the literary manifestation, of analogies between music and scent. The thesis analyses how smells and noses in fin-de-siècle supernatural tales responded to new discursive possibilities afforded by late nineteenth-century developments in rhinoplasty, anaesthesia, nursing and Tractarian theology. The possible over-estimation of H. G. Wells’s reputation for early alignment with Darwinian theory is also considered through a recuperation of George William Piesse’s The Art of Perfumery (1855). Finally, it considers smellers and noses in Henry Rider Haggard’s She (1887), Richard Marsh’s The Beetle (1897), Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897), Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891) and a range of prose fiction by Vernon Lee and Arthur Machen. Overall, it argues that in fin-de-siècle supernatural fiction the epistemology of smell, smells and smelling provided writers with new ways of testing, expanding and representing the boundaries of human identity.

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Morgan, Kazel Yvonne. "Not a ghost : liminal female identity and American women's supernatural fiction, 1870-1902 /." Digital version accessible at:, 2000. http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/utexas/main.

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Books on the topic "Supernatural in fiction"

1

Ione, Larissa. Supernatural. New York: Kensington Publishing Corp., 2011.

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Alexander, Irvine. Supernatural. New York: HarperCollins, 2009.

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F, Bleiler E., ed. Supernatural fiction writers: Fantasy and horror. New York: Scribner, 1985.

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1920-, Bleiler Everett Franklin, ed. Supernatural fiction writers: Fantasy and horror. New York: Scribner, 1985.

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1976-, Ryan Allyson, ed. Suddenly supernatural. New York: Random House/Listening Library, 2009.

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Margree, Victoria. British Women’s Short Supernatural Fiction, 1860–1930. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2019. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-27142-8.

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Richard, Bleiler, ed. Supernatural fiction writers: Contemporary fantasy and horror. 2nd ed. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 2003.

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Clery, E. J. The rise of supernatural fiction, 1762-1800. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.

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1958-, Joshi S. T., ed. American supernatural tales. New York: Penguin Books, 2007.

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Dickens, Charles. Supernatural short stories. Richmond, Surrey: Alma Classics, 2012.

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Book chapters on the topic "Supernatural in fiction"

1

Cisco, Michael. "The Supernatural." In Weird Fiction, 27–56. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2021. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-92450-8_2.

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Kaminski, Johannes D. "Supernatural dream encounters." In Dreams in Chinese Fiction, 17–42. New York: Routledge, 2024. http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9781003481881-2.

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Bloom, Clive. "Harry and Marianne: The Never Ending Supernatural Soap." In Cult Fiction, 205–18. London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, 1996. http://dx.doi.org/10.1057/9780230390126_11.

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Reis, Amândio. "Machado de Assis and the Doors of Fiction." In Short Stories, Knowledge and the Supernatural, 25–89. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2022. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-06681-8_2.

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Cisco, Michael. "Bizarre Epistemology, Bizarre Subject: A Definition of Weird Fiction." In New Directions in Supernatural Horror Literature, 191–208. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-95477-6_10.

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Andrew, Lucy. "‘Exspecta Inexspectata’: The Rise of the Supernatural in Hybrid Detective Series for Young Readers." In Serial Crime Fiction, 219–30. London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2015. http://dx.doi.org/10.1057/9781137483690_21.

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Margree, Victoria. "Introduction: Our Own Ghostliness." In British Women’s Short Supernatural Fiction, 1860–1930, 1–26. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2019. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-27142-8_1.

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Margree, Victoria. "(Other)Worldly Goods: Ghost Fiction as Financial Writing in Margaret Oliphant and Charlotte Riddell." In British Women’s Short Supernatural Fiction, 1860–1930, 27–67. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2019. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-27142-8_2.

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Margree, Victoria. "Neither Punishment nor Poetry: Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Edith Nesbit and Female Death." In British Women’s Short Supernatural Fiction, 1860–1930, 69–110. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2019. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-27142-8_3.

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Margree, Victoria. "The Good Memsahib? Marriage, Infidelity and Empire in Alice Perrin’s Anglo-Indian Tales." In British Women’s Short Supernatural Fiction, 1860–1930, 111–45. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2019. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-27142-8_4.

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Conference papers on the topic "Supernatural in fiction"

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Schiele, Alexandre. "THE NORMAL AND THE EXCEPTIONAL: A COMPARISON OF PU SONGLING’S AND MO YAN’S SURREAL WORLDS." In 9th International Conference ISSUES OF FAR EASTERN LITERATURES. St. Petersburg State University, 2021. http://dx.doi.org/10.21638/11701/9785288062049.10.

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From a comparison of the surreal worlds of Pu Songling and Mo Yan in their respective auctorial context, this paper argues that although Pu Songling’s short stories integrate surreal elements, contrary to the accepted typology of genres, they fall into realistic and not speculative fiction because the worldview of Imperial China in which he lived not only accepted the supernatural as real, but as foundational to the traditional order. By comparison, Mo Yan’s supernatural stories partly fall within supernatural literature, because post-1949 China espoused a scientific worldview which banishes the supernatural. On a second level, however, both Pu Songling’s and Mo Yan’s surreal fictions are political satires of their times. Yet, even on this point they diverge. While Pu Songling articulates the social and political criticism of his present to surreal elements, Mo Yan casts the surreal as a stand-in for the exceptional situations of his recent past which are the object of his criticisms.

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Reports on the topic "Supernatural in fiction"

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Murray, Chris, Keith Williams, Norrie Millar, Monty Nero, Amy O'Brien, and Damon Herd. A New Palingenesis. University of Dundee, November 2022. http://dx.doi.org/10.20933/100001273.

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Robert Duncan Milne (1844-99), from Cupar, Fife, was a pioneering author of science fiction stories, most of which appeared in San Francisco’s Argonaut magazine in the 1880s and ’90s. SF historian Sam Moskowitz credits Milne with being the first full-time SF writer, and his contribution to the genre is arguably greater than anyone else including Stevenson and Conan Doyle, yet it has all but disappeared into oblivion. Milne was fascinated by science. He drew on the work of Scottish physicists and inventors such as James Clark Maxwell and Alexander Graham Bell into the possibilities of electromagnetic forces and new communications media to overcome distances in space and time. Milne wrote about visual time-travelling long before H.G. Wells. He foresaw virtual ‘tele-presencing’, remote surveillance, mobile phones and worldwide satellite communications – not to mention climate change, scientific terrorism and drone warfare, cryogenics and molecular reengineering. Milne also wrote on alien life forms, artificial immortality, identity theft and personality exchange, lost worlds and the rediscovery of extinct species. ‘A New Palingenesis’, originally published in The Argonaut on July 7th 1883, and adapted in this comic, is a secular version of the resurrection myth. Mary Shelley was the first scientiser of the occult to rework the supernatural idea of reanimating the dead through the mysterious powers of electricity in Frankenstein (1818). In Milne’s story, in which Doctor S- dissolves his terminally ill wife’s body in order to bring her back to life in restored health, is a striking, further modernisation of Frankenstein, to reflect late-nineteenth century interest in electromagnetic science and spiritualism. In particular, it is a retelling of Shelley’s narrative strand about Frankenstein’s aborted attempt to shape a female mate for his creature, but also his misogynistic ambition to bypass the sexual principle in reproducing life altogether. By doing so, Milne interfused Shelley’s updating of the Promethean myth with others. ‘A New Palingenesis’ is also a version of Pygmalion and his male-ordered, wish-fulfilling desire to animate his idealised female sculpture, Galatea from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, perhaps giving a positive twist to Orpheus’s attempt to bring his corpse-bride Eurydice back from the underworld as well? With its basis in spiritualist ideas about the soul as a kind of electrical intelligence, detachable from the body but a material entity nonetheless, Doctor S- treats his wife as an ‘intelligent battery’. He is thus able to preserve her personality after death and renew her body simultaneously because that captured electrical intelligence also carries a DNA-like code for rebuilding the individual organism itself from its chemical constituents. The descriptions of the experiment and the body’s gradual re-materialisation are among Milne’s most visually impressive, anticipating the X-raylike anatomisation and reversal of Griffin’s disappearance process in Wells’s The Invisible Man (1897). In the context of the 1880s, it must have been a compelling scientisation of the paranormal, combining highly technical descriptions of the Doctor’s system of electrically linked glass coffins with ghostly imagery. It is both dramatic and highly visual, even cinematic in its descriptions, and is here brought to life in the form of a comic.

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